I thought these were fun.
These sculptured corbels are all of different animals, they are on a few buildings around the Roman Baths in Bath, England. I never found the story behind them. They are not new or in the best condition.
Every city that I have been in in China has had spacious, well maintained parks and public square, mostly called “People’s Square” or a minor variation on it. One of my favorite things to do in China is wander around in these parks and public spaces.
Weifang has two with very similar names pretty far apart and it took me quite a while to figure out that the one near where my son lived was not the one referred to most of the time.
If I recall correctly (not a 100% sure thing) these are two view of the People’s Square in Qingdao:
Preparing Tian’anmen Square for National Day:
Many of the parks have really cool art, and artistic details. Here is a sampling:
On weekday mornings, even nice ones you might think that these beautiful parks are like the empty high-rises, waiting for more people to come to fill them. On a sunny day, before work or in the afternoon as people start getting off work, or a nice weekend (especially one with enough wind for kite flying) you can see that this is not true.
Parks are places for exercise, to meet friends, to dance, to fish (F is for Fishing) and, of course to fly kites (K is for Kites).
Shouguang, the city where my son lives now, even though it is considered “rural” or a “fifth tier” city, has really nice parks and a lot of nice art in them. I did some posts about this: A walk along the Mihe River , Fall in Shouguang , and, par for my course, never finished my plans to show even more of the park art in Shouguang. Maybe when I get back from this coming trip I’ll finally finish.
Even more than the art in parks, I love to see people out enjoying the parks. On weekdays they are often fairly empty, peaceful places. On nicer days there are usually a few people, often children with their grandparents, but on nice days as evening approaches and on the weekends they are busy places.
I loved this wonderful park along the west bank of the Mihe River. It runs about 3/4 mile (1.25 km) between the two car bridges. Near each of the car bridges was a pedestrian (plus cyclists and scooters) bridge. One of them was obviously the old roadway but the other was a graceful gently arched bridge.
As I mentioned in an earlier post one the Mihe River runs through the eastern part of the city of Shouguang.
You can see a larger version of any photo by clicking on it.
In September and October I visited a “small” city (roughly the population of Seattle) considered rural in China. The city of Shouguang in the prefecture level city of Weifang in Shandong province.
Shouguang merits mention in Wikipedia! It is the vegetable capital of the world (self proclaimed). The city hosts an International High-Tech Vegetable Fair every year in April/May. I went a couple of years ago: I’ll meet you at the giant bok choi. It was a lot of fun, but we didn’t see the city itself at that time.
Fast forwarding, my son got a job teaching at a new school in Shouguang and moved there over the summer, so this fall I had a chance to explore. Shouguang is a seasonal city, they roll out the carpet and have wonderful gardens oriented to being at their peek in the spring. In the fall it has a more relaxed charm. Over the course of this month I am planning to share a little bit about Shouguang in the fall. With any luck I’ll be able to explore it again next spring.
One fun feature of Shouguang was the sculptures around town, especially in the parks. Shouguang has a large amount of land dedicated to parks. Each park seems to have its own personality. The first sculpture I noticed was a giant strawberry tucked among some trees in a park. As I wandered along more of them appeared. Then I saw the giant pumpkin patch.
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