Parks

In PREPARATION for P week, here is my tribute to Chinese PARKS. I love, love, love the parks in China. On the one hand, they feature tranquil, beautiful settings, and on the other hand, they are great social gathering spots.

A view from above. All around town you can find large groups of people gathering around a card table (sometimes the card table is just a newspaper thrown on the ground). This game is like hearts on steroids. You play it with three decks of cards. We were told to never, ever, ever try to play this with the park players because they would eat us alive. Serious stuff.

I don't know if this is a game or an artistic activity, but they are writing Chinese characters with charcoal dust. In the Summer Palace in Beijing, they had attached a water bottle to a hollow pole. After they created the characters with the water, the characters transformed into small, slightly raised ice forms. I'm sure a post-modern scholar would have an interesting comment about the ontology of the written language, but I was more concerned about the characters tripping me up and making me look ridiculous (oh, kind of like what they've been doing for the last three months!).

An impromptu musical gathering. This instrument is called the erhu, or the Chinese violin. As these men were playing, others just casually walked up and started playing, too. Then, when they finished their "set," everyone just naturally dispersed. The man in the blue jacket, with his fingers entwined, was the singer.

How happy does this picture make me? (Answer: very!)

Just one more picture. I can't choose between the pictures I have of senior citizens playing hackey-sack, badminton, croquet, tai-chi, ballroom dancing, disco dancing, fan dancing, sword fighting, doing military exercises or, here, I'm not sure what this is called, but it seemed to form its own sort of dance.



See you at the park!