A few weeks ago the central heating was turned off in anticipation of spring. Beijing has now hit it’s “nice weather” time wherein the flowers are growing and the trees are coming alive once again all the while the temperature hesitates to get too warm just yet.
The garden workers on my compound hauled out the water hoses in the middle of March to begin soaking the dried out dirt. Within a day you could see green shoots appearing and a few days later there were noticeable green patches.
But the big draw this time of year is the appearance of the sakuras or, as we call them in the West, cherry blossoms. We were able to visit a couple of parks that have flower displays but the one that specializes in the cherry blossom trees is Yu Yuan Tan Park.
Though the park is huge, it’s dwarfed by the cityscape around it. Situated in the southeast corner of Beijing near Mu Xi Di subway station. The park has a few particular areas dedicated to different displays, among them are lakes, flowers, monuments to young heros, and, of course, the cherry blossoms, which occupies the northwest section of the park. Unfortunately, due to a bit of miscommunication, we started our trip at the bottom of the park, the southeast corner and had to work our way around in a clockwise direction and so the pictures you see below go in a clockwise direction from southeast to the north.
And without further adieu, a photo gallery of the flowers we saw:
And to make the occasion a bit more festive, the park set up a few shops that sold typical trinkets, none of which were at all necessary. They did, however, set up food stalls and those came in hand.
All said and done and some 10,000 steps later, we had finished our saunter through the parks and it was time to head to another type of garden: the beer garden! 😀
And if you haven’t had enough flowers, I made a video of the day out: