Before We Begin: A Breath for the City
First, what this part gathers
Zhabei was very crowded. In the age of the old North Station it was one of the densest districts in Shanghai — generations packed into shikumen, workers' villages laid out one after another, chimneys, railways and roads filling the land to the brim.
A park is where this city catches its breath.
What this part gathers is exactly the two places where Zhabei people caught their breath: one the oldest, which went from a graveyard of the early Republic all the way to a five-star park of today; one the newest, a green lung grown out of an empty lot that did not appear until 2000.
One line of division
These two parks used to live in Part Three, among the "notable sites".
Bringing them together has a simple reason: a park is not there to be "seen", but to be "used". You see a ruin and then leave; a park you have to walk into — morning exercises, boating, kite-flying, the matchmaking corner, taking the children out, daydreaming …
For history, go to Part Three; for daily life, come to this part.
This category: two parks
| # | Park | The park's story begins | Location | In one line |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Zhabei Park | the Song Park years (the 1910s) | 1555 Gonghexin Road | opened in one man's name (Song Jiaoren); the only park in Shanghai "named after a district" |
| 2 | Daning Lingshi Park | 2000 | Guangzhong West Road | a green space that appeared only in 2000 — "the green lung of Daning" |
A few reminders
- Both parks are free, but each keeps its own hours: the early morning in Zhabei Park belongs to the old people doing their exercises, and the weekends in Lingshi Park belong to children flying kites — to see "a living park", go early or go at the weekend;
- Do not miss the history inside the parks: the tomb of Song Jiaoren and the Qian family ancestral hall in Zhabei Park are both Shanghai municipal cultural relic protection units — stroll in the park, and look up to find a name from the year of the 1911 Revolution;
- how to read them alongside others: Lingshi Park goes with Shanghai Circus World and Daning International Commercial Plaza — "culture first, then ecology, then commerce" is the three-move sequence in the development history of Daning Road Subdistrict;
- This category will grow. Zhabei's green spaces are more than these two — Sanquan Park, Guangzhong Park, Jiaotong Park, Bunye Cheng Green … most of them do not yet have a piece of their own, and are waiting to be written about slowly.
So let us begin with a garden of a hundred years' standing.