Sunday, April 6, 2014

南山植物园 (South Mountain Botanical Garden)

A few weeks ago, the weather really started turning around here in Chongqing. It had been cold and rainy, overcast all day. Not that I was complaining; the Oregonian in me wasn't at all upset with the wet gray blanket that Chongqing had turned into. 

That said, when I saw my first blue sky here in the 'Foggy City' (we all know it's the really the 'Smoggy City', c'mon), I couldn't help but smile and want to take advantage of the wonderful weather. In this spirit, our little gang decided we needed to do some sort of outdoor activity. At a suggestion from our student/friend Jerry, we settled on the South Mountain Botanical Gardens which was just outside the city. It didn't hurt that he knew exactly where it was, offered to drive us, and buy us all dinner, either. Don't think for a second that we were using him; we really like Jerry, but this was also the first time we had had an activity with one of our students outside of class, so I was interested to see how that dynamic would go.
Anyway, apparently, all of Chongqing also decided that this was the perfect time to go to the gardens because it took us something like two hours to get there with all of the traffic. I've already complained about the traffic here, so I'll try not to get into it too much. But we were on a mountain people! Outside the city! And it was bumper to bumper. Anyway, it was definitely not supposed to be that long of a drive but I'd say that it was eventually worth it to get outside of the city in the sunshine and nature. Nature is certainly something that I'm missing with living in such a big city. Even their parks lack real open space and grass to lay in and the massive buildings block out direct sunlight unless you get there exactly at noon.

This is South Mountain


Anyway, South Mountain is..well...a mountain so it's hard to build looming skyscrapers there and the fresh air makes the perfect garden spot. Jerry told us that the main reason for going to the gardens this time of year was the Sakura blossoms. Sakura blossoms are apparently just cherry tree flowers, and the entire time we were there Jerry kept pointing to the trees and telling us which were Sakuras. I thought I had a handle on it, until the writing of this blogpost where I discovered that maybe I didn't know which ones were Sakuras because going through my pictures I'm not finding the same flowers that came up when I googled them. Help me out here Dad...

I'm fairly certain that the flowers in the pictures to the left are Sakura blossoms. They look the most like cherry blossoms to me and they look the most like what I googled, so we're going to go ahead and say that those are them. Aren't they beautiful?! They were scattered throughout the park and came in at least two colors that I remember, pink and white.  Most of my flower pictures that I took were close-ups because there were so many people there and I frankly didn't want a random person's face in my pictures of the flowers from that day. That being said, I did try to take a picture of a statue in the park and snapped a hysterical picture of a woman looking really really confused about something (above and to the right). She probably didn't know which flowers were Sakuras either; I feel for you honey.


So we spent a few hours walking around and just enjoying the flowers, whatever they were. To be honest, we were all pretty wiped from the car ride and I think we were only half aware of where we were walking and what we were seeing. Luckily, the park is an enclosed space so we couldn't wander too far without ending up where we started again.

The garden reminded me a lot of the Chinese and Japanese gardens that you can see back home in Portland. It might have been organized a little differently because it was on the side of a mountain and couldn't sprawl like the gardens I'm used to. But the garden was very dense and well laid-out. They made it seem much larger with winding paths and partitions made with large trees and ponds. Each space to the garden had a unique landscaping style and specific plants. Other than the Sakura blossoms, there were the big pink flowers in the picture to the left. I'm gonna go out on a limb here (badum-tiss) and say that they're Magnolias? If not, it's too late to back petal (badum-tiss), so that's what I'm going to call them. They were my favorite flowers. Other than that, it was pretty much a typical botanical garden: ponds, trees, some bamboo, an indoor garden that we were too cheap to pay to go in, etc.
All in all, it was a great day with some great weather and even better people. I'm so lucky to have friends like these. Even when we're exhausted from a long, hot car ride we can still have a blast walking around doing anything. I'm also so incredibly lucky to have Chinese friends. I've said this before, but the Chinese might be the most gracious people I've ever met. Jerry went out of his way on a weekend to drive across the city to get us, then back the way he came and an extra few hours to take us to the mountain. Afterward, he bought us an amazing dinner at a great restaurant with probably the best view I've ever seen of Chongqing. I'm spoiled now and I can never teach in the States because I'll be expecting this treatment from my students there too.

As the weather keeps improving, I hope we venture further and further outside of the city. Our friend Eric lives hours outside and is always bragging about how beautiful his town is. We've had tentative plans to camp there for a while, but I'm going to make it happen soon. Until next time friends and family.

Love always,

Jared


Three amigos

Calla Lilies and fishies

Rando girl decided she needed to be in EVERYONE'S pictures

Some pretty bad photography


Gotta be bamboo, I mean this is China

More of my favorites


Even more of my favorites

Jurassic park

Grandmother Willow

This one's in a pot


This is the last picture






3 comments:

  1. I LOVE the Juarassic Park plant!! Made me laugh out loud! Miss you

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  2. Thanks Momma. I miss you too and if the weather's good enough, I promise to show you that very plant when you visit!

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  3. I love your posts! So much to do and see. Maybe I will need to visit more than once?? :D LOVE YOU!

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