There is a corner of a foreign field that is forever China
Or there should be. I want to buy a piece of land, somewhere in England or Ireland, and declare it a Chinese park. Or just rent a house with a garden and declare it to be a Chinese park for a single night. Chinese parks are the new best thing ever.
Picture this: It’s just after dark. You’re walking along a winding, shadowy, leafy path with funny metal sculptures like huge bubbles of mercury sitting on the grass on either side. Off in one direction, someone’s voice is rising and falling in operatic scales. From another, faintly, comes the sound of someone else’s flute practice. A barefoot woman is doing t’ai chi in a clearing. Further on, an elderly man in pyjamas is standing absolutely motionless, staring at a tree. Young couples kiss on benches, old couples walk their tiny dogs. Kids play badminton in the path...
Then, with one final twist, the path opens out into an open space where a circle of people - middle-aged, loosely clothed, not slim or beautiful - are singing exuberantly to a tambourine and a guitar. A dozen more are doing a sort of line-dance in a square formation to the music. It’s a bit like the video of Praise You.The singers speed up until the dancers trip over their own feet, laughing breathlessly. Near them, some women are doing a fan dance to music of their own. The fans are tacky as hell, neon-coloured and gold-fringed, but the women are having fun. A man is playing accordion a little way off, peering over his instrument at his music propped on the accordion case. His friends stand around, making comments that seem approving. On the far side, a boy is playing guitar, way out of tune but with enthusiasm.
Here they all are, in the park, doing their hobbies. Some of them aren’t very good at their hobbies, but it doesn’t matter. The park is a momentary zone of no self-consciousness. It’s not a place to perform or do things for gain, it’s a place to just do your thing - whatever your thing is and whatever your skill level - and never mind who’s watching.
I’d heard Chinese parks were something like this, and we’d already wandered through Tiantan Park - home of the Temple of Heaven - in the evening and heard disembodied music floating through the trees as bats swooped overhead. But all this, this picture I’ve drawn, wasn’t happening in a big, official state park, but on the central reservation of Beiheyan, the street our hostel was on, with traffic roaring around the T-junction mere feet away.
That night, at the top end of the park above a little knot of men, a glowstick seemed to be hanging in the air unsupported, like a fat blue firefly. We stared at it, trying and failing to see a string, trying to comprehend how this was possible. Was it filled with helium? Was it hanging from something? But nothing was up there. An old man saw us, made a kite-flying motion and burst out laughing. We were even more mystified when the glowstick came closer and there was still no kite. One of the men pointed upwards and mimed counting to two. Yes - there were two tiny dots of light up there. We’d thought they were stars but the sky was full of smog, and besides, they were moving.
One of the dots (as they kept reeling in, though there was still no visible string) turned out to be another blue glowstick. It must have been a couple of hundred feet above the first one. It bloomed slowly out of the dark, taking on shape and colour, and when it was nearly down we could finally see the actual kite - a tiny fleck with two glittering red lights. It grew slowly as the men hauled away, and at last it was on the ground, as tall as a man and twice that wide. How had they got it up there on such a windless night? I was enchanted by the whole idea of night kites and couldn’t stop smiling. I wanted one.
The men seemed pleased with their kite prowess. One of them departed on a motorbike and the others slowly drifted away, and elsewhere the singing and dancing and music-playing was still going on. It was like a vision of heaven, or of some future society where there was no more embarrassment or fear.
Say I did have a nice big garden to do it in. Would you come to a Chinese park evening? And what would you do? ('Stroll' is a perfectly acceptable answer, of course, and so is 'absolutely nothing').
Picture this: It’s just after dark. You’re walking along a winding, shadowy, leafy path with funny metal sculptures like huge bubbles of mercury sitting on the grass on either side. Off in one direction, someone’s voice is rising and falling in operatic scales. From another, faintly, comes the sound of someone else’s flute practice. A barefoot woman is doing t’ai chi in a clearing. Further on, an elderly man in pyjamas is standing absolutely motionless, staring at a tree. Young couples kiss on benches, old couples walk their tiny dogs. Kids play badminton in the path...
Then, with one final twist, the path opens out into an open space where a circle of people - middle-aged, loosely clothed, not slim or beautiful - are singing exuberantly to a tambourine and a guitar. A dozen more are doing a sort of line-dance in a square formation to the music. It’s a bit like the video of Praise You.The singers speed up until the dancers trip over their own feet, laughing breathlessly. Near them, some women are doing a fan dance to music of their own. The fans are tacky as hell, neon-coloured and gold-fringed, but the women are having fun. A man is playing accordion a little way off, peering over his instrument at his music propped on the accordion case. His friends stand around, making comments that seem approving. On the far side, a boy is playing guitar, way out of tune but with enthusiasm.
Here they all are, in the park, doing their hobbies. Some of them aren’t very good at their hobbies, but it doesn’t matter. The park is a momentary zone of no self-consciousness. It’s not a place to perform or do things for gain, it’s a place to just do your thing - whatever your thing is and whatever your skill level - and never mind who’s watching.
I’d heard Chinese parks were something like this, and we’d already wandered through Tiantan Park - home of the Temple of Heaven - in the evening and heard disembodied music floating through the trees as bats swooped overhead. But all this, this picture I’ve drawn, wasn’t happening in a big, official state park, but on the central reservation of Beiheyan, the street our hostel was on, with traffic roaring around the T-junction mere feet away.
That night, at the top end of the park above a little knot of men, a glowstick seemed to be hanging in the air unsupported, like a fat blue firefly. We stared at it, trying and failing to see a string, trying to comprehend how this was possible. Was it filled with helium? Was it hanging from something? But nothing was up there. An old man saw us, made a kite-flying motion and burst out laughing. We were even more mystified when the glowstick came closer and there was still no kite. One of the men pointed upwards and mimed counting to two. Yes - there were two tiny dots of light up there. We’d thought they were stars but the sky was full of smog, and besides, they were moving.
One of the dots (as they kept reeling in, though there was still no visible string) turned out to be another blue glowstick. It must have been a couple of hundred feet above the first one. It bloomed slowly out of the dark, taking on shape and colour, and when it was nearly down we could finally see the actual kite - a tiny fleck with two glittering red lights. It grew slowly as the men hauled away, and at last it was on the ground, as tall as a man and twice that wide. How had they got it up there on such a windless night? I was enchanted by the whole idea of night kites and couldn’t stop smiling. I wanted one.
The men seemed pleased with their kite prowess. One of them departed on a motorbike and the others slowly drifted away, and elsewhere the singing and dancing and music-playing was still going on. It was like a vision of heaven, or of some future society where there was no more embarrassment or fear.
Say I did have a nice big garden to do it in. Would you come to a Chinese park evening? And what would you do? ('Stroll' is a perfectly acceptable answer, of course, and so is 'absolutely nothing').