“I used to sit in this small park with a cup of coffee before I went to work. It’s an interesting experience to be in the park and see modern shopping malls on one side of you and tall green trees on the other. At night, older couples gather in the park for group dancing.” —Bartender Tree Mao on the French Concession.
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Xiangyang Park: A Grassy Snapshot of Shanghai Life
“I used to sit in this small park with a cup of coffee before I went to work. It’s an interesting experience to be in the park and see modern shopping malls on one side of you and tall green trees on the other. At night, older couples gather in the park for group dancing.” —Bartender Tree Mao on the French Concession.
A Page from Cliodhna Ztoical's Sketchbook
On my Culinary UnTour was a very cool Irish globetrotting artist, Cliodhna, so I asked her to send me a sketch. This is of a water calligrapher we saw in Xiangyang Park at the beginning of our tour. She went back the next morning to sketch him. According to her website, “Clíodhna is an illustrator, animator and printmaker with a first name that few people outside of Ireland can pronounce or spell. Her parents named her after a lifeboat on the Aran Islands where she was born for which she feels slightly jibbed as boats are usually named after people not the other way round. She studied animation at Ballyfermot College in Dublin and comics at the School of Visual Arts in New York. She currently works and lives in London with her two cats, Joda and Jack.”
Water Calligraphy
You can see men doing water calligraphy during the morning exercises in parks in Shanghai. Some are writing poems, practicing their calligraphy, doing it by memory, and it draws a crowd of respectful onlookers and other calligraphers.
The Morning Paper
Every morning in Shanghai the government posts the newspaper (pictured here in Xiangyang Park) so everyone can read it.
