1) Tai chi sessions
2) Ballroom dancing. Really
3) Mah-jong players
4) People doing circus skills – juggling, diabolo
5) Musicians
6) Tea-drinkers at all the teahouses
7) Calligraphers who paint the paving stones with characters using giant brushes and water
8) People selling toffee – it’s shaped like filigree cut-outs of the signs of the zodiac, I think
9) Sword dancers
10) Men hitting spinning tops – serious ones, unlike the toys we had. The tops are the size of a large mug, the whips crack
11) People sketching and painting
12) People feeding the carp (with baby bottles, I kid you not) – all the ponds are full of them
The park is heaving. It feels like a carnival or festival but this is just an ordinary day. I am stopped four times by curious people and explain in my atrocious Chinese that I’m from England. I have practised this every day since I arrived. Each time I get a look of total incomprehension. Perhaps I have said, ‘Follow that teabag,’ or ‘How pretty is your camel.’ But the word ‘Manchester’ opens doors. Eyes light up, smiles blossom. Manchester! Manchester United! The Red Devils have paved the way for travellers the world over. Well, those of us from Manchester. I nod and do a little hand cheer, as if we scored a goal. Which we have in a way. Twice people ask to have a photograph taken with me. The last woman pats my arms and chatters away, and I smile and nod and hope I haven’t accidentally agreed to anything, like teaching all her grandchildren English every evening. Or marrying one of her sons.
The park is open from six in the morning till nine at night, when lanterns and lights glow among the bamboo plants and trees. And it feels safe. Another difference from the one at home where there’s an edginess, the peace shattered by some prat on a mini motorbike churning up the field, or a group of drunk kids getting physical.
Perhaps the biggest difference is that at home we’re out in public but we keep ourselves to ourselves – all that British reserve, we stay in our own little cliques. A nod as you pass someone is the height of interaction – apart from the dog-walkers, who like to mingle with their canine friends. In China, everyone is into everyone else’s business – there doesn’t seem to be any notion of privacy. People stare and interrupt and join in and interfere all the time. A crowd forms at the drop of a hat. It’s like a big party where everyone knows everyone else, except they don’t, they just act like they do. Lxxx
