Shanghai Botanical Garden

I recently went to the Shanghai Botanical Gardens with a local photography club. Although we went in terrible weather, I ended up finding it very, yes, picturesque. There were indeed a whole lot of flowers, and in general it was a nice park grounds.

I don't have a macro lens or extension tube that would allow real close-ups (although I've resolved to get one,) but I’ll quickly show a few photographs of the many flowers there:







The park is in the far south of the City, but it’s not terribly inconvenient: take the #3 line south, all the way down to Shilong Lu Station, which is one station before it comes to an end. From there, walk about five minutes south down Dongquan Lu, to the Park’s North Gate. It’s 15 kuai to get in. There’s also a more expensive ticket that grants entrance to special exhibits inside, but it makes more sense to just pay at the exhibit gate – the park is so large, I can’t imagine also going to all the special exhibits.

Although the grounds just go on and on, I thought the most impressive display of flowers was right at the north Entrance. There were also playgrounds for the kiddies, small bamboo forests, an atrium, Chinese-y pavilions that were popular with wedding photographers, and small ponds. The ponds were interesting, because people were out in force, fishing for crawfish!



Crawfish season is probably over by now, but it was crazy how it works. It was generally done as a two person job. The first person would hold chicken intestines from a rope on a stick into the water – and it was always chicken intestine, maybe that’s the cheapest meat, maybe it just stays on the line the best? The crawfish go after the meat, and a second person comes with a net and snags them. Although the fishing spots seemed over-crowded, some people were sporting huge bags of crawfish.

For those with an interest in hunting crawfish, my friend later told me, a better technique is just to use a flashlight at night, crawfish are attracted to the light. Fortunately for the crawfish, the park officially closes at 5:30, although the guards seem pretty relaxed about getting people out by then.

Red Town

Red Town is the name of an art-park/museum/shopping area immediately off Hongqiao Subway Station, at 568 Huaihai Xi Lu. Hongqiao is a district in the Western part of town, it's a popular area for expats to live, particularly expats from Japan or Korea – many Japanese like to live in gated, Japanese-only communities! I haven't been to the area very often, mostly because there's nothing much exciting to the area except the airport and some expat-oriented restaurants, and Shanghai's expat restaurants are a total joke. Furthermore, the subway doesn't go to the most interesting food streets of Hongqiao, and I'm not motivated enough to take a taxi.



Red Town, by contrast, is located just a couple minute's walk west of the Subway station. As I mentioned, there's an art-park, one of several art-parks located around Shanghai, mostly in expat areas. Basically, they're parks with outdoor sculptures set up. I'm not a great judge of sculpture, but I find these to be lightweight fun:







These sculptures continue on in a free sculpture museum adjoining the park. The sculptures there are in much the same whimsical vein, maybe they're a little more fragile and couldn't be kept outside:





There's a couple of cafes in the complex, as well as small shops selling things like art supplies or art books. There's also a club called Sugar, I've never been a visitor, but I went inside and had a look while they were shooting cheesecake promotional pictures:



Red Town can't be called a highlight of Shanghai, but it's convenient to get to and it's worth dropping by the sculpture museum, which is open 10-5 every day but Monday.

Stopping to Smell the Flowers in Fuxing Park

I wandered through Fuxing Park today, which I love but haven't visited in far too long - and was very impressed at the rose garden near the Western Entrance. I'll attach a few pictures, and recommend people to make a look-see while they can!

Zhongshan Park

Zhongshan Park is in Western Shanghai. A little sign outside says it was created from the estate of a resident Englishman from a century ago, and the park has an appealing hybrid English/East Asian feeling to it, with both gardens to romp around in, and purely decorative elements. When I went, it was just a little after the New Year's Holiday, the Year of the Pig Decorations were out in force at the entrance gates.



Also interesting at the gate, was a person demonstrating his calligraphy techniques! I've seen this before, the squares of the concrete are used to frame the characters, and a special kind of mop/brush is used to write the characters. The "ink" is just water with no detergent added or anything, so even on a cool day the letters dissolve away by the time he's gone a few lines down. The whole affair draws a surprisingly big crowd.



There's a lot of games at the park, with families and couples having fun. One thing that's not so common in Shanghai is a series of small wooden boats with underpowered engines, they're taken around a large pond that extends through the park. It's so crowded it comes off more like bumper cars, but I haven't seen anybody sink yet. Here's a cute picture of a little girl and her smoking grandfather.



And this is a loving black-clad couple and their pet cuckatoo. Taking birds to the park seems to be somewhat popular with older people, and my Chinese texts mention the idea over and over for some inane reason, but I don't see tropical birds all so often.



