9 May 2018
Every single park and garden
Exploring all the free parks in Shanghai
Today I visited every single park, garden, temple, shrine, square, reserve and backyard in the greater Shanghai area, on foot.
As you will see, Shanghai has lots of green public spaces, many of them free, some with an admission fee.
I had been to some of these places before, the two main attractions I had been around but not into before due to the admission fees, today I paid the fees.
On my long journey I saw lots of people from every part of the world, so many German men carrying a VHS camcorder. So many Russian men wearing slip on leather shoes and Adidas tracksuit pants. So many young French people smoking and complaining. I will never understand the huge tour group concept, it seems like the worst thing in the world. I would rather not go.
My last stop of the day was a notorious tourist souvenir selling zone, Yuyuan, often called Yuyuan garden but should be called Yu garden since yuan means garden and thats like saying ATM machine.
Anyway, this is the place with the most people trying to sell you watch? bag? phone? what you want to buy? It is also the place with the most police openly retaliating against them! 3 different guys got lead away for harassing me, I dont know what happened to them! They seem to let the women harassing me for exactly the same thing go.
My tactic with them today was to say I already have a watch and a bag and a phone. They would then ask 'what you want?'. My answer varied each time, but was a combination of peace and happiness, a machine gun or a position in the central government.
Lots and lots of photos today so dont expect long detailed amusing descriptions. Here we have a local neighbourhood early in the morning. Terrific blue skies again...terrific!
Garden #1 for the day, the peoples square. No entry fee for the peoples square! The entry is very colorful.
It is a very nice park with lilies and exercising old people, there was a mass group of them doing stretches with accompanying long drawn out deep moans alternating with high pitched sharp screams.
Last photo of the peoples square, not too many people in the peoples square today.
I headed west, this is taken roughly from the hotel I stayed at on previous visits to Shanghai, a very busy part of town.
I soon found myself at the sculpture park. Countries from all around the world have donated sculptures, this one is from Belgium. Why they have donated I could not work out?
This park is still being expanded, I do remember it being here last time I was here but it was a lot smaller then. I dont know which country donated the bulls but they are pretty great.
A rabid wolf. Those are full sized shipping containers it is sitting on.
A pile of busted violins is the best the French could manage.
After leaving the sculpture park, I decided to follow the piles of black hose and see where it took me.
The pile of hoses ended at a picturesque street corner, featuring a sculpture of a human child playing games on his phone resting in the flower bed.
Nearby was the Jing'an Buddhist temple, time to do some golden Buddha appreciation.
A rubbish fire had broken out in the forecourt amongst the parked luxury cars. I think some people really were burning their entry tickets.
The mandolin is mightier than the sword. I am wondering if I had a bit of smoky lense!
The main Buddha here at the golden temple is not even made of gold. Really crap photo, smoke got in my camera!
Smoke must have cleared from the camera, because this is a decent photo again.
Out the back the gold ends and it becomes impressive wooden Buddhist temples. Real monks live here, and dry their Gucci clothes on the balconies.
Over the road from the golden temple is another park, where you can admire a family of petrified rhinoceroses. The grass police blew their whistle at me while I was taking this photo. The grass was nothing special, I didnt think it was a special historically preserved grass covered harmonious area for the peoples preservation of historical grasses.
The grass police guy was following me around now, so I took about 11 minutes to set up and take this photo to tease him. On my way out I peered over a fence into a construction site, he blew his whistle again about 3 feet away from me.
If you get caught stepping on the sacred grass three times you are forced to put on a special yellow idiot suit and balance a stick on your head for 3 months.
I stepped into this phone box to make a call. I wanted to be the first person to use a phone box this century, only to find that its now a library.
I passed yet another garden. Too many gardens.
My extended journey took me into another trendy shopping area, this is a clothing boutique, that features a pile of dirt in the middle of the shop. Its not under construction, somehow dirt pile is fashion. So fashion!
After another hour or so of walking past expensive shops, I arrived at the special tourist area for selling of souvenirs and arresting of people selling souvenirs known as Yu Garden Garden. These are all souvenir shops, KFC, Starbucks.
Still fake modern shopping area. But impressive fake.
This is a Chinese ancient peep show! 10 RMB to stick your eyes over these holes, contract conjunctivitis, and see an ancient silhouette of a concubine doing a fan dance.
These are tea houses, but they are still outside the pay area that is the actual old garden.
I got to this point and realised this was as far as I had got on previous visits. You have to pay to continue beyond this point, today I paid!
At first I was a little disappointed, its a rock garden with a few bonsai, didnt look very impressive.
It started to get nicer, all the areas are quite small, hard to get a decent photo.
I believe these are genuinely old, also you can see the new drain pipe building towering above it all!
This child was feeding his feet to the piranhas.
Probably the nicest place for a photo, that couple sitting on the bridge thought so also. Me and 25 other people waited for ages for them got get out of the way, they never did. They are still there now.
In the meantime the small child had been completely consumed by the fish.
Have a bit more ancient garden tea house / jade viewing gallery.
I was again impressed with the trees here, I noted that they wrap the trunks in cloth to discourage growth.
Last photo from yuyuyuanyuangardengarden is the free ear piercing Chinese orchestra display. Why was it so damn loud?