A show staged inside a working railway, for a client answerable to the public
| Client | Zhengzhou Metro 郑州地铁 |
| Sector | Civic infrastructure / public sector |
| Project | Opening of Lines 3 and 4 |
| ING’s role | Programme planning and promotion |
| Venue | Station concourses and platforms |
| Format | Live performance programme with filmed content |
Zhengzhou Metro Lines 3 and 4 opened to passengers on 26 December 2020. ING Entertainment planned and delivered the public programme that marked it — staged not on a stage, but inside the stations themselves.
THE BRIEF
A metro line opening is not a product launch. There is no ticket, no guest list and no client boardroom to please. The audience is the travelling public, the client is accountable to a municipal government, and the venue is a piece of public infrastructure that has to keep working while you use it.
ING Entertainment was engaged for planning and promotion: designing the programme, casting it, and producing the content that carried the opening beyond the people physically present.
THE PROGRAMME
The programme was built to work in a transit environment — no proscenium, no fixed seating, an audience arriving and leaving continuously — and it drew on Zhengzhou’s own visual vocabulary throughout.
- Guzheng performances in Han-style dress, staged against a set piece of Zhengzhou landmarks including the Erqi Memorial Tower
- Traditional ensemble segments — guzheng and drum, performed in front of LED content built from the city’s skyline
- Martial arts sequences, silhouetted against LED backdrops of moon, pagoda and cloud motifs
- A dance number performed in Zhengzhou Metro uniform, taking the operator’s own identity into the choreography
- Contemporary crew work with the line’s mascots, aimed squarely at families and younger passengers
- Filmed content shot in-station, using the platforms’ reflective floors and the LED walls as a set
WHAT A CIVIC OPENING DEMANDS
This is a different discipline from commercial work, in ways that are easy to underestimate.
The venue is live infrastructure. A station is not a room you hire. It has operating hours, cleaning windows, fire routes, and a staff whose actual job is moving people safely. Production works around all of it, not the other way round.
There are no rigging points. Low ceilings, polished floors that throw every light source back at the camera, mixed colour temperatures from fixtures you cannot switch off, and architecture designed for flow rather than sightlines. Lighting and staging have to be designed for the space as found.
The approval chain is longer. A public-sector client sits inside a municipal structure, and content is reviewed accordingly. Nothing is signed off by one person in a meeting.
The content band is narrower. A civic opening has a tone to hit — celebratory, dignified, broadly welcoming — and a great deal that is fine for a brand launch simply does not belong here.
The audience is everyone. Not an invited demographic. Children, commuters, elderly passengers, officials and press, all in the same concourse at the same time. The programme has to read to all of them at once.
Mascots are a production element, not a costume. Sightlines, handlers, heat, rest cycles and choreography that works for someone with restricted vision — all planned, or the mascot becomes a liability.
WHY THIS ONE MATTERS IF YOU’RE A BRAND
Most international clients will never stage anything inside a metro station. The relevance is what the project proves.
Public-sector work in China means navigating the strictest version of the approval process — municipal sign-off, content review, safety documentation, and a venue operator with statutory obligations. A production company that has delivered inside that system, on a fixed public date that could not move, has demonstrated the part of China event production that foreign teams find hardest.
Permits and content review are where international projects lose weeks. This is the credential behind ING’s compliance work.
Planning something in China that involves a public venue, a municipal partner, or an unmovable date?
ING Entertainment handles the compliance pathway — documentation, submissions, content review and safety planning — alongside the creative.
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