A Walk in the Park - China Style

(May 29th) Before I came to China, one of my good friends, Vincent, told me a claim I half dismissed as egregious exaggeration. At the time he said that if China wanted to, they would build a school or hospital in a couple of weeks. Having seen the pace of Ann Arbor construction over the years, I mostly laughed at his claim. Today I went to Changsha's Island Park which they began building a couple of months ago and I was choking on my earlier disbelief. Here you can see one of the fountains found near the entrance to the park.

This park was huge - perhaps bigger than New York's Central Park. It was also filled with buildings, paths, horticulture, man-made water, etc. When we walked through it was pretty much all completed. After I saw some of the groundsworkers it was apparent that the completion of this engineering feat was due to hard work and sweat not advanced machinery.

As you can see from the shots already, the day was rainy and severely overcast with a dense cloud cover penetrating to the ground. From the island the shore of Changsha was visible through the shroud of the fog. As you can see, Changsha like much of China blends together old and new.

This synergy of old and new is really present everywhere you go. To someone from the United States, I wasn't quite sure what to make of it. Some of the buildings in the park were designed according to an obviously Western style of architecture.

While not old or even authentic by any means, some of the buildings were also done in a more traditional style in sharp contrast to the Western-style buildings.

Mao has a footprint every you go in China, and perhaps no place more so than in Hunan Province, the province of his birth and youth. One of the manifestations is in words that make up some of his teachings and sayings. These were engraved in rock within the park, but I encountered these many places - even along the highways as we drove.