Step Inside a Hand-Painted Shenyang From a Century Ago
A full circle of painted Shenyang from 1910 to 1930 sits inside a 1910 movie theater, with a mist garden after.
🎨 The Painted Circle and the Garden
An appointment buys you an hour, not a queue. One ticket covers a sixty-minute self-guided visit, and the hour happens inside the Union Theatre, a movie house built in 1910. The Shengjing Panorama is a full circle of painted Shenyang between 1910 and 1930, made by Li Wu, Yan Yang and Zhou Fuxian over a three-dimensional foreground, then lit by a sound and light installation. The painted cyclorama anchors the visit, which leaves time for the Nova Tuskhut trading post and a cabinet display on Chinese panoramas. For a family that left a northern Chinese city in that era, the painted shopfronts and rooftops are the point. Out back, the Gardens of the Illustrious Pacific Ring carry the second half, a gazebo of carnivorous plants, a mist grotto called the Pavilion of the Verdant Dream and a waterfall named for Penglai. Admission is a $7 suggested donation, and an underresourced option registers a visit without donating. Plan for street parking and the Expo Line at 23rd Street. Official info: panoramaonview.org, checked 30 October.
