ISpyShanghai

A cracking photo by Craig

On Wednesday I went to GongQing park- which I believe is the second largest park in Shanghai. Don’t ask me what the biggest is, I’ve only been here for 4 months.

It was a blast- a nice warm day, cracking food (courtesy of Craig and Weija), white wine before midday, frisby and kite-flying on open lawns, a good decision by me to take the bus to this haven barely outside of the city.

It was Weijia that suggested it, and at first I was thinking
“Well, I could do that, or I could stay in bed until I get sores that nurses have to treat…“-
funnily enough though, it was reading a blog entry from the thing I used to write in Seoul and thinking about the day out I had there that convinced me to return to the big open, public spaces of Asia.

They’re not the same as parks back home, I tell thee- for one thing this place was packed with people. Not over the whole park, I mean you could find your own sleepy corner and enjoy the weather or shoot birds or whatever- but when you went to the BBQ area for example- it was pretty much like trying to set up a grill on the subway at 7pm (which FYI, ‘the man’ doesn’t appreciate). Back in the UK, I don’t remember ever seeing schoolkids playing with baby chicks either- footballs yes, but livestock? Maybe in Norfolk but not where I’m from.

On the clatter bridge to BBQ island


Kids playing with chicks

There was a fairground ride too that I don’t remember seeing the equal of back home. A zip-line / flying fox- where you strap yourself into a hangglider type affair and are wired back and forth over a boating lake of people in pleasure boats, waving all the way. That was where we headed first of all, I’m a sucker for an SAS type manouver and soaring over the heads of weekend rowers was a nice way to start the day, even if Weijia freaked out and screamed until the guy unhooked and let her down when she was first strapped into the harness.

This being China, kite-flying was high on the agenda and we’d bought what looked like a lovely little flyer at the entrance gate. However it soon transpired that crappy balsa-wood Eagles do not soar like their namesakes in a slack wind, and I spent a frustrating 20 minutes with Craig trying to get the thing in the air.
Eventually a man came and told us that it wasn’t flying because the string only had one point of contact with the bird. Any good kite has three, or perhaps more.
“Ah well!”
thought we- but this guy had more to say- he’d sell us an infinitely better kite for 5 Yuan (35p)- and help us to get it in the air. There seemed like there must be a catch, but in fact there wasn’t and soon we had a glorious new beast soaring 100+ feet into the heavens. Soon afterwards our cheapo string (from the original vendor) snapped, landing the bargain kite in the tree, and tears all round.

Not to worry though, as the kite-flying-evangelist sold us another good model with an industrial strength reel for 45RMB (3 quid) and we were off to the races again, making our little nylon astronaut fly up higher than you’d ever imagine, whilst trying to ignore the burning feeling on our delicate hairless scalps.

I would say that this kite-guy was, in fact, one of the nicest chaps I’ve met out here- I find it hard to believe he makes much profit selling kites for a 6th of what they go for on the gate of the park, so suspect he might genuinely do it for the good of the people he meets, or the knowledge that he helps out clueless idiots.
When we were packing up to leave he scooted over with a nylon bag for the (industrial strength) reel we were now packing. We gave him the rest of our crappy recycled-from-polysterene-popcorn string for his collection and off he went, chuckling into the dusk.

We ended with a mammoth game of frisby with some kids on the ‘great lawn’- young lads of maybe 6 years old were catching and chasing after our throws like we were pro-athletes whilst the parent looked on approvingly and took photos of the good times. Definitely beats a day in bed sleeping off a hangover eh?.