Urban jungle and green-space oases

For a 20 million-person metropolis that throws around new skyscrapers the way Israeli politicians throw around petulant ultimata, Shanghai has some pretty sweet green spaces.

In aggregate they make up an odd assortment of traditional Chinese gardens (mostly renovated, originally imperial-style but now tourist-style); colonial gardens built by the European powers that lorded it over Shanghai during the late 19th and early 20th centuries; and new, sterile-looking modern gardens, with lots of stone slabs and oddly placed neon things.

But the coolest park in the city, at least by people-watching standards, is Fuxing Park. You really wouldn't think it would be all that pleasant: The place was designed by the French when they ruled the roost in the French Concession, and it looks a lot like the Jardin de Luxembourg--right down to that tiered, round fountain. Very weird.

But in the intervening 160(ish) years it has been reclaimed by locals.

On a weekend afternoon it's swarming with Shanghainese gambling loudly, practicing Tai Chi or ballroom dancing and inscrutably fishing for goldfish they buy from a stand beside the pond (I swear, I'm not making this up). Children rollerblade around the water fountain with a reckless abandon that would make Haussmann apoplectic.

Love it--我爱这个.

What's most fascinating about parks in Shanghai, though, is their anomalously cultivated nature: These manicured lawns, meticulously placed rock sculptures surrounding fake-as-you-can-get fishponds overlooked by park benches, are weird oases of calm in a frantic urban jungle. The wild stuff is skyscraper city--undulating glass and oddly angular concrete structures, contrasted with the tame public parks.

For a Canuck raised in a place where "the wild" was enormous conifers and crashing surf, that's a pretty drastic reversal.

Weird. But very cool.