If you’ve followed this blog for a while, you’ve seen examples of the popularity of parks in Chinese life. When your home is so small that you can’t comfortably host people, then you use the restaurants for dining (hence the vast number of restaurants) and the parks for getting together for social activities and talk (hence the popularity of parks). Here are some shots and short movie from parks that I’ve visited recently.

I was especially impressed at the quantity of people at this one park in the north of Shenzhen just across the street from the concert hall. The lake was full of rented boats and people feeding the ravenous fish. Even more crowded were the broad open spaces. These places were load with people doing every park activity imaginable: flying kites, selling kites (of course), kids running around, parents chasing the kids, knitting, picking their noses, listening to music, sleeping, kids peeing, and even a public dating forum. The dating forum was interesting: under a wooded area, people clipped personals of themselves to closehangers with a picture and basic information like job, where they live, how much they made, and if they had a car (for example). Phone numbers were listed and people went from ad to ad checking each other out and writing down numbers.

Another neat place that I visited was a park established around a reservoir. This was located in the MeiLin neighborhood, which may have been fun to live in due to it’s complete lack of foreigners, but it was far from a subway stop and work.

(above) Looking down from the top of the reservoir (note the giant Chinese character on the right), Keep smiling and don’t lose face!

This park was backed against the hills bordering Shenzhen, and, like a typical park, most of the trails were all paved and fitted with nice stones and stairs. Of course, it was quite crowded, and being in this neighborhood lacking foreigners, I got lots of stares. I was on a tour with my Chinese teacher and we decided to go down to a “temple”. Being Shenzhen, this temple, which looked pretty old, was actually built in 2004! On the broad promenade before it was a man drawing elegant traditional Chinese characters on the ground with a special brush and some kind of water solution that dried a bit slower than water. I was particularly interested and my Chinese teacher started talking to him (I couldn’t follow this conversation at all). It turns out he was a retired man whose hobby was Chinese calligraphy. He’s started a club a few years ago which had grown to nearly sixty members. He was intently engaged in writing one of Mao’s poems when we approached. He was friendly and smiling and offered both of us some of his pen and ink drawings. He repeatedly mentioned that he wanted to make friends with foreigners like me and was always interested in showing his work to diverse folks. We walked away with a nice poem on silk paper and a drawing of ducks. I will have to bring these to Da Fen Cun (the art village) and have them framed.

After the temple, we hiked down and out past lovely and fragrant “Yellow Flower” bushes and goldfish ponds. Upon exiting the park, we stopped by a church. I’d wanted to look inside a Chinese church for a while, but I haven’t attended due to the language barrier. Of course, that’s no reason, I’ll have to go and write about it. While we were there, there was a group rehearsing for a service. We arrived right as they were ending their practice, and I’m guessing they said the Lord’s Prayer to end their practice, but I’m not sure. Their punctuated shouts reminded me of something out of the military though. To end the day, we hit a neighborhood Hunan restaurant. Once again, I was cautioned not to chose food that was too spicy. So, to show that we wild barbarians can handle spice as well as any civilized Chinese, I ordered the spicy food and asked them to make sure it was hot. It was. Very tasty!

(l-r) A misty goldfish pond, the church in MeiLin, Hunan cai!