The real-scene show Impression Wulong premiered in the Peach Garden Canyon in Wulong County, Chongqing on October 1, 2011, involving more than 100 performers and having Zhang Yimou as the art adviser and Wang Chaoge and Fan Yue as the chief directors. About 9km away from Xiannvshan Town, the Peach Garden Canyon is a U-shaped canyon with a depth of nearly 188m, where there are unusually majestic mountains and ravines. The selection of the site for the show is out of consideration for ecological protection and for providing a superb space for performance. On space design, the theatre has a stage stretching into the stand to allow for zero distance between the performers and the audience. A 288m-long man-made tunnel runs underground to the theatre from the outside of the canyon, dug to give the audience an unusual impression of the “heavenly pit and earth crack”, so that the awaiting and unknowing audience, while walking inside, feel as if passing through a time tunnel, and all of a sudden are astounded to find a wholly different landscape.
This real-scene show features local haozi, a kind of work songs sung to synchronize movement, which is on the verge of extinction. Lasting 70 minutes, it exposes the audience to local customs, love stories, and traditional work and life scenes peculiar to Sichuan, including the stirring Chuanjiang (Sichuan River, the upper section of Yangtze River from Yibin to Yichang) haozi, gracefully sad wedding melodies, and huagan, sedan chairs borne by two bamboo poles used in Sichuan Province.