Wetlands and opera
(Looking up at a Chinese opera stage roof at the Xixi National Wetlands Park: Hangzhou, China)
With concerns that there have been too many gardens and landscapes here of late, I have striven to bring you something fresh. Yesterday we returned from a one-night stay at the only national wetland park in China, it took over two hours to reach there from Suzhou. The city nearby the park is Hangzhou and just for interest, there is a Chinese saying: “up there is heaven, down on earth there is Suzhou and Hangzhou”. I’m not so sure about that (though the previous post may dispute it somewhat) but it was a new adventure, picking our rambling route through the immense park.
The best thing about the park is that all the vehicles inside; e-bikes, boats, cars are all electric and create no fumes. I was pretty impressed by the effort involved and generally how well the place was managed with as much self sufficiency as possible. I was slightly concerned when Ying’s mum* expressed a wish to go there as it’s not only a long journey, but my experience of British wetland parks is that a rainy afternoon is spent in a camouflaged hut scanning the landscape for a rare sort of duck or moorhen that never appears. Plus I was never allowed to feed the birds so, as a child, I was always singularly unimpressed with these weekend trips with the family. These were virtually the only family trips in which interest waned soon after arrival. In contrast, his park is neither stormy nor merely a damp nature reserve, it is also a heritage site with exhibitions on the Hong family that lived here and their practices. This is one of the many buildings dotted throughout the swamps and waterways – this is the roof of an opera stage, and the decoration of what could possibly be dragons roaring into the sky caught my attention. The photo was irresistible with the red banner, especially as the family we had been learning about has the surname; Hong, meaning ‘red’. Never let it be said that reading ‘China meets Rosie’ isn’t educational!
*Her name is ‘Fong Chee’ and you might spot her comments on some posts.
