Home Shanghai travel story: the Guilin Park in Shanghai
Shanghai travel story: the Guilin Park in Shanghai
Guilin Park at 80 Guilin Road is located in the city’s southwest in the vicinity of Xujiahui shopping center. Its sweet scented osmanthus are known in Chinese as Gui. Many tourists in a Shanghai travel came to here for purpose to see those flowers and smell the fragrance.
With an area of 3.55 hectares, the park, completed in 1932 after four years of construction, is a miniature of traditional Chinese Gardens around the lower reaches of the Yangtze River.
The Suzhou style Guilin Park has fascination history of its own. It was formerly the private garden of Huang Jinrong (1868-1953), one of the leading gangsters in Shanghai in the early years of the last century.
There were different sections in the garden for enjoying tea, playing chess and entertaining guests. But after Shanghai was lost to Japanese invaders in 1937, the garden was destroyed.In 1957, the local government conducted a comprehensive refurbishment and restored it to its original style. The garden was renamed Guilin Park because it contains 23 species and over 1000 osmanthus trees. Osmanthus is a sweet, millet-yellow flower that blooms in bunches around the Mid-Autumn Festival. The sweet fragrance and aromatic flowers draw large crowds.
The timing of the osmanthus makes it a mythical flower. The Chinese folklore says the shadow in the moon is a 500-meter-tall osmanthus tree and that a lunar man, named Wu Gang, can make a divine brew with sweet osmanthus.
If visitors feel tired strolling among the trees, they can sit on stone or wooden chairs or lie in the meadow to enjoy the sunshine. Some visitors come to enjoy tea scented with osmanthus flowers.
As autumn shows its tail, Osmanthus flowers wither but the fascinating scent lingers, though not as fragrant as before.
The park also features the two-story Yuanyang (mandarin duck) Mansion, which is furnished with antiques creating the appearance of the home of an old wealthy family. Each window there provides a lovely view of the park including its green pools, small bridges, old rockeries as well as trees---- pine or maples planted so their stretching branches gently sweep the red roof of nearby pavilions in the cool autumn breeze.
Guilin Park is quiet and elegant. This is the one for you if you do not want to walk too much or to be jostled by large crowds.
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