A Garden in Shanghai

One may be forgiven if one were to associate Shanghai with its Broadcasting Tower, the banks of the Bund with its 1920s or 1930s European style buildings, its brand name stores around Nanjing Road and the World Expo. But like any other big metropolis, its also has more modest gardens where young lovers may hide amongst some obscure corner whispering sweet nothingness, parents or grandparents may walk their children before or after dinner, and young children may run around the lawn playing cops and robbers and retirees may play a game of chess or take out their Chinese strings to play a song or two or to sing Beijing or the more local Kun opera songs, to play Taichi or merely to take a leisurely stroll. I was brought to one such park by a local. It's called Hua Chong in one of the suburbs of Shanghai. I was told that one needed to pay to go into that park in the past but that it has now become a no-admission charges municipal park.

The entrance to the park

There are mock Ming dynasty (?) Chinese garden walls with an oval gate.

It was obvious that quite a bit of thought had been put into the layout of the garden with its different mix of trees, shrubs and plants.

Another part of the small park

A lawn at the park where children and old people may sit around

a corner of the park with plants in different layers.

A part of the garden devoted to the plum tree

A poem on the plum by Tsing poet Chiang Shek Chun

Another poem by Yuan poet Wang Mian (1310-1359), who loved the plum tree and its flowers and named his last residence "The Plum House".
Here's another one of his poems on the plum:

平生愛梅頗成癖。踏雪尋春一雙屐。 

六出散漫飛滿空。千里萬里同一色。 

衝寒不畏朔風吹。乘興來此江之湄。 

繁花滿樹梅欲放。彷彿羅浮初見時。 

南枝橫斜北枝好。北枝看過南老枝。 

中有一枝致奇絕。萬蕊千葩弄大巧。 

老夫見此喜欲顛。載酒大酌梅花仙。 

仙人怪我來何晚。一別已是三千年。 

醉來仰面臥深雪。夢扶飛瓊上天闕。 

酒醒起視應何其。饑鳥啼殘半江月。

Three Chinese music buffs having a good time amusing themselves at the park, perhaps doing some amateur recordings.

A few buddies rapt in rolling some comradely cigarettes together

A ginger flower that I found

Other small flowers at the garden

Some colorful leaves

More colorful leaves with flowers at their side.

I do not know if the white dots are natural or marks of parasitic ravages.

Some yellow flowers I found

Some red flowers. We call them "cockerel crowns" in HK.

Some orange flowers, probably belong to the chrysanthemum family

Some roses

Some orchids

Some rose like flowers.

A purple flower which looks as if it were made of crumpled paper

More crumpled flowers piled one on top of the other.

Some curling leaves

Even some rushes.

The entrance to another part of the garden. Since I ran out of card space, no pixes of the beautiful flowers in the adjoining garden

The park was built around a small stream adjoining a residential development. There are residential developments everywhere in this city. I just wonder how they can manage to sell all of them.

The other side of the quiet little river.

However, not only is there a river beside the park, some residential area with independent houses also got their own little rivers. This is the one such within the residential development where my relative lives. It's full of trees and shrubs and lotus leaves.

The houses on the banks are all European style independent houses.

The atmosphere is quiet and serene

A really nice spot for spending some quiet moments reading, writing, leafing through the pages of color plates of books on various artists one loves, listening to music, watching a good movie on DVD or merely chatting with old friends over a glass of wine. Some Shanghai people really know how to live.