Wuxi: China’s First UNESCO City of Music
In October 2025, Wuxi City of Music became official: UNESCO added Wuxi to its Creative Cities Network, making this lakeside Jiangnan city the very first City of Music in China. The designation, announced from Paris on 31 October 2025 and marked by a plaque ceremony on Bogong Island on 15 November, filled a long-standing gap for the country within the network's music category. For travellers, the new Wuxi City of Music title is a welcome reason to explore a place where music has shaped daily life for more than two thousand years.
Figure 1. The Wuxi City of Music logo alongside the UNESCO Creative Cities Network emblem
Why the Wuxi City of Music Title Matters
The UNESCO Creative Cities Network is one of the organisation's three flagship cultural programmes, alongside World Heritage and the Intangible Cultural Heritage lists. Every two years, each country nominates cities, which independent experts then judge on living tradition, education, industry and international exchange. Wuxi became the 76th City of Music worldwide and remains the only one in China. As the official Wuxi government announcement puts it, the Wuxi City of Music crown honours not a single relic but a complete, living musical ecosystem.
A Thousand-Year Musical Heritage in Wuxi
From ritual bells to elegant Kunqu
Wuxi is one of the birthplaces of Wu culture. Celadon yongzhong bells unearthed at the Hongshan ruins still carry the tones of the Shang and Zhou dynasties, while the Spring and Autumn prince Ji Zha was celebrated some twenty-five centuries ago for his refined understanding of ritual music. In the Ming and Qing dynasties, the Tianyun Society became famous for its pure, elegant unaccompanied Kunqu singing and is remembered among the oldest Kunqu societies still documented today.
Abing and the erhu classics
Modern Wuxi helped shape Chinese national music itself. Hua Qiuping compiled China's first printed pipa score; Yang Yinliu laid the foundations of Chinese ethnomusicology; Liu Tianhua reformed the erhu into a solo concert instrument; and the folk musician Abing composed The Moon Over Erquan, a piece so moving that the conductor Seiji Ozawa said such music should be listened to on one's knees. Eight of the world's ten best-known erhu pieces have close ties to Wuxi.
Figure 2. The UNESCO City of Music designation ceremony at Wuxi’s Bogong Island Eco-park on 15 November 2025
How Wuxi Earned Its City of Music Title
A complete living ecosystem
Behind the Wuxi City of Music title lies a city that makes music part of everyday life. Wuxi now has eight grand theatres and concert halls, eighteen music-themed museums and more than a thousand performance spaces, from formal halls to street corners. An erhu-in-schools programme covers seventy primary and secondary schools and over 30,000 students, while more than 500 folk music groups and 80 school clubs keep amateur music thriving. People's Daily explores why Wuxi was chosen, highlighting both this grassroots participation and the city's industrial base.
An instrument-making powerhouse
Wuxi is also where instruments are made. The workshops of Meicun Sub-district produce nearly 50,000 erhus a year, accounting for about a quarter of China's mid- to high-end market. The city is the world's largest harmonica manufacturing base, its accordion makers hold a 43 percent share of the domestic market, and an international harp brand based in Wuxi serves more than 60 percent of the global market. Around 370 music-related companies and thousands of cultural enterprises form eight distinct industry clusters.
Bridges to the world
Music has become Wuxi's international language. The Philadelphia Orchestra once played the Butterfly Lovers concerto inside the classical Jichang Garden, while the Wuxi Symphony Orchestra has toured France, Japan, Belgium, Croatia and beyond, carrying Jiangnan silk-and-bamboo music onto world stages. International musicians now take up residencies in the city, and the Erquan Yingyue National Music Gathering has brought ensembles from more than ten countries to Wuxi.
Where to Experience the Wuxi City of Music Today
Begin at the lakeside Wuxi Grand Theatre, whose wing-like roof is illuminated against the water after dark. The annual Taihu Culture and Art Season offers more than a hundred performances, and long-running weekly broadcast concerts keep classical music accessible. In the historic core, Abing's former residence near Chong'an Temple and the canal-side Nanchang Street blend street music, teahouse opera and night markets; free folk performances are also staged at Dangkou Ancient Town.
New venues are on the way. A roughly 100,000-square-metre Wuxi Symphony Concert Hall is nearing completion, while the Hongshan Music Town, the Yinyueli music quarter and Jiangyin National Music Island are being developed as places to learn, rehearse, perform and meet. Together they aim to turn the Wuxi City of Music into a year-round destination rather than a single headline.
Figure 3. The Wuxi Grand Theatre by Lake Taihu at night, one of the city’s landmark concert venues
Plan Your Own Musical Journey to Wuxi
Wuxi sits on the Shanghai–Nanjing high-speed rail corridor, little more than an hour by train from Shanghai, which makes an easy weekend music-and-garden trip. Pair an evening concert with a morning in Huishan Old Town, time a spring visit for the famous Yuantouzhu cherry blossoms, and look out for the city-wide carnival events that followed the UNESCO announcement. Guangming Daily reported on the Bogong Island plaque ceremony, a sign of how central music now is to the city's welcome.
Few cities weave ancient melody, folk memory, world-class instrument making and international stages into one tune as Wuxi does. Listen closely, and the Wuxi City of Music tells a story that begins beside a two-thousand-year-old spring and now reaches audiences across the world.