Fuxing Park mid morning atmosphere

September 2016

Fuxing park is a popular, beautiful and well maintained city park in Shanghai. This is a compilation of video clips taken in the mid 2010's highlighting the park's vibrancy and unique festive atmosphere, owing to its multitude of regular performers of all types; usually local Shanghainese men and women, playing musical instruments, dancing to music and exercising. There are also mens storytelling groups, places to play cards (mostly men) and groups of men playing diavolo. The park is most vibrant from Sept to December, and March to June, when the weather is warm, sunny and predictable.

The park acts like a green lung and oasis in a busy part of Shanghai that is fully open to the public and highly accessible morning, evening and night. The park is quintessentially Shanghainese owing to its mix of Chinese and European elements (the park dates back to the French colonial period of 1909). In the early morning, the park fills with (older) people doing their morning Chinese style exercises. As the morning unfolds, more groups can be observed playing cards and mahjong, and practicing tai chi.

On weekends, it's a great picnic spot and place to kick a ball or throw a frisbee in one of the open grassy areas. It's one of the few city parks in Shanghai where there are generous green spaces that people can actually use and sit on versus just look at. If you are looking for a peaceful escape from the noise of the city, you probably will be disappointed as there is often a cacophony of noise, where there is a mix of dancing groups practice their moves, saxophonists blast their horns, and individual people practice their karaoke with a big speaker or ghetto blaster beside them, all competing for space. (Note that NONE of these people are doing these performances to show off on social media (at least not when I hung out there in the mid 2010's).

I was always delighted when I got to observe the storytellers - almost always men - who would hold court amongst a group of other men of a certain vintage, wearing similar plain clothes, all smoking and listening intently. It was usually in Shanghai dialect making it almost impossible for me to follow what was being said. If I can find a video clip or image I will certainly add it to the mix.