The booking wall verified
These sell out or block foreigners if you arrive unprepared — the dates, the official link, and whether your passport works.
Millennium City Park (Qingming Riverside Landscape Garden)
✓ 2026-06-13- Release
- Buy at the gate or online, real-name with your passport; the evening water show runs seasonally, check times on the day
- Price
- ¥120
- Foreigners
- Passport works
Entry is around ¥120, real-name with your passport, bought at the gate or the official channel. It's a life-sized recreation of the famous Song-dynasty 'Along the River During Qingming' scroll — costumed staff, boats, craft and combat displays. The big evening outdoor show is usually a separate ticket; confirm on the day.
officialBookingUrl left null: tickets are real-name at the gate and the official platform, and I won't render a button I can't confirm completes for an overseas card. This is a theme park, not an ancient site — enjoyable if you like costumed re-enactment and the Song-dynasty staging, skippable if you want genuine old architecture. The daytime is for the displays; the evening show, if you catch it, is the production people rave about.
Source: official ticketing · re-checked monthly
Iron Pagoda Park & Longting (Dragon Pavilion) Park
✓ 2026-06-13- Price
- —
- Foreigners
- Passport works
Each is a separate modest gate ticket (roughly ¥30–40), bought on site; passport fine, no advance booking needed.
The Iron Pagoda — an 11th-century, 55 m glazed-brick tower that has survived floods and wars — is the one genuinely old, genuinely impressive monument in Kaifeng, and the antidote to the theme-park sights. Longting Park, on the old palace site, is a pleasant axial garden-and-hall complex. Pair them for a morning of the authentic, quieter Kaifeng.
Source: official ticketing · re-checked monthly
Gulou (Drum Tower) night market
✓ 2026-06-13- Price
- Free (still needs booking)
- Foreigners
- Passport works
Free to wander — no ticket. Pay per snack as you go, cash or mobile pay. The market sets up in the evening around the Drum Tower square and nearby streets.
This is the real reason to stay the night. Kaifeng's night market is one of the most famous in China, a centuries-old institution of stalls packing the Drum Tower area after dark — peanut soup, mutton skewers, 'xiaolongbao' soup buns, almond tea, barbecue. It's free to walk and the food is cheap; it's a better, more genuine evening than any ticketed show.
Source: official ticketing · re-checked monthly
Landing & registration
The first-24-hours facts: hotels, police registration, and whether your card works.
- Hotels take foreigners
- Mixed — check first
- Foreign card via Alipay/WeChat
- mixed
- Police registration
- Kaifeng is a mid-sized Henan city that most foreigners visit as a day trip or overnight from Zhengzhou. Hotels in the centre near the Drum Tower and the main sights generally register foreign passports; budget guesthouses can be patchy, so confirm at booking. The high-speed hop from Zhengzhou is quick, so day-tripping with a Zhengzhou base is common too.
Eat like a local
What to order, where locals actually queue, and the food-street traps to skip.
Kaifeng's signature: delicate steamed buns filled with soup and pork, eaten carefully so you don't burn yourself on the broth. The old-name restaurants in the centre do the famous versions; the night market does cheaper, rougher ones. Either way it's the dish most associated with the city.
Beyond the soup buns, the Drum Tower market is built on sweet peanut soup, almond tea (xingren cha) poured from long-spouted pots, mutton and beef skewers, 'barrel chicken' and fried snacks. It's grazing food — cheap per item, best sampled widely. This is the eating experience of Kaifeng.
The sit-down restaurants aimed at tour groups are fine but pricier and less fun than the street. Kaifeng's whole food identity is the night market, so lean into it — a couple of evenings of stall-grazing tells you more about the city's flavours than any formal meal.
The honest layer
The part a tourism board will never print.
Kaifeng leans hard on recreated-Song attractions, and they're fine, but the thing that's genuinely special and unmissable is free: the Drum Tower night market. Plan your day so you're in Kaifeng in the evening — graze the stalls, try the local snacks, soak up one of China's oldest street-food scenes. If you only do one thing here, make it that, not a ¥120 theme-park ticket.
Kaifeng sat on the Yellow River and was repeatedly flooded and rebuilt, so much of the 'old capital' is modern recreation — the big riverside park especially. The genuinely historic survivors are the Iron Pagoda and a handful of temples. Decide whether you want costumed Song theming (the parks) or actual antiquity (the pagoda), and spend your tickets accordingly rather than expecting both from one site.
Kaifeng is about half an hour from Zhengzhou by high-speed rail (or ~1.5 hours by road), which makes it a comfortable day trip — and it pairs naturally with a Shaolin/Dengfeng or Luoyang Henan loop. But to catch the night market you really want to stay over, or at least leave Kaifeng late. A rushed daytime-only visit misses the best of it.
The temptation at the night market is to overdo it on the first few stalls. Order small, share, and keep moving — the point is breadth, not one big meal. Carry a little cash for the stalls that prefer it, and start hungry rather than after a big dinner.
Straight answers
Is the Millennium City Park worth the ticket?
It depends what you want. It's a ~¥120 life-sized recreation of the famous Song-dynasty 'Qingming' scroll — costumed performers, boats and craft displays, plus a big evening show (usually a separate ticket). Enjoyable if you like theme-park-style re-enactment; skippable if you want genuine old architecture, in which case the Iron Pagoda is the better, cheaper call.
What's the best thing to do in Kaifeng?
The Drum Tower (Gulou) night market — it's free, it's one of the oldest and most famous street-food scenes in China, and it's the real highlight. Plan to be in Kaifeng in the evening for it. By day, the Iron Pagoda is the standout genuine monument; the recreated Song parks are optional extras.
How do I get to Kaifeng from Zhengzhou?
It's about 30 minutes by high-speed rail from Zhengzhou (or roughly 1.5 hours by road), which makes it an easy day trip — though to enjoy the night market you should stay over or leave late. Kaifeng combines well with a wider Henan loop taking in Shaolin/Dengfeng and Luoyang.
Will my foreign card and phone work in Kaifeng?
Mobile pay is your best tool — a foreign Visa or Mastercard linked to Alipay or WeChat Pay covers tickets, taxis and most shops. The night-market stalls and small vendors often prefer cash or mobile pay, so carry some cash as backup and set the wallet apps up before you arrive.