There's also an under-utilized merry-go-round, bumper cars, a weird overhead monorail track that allows people to bicycle overhead (there's a small black seatbelt if you look hard enough), and a few other carnival-esque rides.

And there were people flying kites. Shanghai's so windy, it's easy!



Kind of strangely, these people had staked out a small tent in the middle of a big grassy field, and were playing cards. The sky was overcast, maybe they were anticipating rain?



Definitely the best part of the park was a very large group of pianos, maybe fifty of them, laid out in the middle of a field. They were there as part of a ceremony dedicating a statue to Chopin. Whoever wanted to could go up and start playing. Walking past, a few people were expert, and a few people could play a simple tune, but the vast majority were just fooling around, tapping on the keys. However it was obvious everybody thought it was a lot of fun. With being able to see how differnet age groups and apparent economic classes approached the pianos, it had something of the feel of a concept art project. Unfortunately the overcast skies and fear of rain meant the pianos had to be packed up early.



There was more music to be found, with groups of instruments, mostly traditional Chinese instruments, augmented with a few Western instruments such as accordians. These groups are always led by a singer with an ampliphied microphone. They came both in groups small:



And large:

The People's Square

People's Square is a large park in the center of Shanghai.



It's not as grand or as large as Central Park in NYC, but that's the obvious comparison. It's bordered on the North by the central shopping street of Nanjing Lu, the Bund is just a little to the East, and the large offices and shopping district on Huaihai Lu is just a little to the South.



It's mostly shops and hotels surrounding the park, including the occasional mega-mall. With the picture on the left, they like to stage a jazz band in front of the New World Mall. The People's Square area was once a rectrack at the center of the concession-era city. Some of the buildings date from that that time, especially alongside Nanjing Lu, where the new and old co-exist quite well. It's about the only place in Shanghai the new and old co-exist quite well.



That picture was taken from a corner of the square, known as the People's Park, just like in Berkeley! It's more paved than the rest of the square, there's crazy statues and sometimes art exhibitions. Below can be seen a kid rollerblading around, I'm proud because it's the first picture I've ever taken with decent panning technique:



There's a few businesses on site, including a second branch of Mac Dog - another Berkeley connection. Its mascot is a blatant rip off of Top Dog, a hot dog shack right off the UC Berkeley campus. But it not longer sells the fancy hot dogs, aside from having a choice of chicken, pork, or beef. It now specializes in sweet dessert drinks. There's also a Starbuck's, it's hard to see the sign in the picture below. But it's worth searching out, the rooftop tables have great views of the park. There's about five Starbuck's within a 1 block radius of the park.



To me the park is defined by pathways, often with benches alongside. It's a place for families and couples to walk around and chill. That's as opposed to Tian'anmen Square in Beijing, which is one massive, flat, concrete pavilion. Or a Western Park, where usually patrons are allowed on the grass, maybe kids can run around and play games. Actually this is the only case I've seen of people on the grass, it must have to do with being Chinese New Year's, and that the grass looks entirely dead anyway.



My old Lonely Planet has an interesting story about that, that the landscaping was done in reaction to the massive rallies held during the Cultural Revolution, making it impossible to have such large demonstrations on the site. Maybe the ralliers wouldn't want to trample the pretty flowers?



There's two buildings that can be seen in the above picture - there's a few large buildings inside the park, all with weird (if complimentary) architecture. The building on the left is for productions of musicals, they had a production of Disney's Lion Kind last year. The building on the right is the city government heaquarters. It's hidden by a tree, but really there's not much to see. Here's another building, a great location and I kind of like the weird looks. However the museum is incredibly boring - it's a Shanghai city planning exhibit!



There's also the Shanghai Museum, I went when I first came to Shanghai, I'll have to go again. I've heard it described as the best history museum in China. There's a fountain in front for kids to play in, on warmer days. People fly kites in the area, just as common is hawkers flying kites, and then trying to sell the kites to people walking by. Also when I first lived in Shanghai, I stayed in a hotel around the corner. I'd cut through the park at night, some of the pathways were evidently sleazy gay pick up spots. I'd get Chinese guys using English pick-up lines like "I like you, you like me?" as I walked through.



Huh, there's also an area which is more designed for the kids. Sometimes there's hosted arts & crafts outside, like painting. There's also carnival type rides, the same as could be seen in the US, such as these bumper cars:



As it's a busy area, there's lots of small shacks for the commuters and the passerbys, like newspapers stands, or small shacks selling quick drinks and food.



Finally, the park has a few bottlenecks, where crossing the road or entering the subway requires using underground tunnels that are too small: