Weifang

Shandong city known internationally as the Kite Capital of the World. The Weifang International Kite Festival in April is the largest kite event on earth; the city also preserves Yangliuqing woodblock print tradition and Qing-dynasty Yangjiabu folk art village.

Weifang is a large prefectural city on the central Shandong plain between Ji'nan and Qingdao. Its international profile is built almost entirely on kites: Weifang's kite-making tradition is documented from at least the Song dynasty, and the city's modern kite industry produces both traditional hand-painted silk kites and mass-market commercial products. The Weifang International Kite Festival, held every April on the city's kite airfield, has run since 1984 and attracts teams from dozens of countries — it is genuinely the largest competitive kite event on the planet by participant numbers and the spectator fields can accommodate many thousands.

The kite connection gives Weifang a coherent cultural identity that most prefecture-level Shandong cities lack. The Yangjiabu Folk Art Village, on the northern edge of the city, is the historic centre of Weifang's kite and woodblock print production — a settlement of traditional courtyard homes that has been organised into a folk art district, with working workshops demonstrating Yangjiabu New Year prints (a distinct woodblock tradition using bright, flat-colour designs) and kite painting. The quality of work varies from studio to studio and some is clearly more commercial than artisanal, but the serious craftspeople are present if you look.

The Weifang Kite Museum is one of the larger specialist museums in the country focused on a single craft and traces the history and regional variations of Chinese kite design from the earliest records through contemporary competition kites.

Outside the kite context, Weifang's old commercial area around Shengshifang Street has remnants of late Qing and Republic-era architecture, and the Fuhua Amusement Park has a scale model of significant Chinese historic buildings that appeals strongly to domestic visitors.