CHINA: Farewell to charming, slightly seedy park where old folks gathered

. SHANGHAI, China / Shanghai Daily / December 10, 2008 By Wan Lixin "At the intersection of Weihai Road and Shaanxi Road N. is a small delta of garden featuring a pavilion surrounded by groves of green bamboo,'' reads "The Past and Present of Shanghai Streets" by Zhou Lin. "The bamboo leaves would rustle and billow like sea waves in a breeze,'' Zhou observes. The book published this August recounts many anecdotes about Shanghai's streets and lanes. This description of the park, quite frankly, is slightly prettified. The park is just a couple of minutes' walk from my office. In addition to being exceedingly small, it had a slightly seedy and run-down but comfortable feeling. The garden needed not be regularly manicured, the bamboo just grew, screening off the busy streets. In good weather, there was a congregation of indifferently dressed elderly people playing chess, cards and chatting in the ample shade, as passersby gathered round. In the morning people practiced tai chi and played badminton. A barber gave an old gent a free haircut. A man hung his songbird in a cage on a tree bough. There were also occasional tramps taking a snooze. But here we felt the pulse of a breathing city. There was still a small sheltered gathering space for residents not caught up in rushing around and making money. This park, alas, no longer exists. The editors at Wen Hui Bao, just across the street from the park, forgot to note this when they published excerpts of the book in their paper on Monday. A couple of months ago huge boards sealed the place off, the precursor of a major face-lift in our spic-and-span city getting spruced up for one event after another. A new park was unveiled several months later, totally reconfigured, sanitized and shorn. It affords a clear view to drivers who can see straight through the park, without the old obstructions. Unlike the previous garden that created a private area in limited space, the new one is fully exposed to the incessant flow of cars at the intersection of Shaanxi Road N. and Weihai Road. Trees and bamboo have been cut down. Gone are the little pavilion and shaded chairs. Dominating the park is now the zigzag concrete walkway with a sprinkling of shrubs and disposable seasonal flowers nearby. It is now a veritable accessory, and a tribute, to the stream of motor vehicles. Some elderly people sit on the concrete zigzag sides, looking vacantly at the cars. Have you ever sat on marble surfaces in winter or summer? There are a few "chairs,'' but as these are strictly ornamental, the designers have the ergonomic ingenuity to build them without backs. Such "chairs" are no longer novel - you see more and more of them in metro stations and parks - they're not comfortable and they discourage users. One of the differences between Chinese and Western gardens is that in a Chinese garden, there are always nooks, corners, discoveries and pleasant surprises. You cannot take it all in at a glance. Thus bamboo, rockery, walls, screens and other barriers limit the views to small, inviting areas. This sanitized and sterilized version of the garden is being reproduced by the hundreds, just as the diverse signs for all commercial outlets are being replaced by standardized, embossed signs all across the city. Drained of animation, these new "parks" are more concrete than cozy, and offer less shade, less privacy and less real relaxation for the people. People are directed to walk straight through the new garden, not to linger and gather. Copyright © 2001-2008 Shanghai Daily Publishing House