Celebrities in SZ
Jul 24th, 2006 by Andrew
On Saturday we decided to get out of the house and go for a walk at Lian Hua Shan park, since it was accessible by Metro. It’s located approximately half-way along the breadth of Shenzhen and a little north. There are parklands for flying kites or playing badmington, there’s a lake and the area has various lychee trees scattered around in fields. The main reason for the park being there is because there’s a mountain to climb up; so off we went.
As we started to walk up the path the relief that the greenery brought to a concrete jungle was palpable. To be in amongst the vegetation was just wonderful. Along the way we came across this little Engrish example encouraging people not to light the place up.
At the very top is a 20-foot high statue of Deng Xiaoping, who was the guy that officially “opened up” Shenzhen in 1979 and he is shown looking out over the city from this mountain top, and probably striding in a very meaningful and purposeful way. He led a lot of the reforms in China before passing away in 1999. We had a slightly different perspective…
From up here the view of the city is actually quite good. Unfortunately I didn’t allow enough overlap in my panorama shots so there’re a few bits missing, but you get the idea. The building with the blue wavy roof and red and yellow pillars is the central Shenzhen government building. The Diwang building is off in the distance to the left. There was a lovely cool breeze blowing, evaporating the perspiration off our backs and faces.
For some unknown reason we became instant celebrities upon our arrival at the top. We had several groups of people wanting to have their picture taken with us. I can only think that some of these people were from out of Shenzhen and not so used to seeing foreigners. Most insisted on the traditional American peace sign.
As we approached the bottom we came across this…
We were not entirely sure what it is an advertisment for however, the wooden desks and chairs seemed to indicate that Sunday classes were on the menu. As we left, the people in orange shirts with megaphones were trying to round up a few more recruits.