Nantong Grand Theatre

Nantong owes its cultural ambitions to Zhang Jian, the industrialist and reformer who built China's first public museum in the city in 1905 and a theatre to go with it a decade later. The Grand Theatre continues that municipal habit on a modern scale: a multi-hall complex on the north bank of the Yangtze, receiving touring orchestras, opera and dance from within China and abroad, and serving as the principal concert address of a city of several million that lies outside the usual Shanghai–Nanjing circuit.