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Beijing's parks: Get up and go

www.chinanews.cn 2005-08-09 15:11:14

(Source: Washington Post)

Sword wielders practice their craft at the Temple of Heaven, an expansive
public park in central Beijing. (Washington Post/By Caroline Cooper Photo)

Aug. 7 - The sweet strains of high-volume Chinese poetry should always be
cause for further investigation. On a recent visit to Beijing's Ditan
Park, I found Zhang Liwei, 66, a retired accountant, standing inches from
a stone wall, belting ancient Chinese poems with his nose to the mortar.
His voice was a deep baritone with good range. Zhang favors Tang dynasty
classics as well as selections from the Beijing Opera.
"I come here most mornings to open up the lungs," he said in Chinese.
"And to get ready for the day ahead." Dressed casually in gray pants, a
windbreaker and the canvas Chinese sports shoes favored by the People's
Liberation Army, he followed his private recital with some deep lunges
and a few windmill circles of the arms. "If you don't come out in the
morning to wake up, how will you be alive? What kind of life is that?"
It's a question much of Beijing's growing elderly population asks itself
every morning. With a growth rate of 5.3 percent per year in a city of
nearly 15 million, Beijingers 65 and older are in good company, and in
good shape. And they're finding each other in early-morning visits to the
capital's many public parks, where they turn out in droves to exercise
and socialize.
Amid rapid redevelopment and the increasingly frenzied preparations for
the 2008 Olympics, the Chinese capital is undergoing a process of
urbanization that threatens, many say, to erase much of what has made the
capital distinctive. As Beijing continues to reinvent itself and
traditional neighborhoods disappear, a stroll through one of the city's
parks reveals sides of a lively public life that may otherwise go
unnoticed.
There is no better time to see the action than between 6 and 8 a.m., when
residents of a particularly plucky stripe take to the city's many parks
and green spaces to stretch, walk, run, walk backward, slap their faces,
pull their earlobes, or clap and chant in groups. People are generally
out in the hundreds, and their ranks swell more in summer.
For a fine morning in the Chinese capital, spend an hour or two walking
through any of the parks outlined here, then tuck into a breakfast of
steamed buns, dumplings or rice porridge at any of the small eateries
clustered around the main park entrances. Though most park-goers, like
most of Beijing, speak only Mandarin Chinese, non-Chinese speakers can
get by fine simply strolling through the parks and observing the scene.

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