GVL

Xinxing is the hometown of Huineng, the Sixth Patriarch of Chan Buddhism, where he taught the Dharma and entered nirvana. Known for a thousand years as a city of Zen, the region has remained a place of thriving religious activity that draws visitors from near and far. Xinxing presents a characteristic western Guangdong townscape: layered mountains stretching into the distance, winding streams, and occasional ancient temples perched on hillsides with incense rising into the air. Alongside Xinxing's Liuzu Avenue sits Zen Cultural Town, a comprehensive cultural tourism base themed on Chan Buddhism. The development encompasses the Zen Sound Hall, a commercial street, the Yatur Hotel, and multiple other districts. The commercial street integrates shopping, entertainment, accommodation, and experiential retail, providing visitors with diversified and comprehensive services, while regularly hosting Chan-themed exhibitions and performances. The resort is themed around Chan culture, drawing on the rustic elegance and refined craftsmanship of the Lingnan region combined with the grandeur and classicism of Tang Dynasty aesthetics. Every flagstone path, every row of adjacent shopfronts, and the waterside settlement evoke the lingering atmosphere of Lingnan a thousand years ago, offering a serene retreat from the noise of the world. The town features Zen, the first large-scale immersive audio-visual outdoor performance in Lingnan, an epic production structured around eight chapters: Zen Domain, Zen Lineage, Zen Affinity, Zen Sound, Zen Dharma, Zen Realm, Zen Sage, and Zen Enlightenment, recreating the life of Huineng from his awakening to his teaching career. The design team closely studied Huineng's path to enlightenment, relevant Chan sutras, and historical documents, seeking to create a commercial street that entertains and shops while immersing visitors in the legendary life of the Sixth Patriarch and the depth of Chan culture. The designers found that stories of Huineng and Zen tradition carry both profound spiritual meaning and broad popular appeal, making them readily transmissible. These Zen stories were abstracted, reconstructed, and artistically transformed into landscape features along the commercial street. Zen Cultural Town is a flagship project for Xinxing's integration of culture and tourism, and an important initiative for excavating, preserving, and transmitting Chan heritage. The team's approach extended beyond design to encompass product planning for the entire project, aiming both to systematically enhance Xinxing's existing tourism market and to present and perpetuate Zen culture at a deeper level.