Shanghai Tan

Zhong Shan Park (中山公园) is the second largest community park (I think) in Shanghai. Although it is not as famous as the Central Park in NYC or as symbolic as Montreal’s Mount Royal Park, it is the friendliest park I’ve ever seen. It is the “common backyard” of the large community around it. Most of the Shanghaineses can hardly afford an open balcony in their apartment, let alone having any backyard at all. In fact 99.999% of Shanghai’s residences consist of apartment block, there are almost no “house” similar to North America, those who own a house in town is like having a house in Beverly Hill to American, nobody even think about buying one!

I happen to live in front of this park, but unfortunately I don’t have a window view on it (that would be too nice). So during the weekend of International Children’s Day (1st June), I went there for the first time, to see what it looks like and how big is it. My first impression is that the park is very big, very green, not much flowers but full of trees, lots of space for people to do all kinds of activities. But most important of all, the park is full of life!

I know that Montreal has full of parks, but most people prefer to stay at home or have barbecue party at their private backyard. Those who go to the park are alone, reading or walking their dogs, rarely do people go there for meeting the community or have group activities. In contrast, here I’m seeing people mostly in group, playing together, such as Tai Chi, dancing (lot of them), singing, badminton, family gathering, boating, portrait or wedding photography, play chess, play card, physical exercices, reading, dating (yes, young couple), and so on. It really is pleasant to see such a green space so rightly used for their intended purpose.

Of course I have taken snapshots of all of them!

Lady playing a traditional musical instrument at Zhong Shan Park	Tai Chi Master teaching students at Zhong Shan Park
Tai Chi	Tai Chi
Wedding photography at Zhong Shan Park	Wedding photography at Zhong Shan Park
Another wedding photo group	Beautiful bride
	Chess players
Playing kites	Propaganda-style red banners are still in used by local government to promote their wills, but no longer on the street, most of them are replaced by large western-style ads panels.
I found this old man very impressive, despite his age and limited flexibility, his calligraphy is still very strong. I hope being able to write like him at his age...	His brush is in fact a bottle a water attached to his crutch.

To see the whole album, click here.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 17th, 2007 at 5:46 am and is filed under Shanghai Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.