Very many cities in China have a Zhongshan Park 中山公园 (perhaps the most famous is Beijing’s Zhongshan Park near the Forbidden City). In honour of the Chinese Republic’s first president, Sun-Yat-sen, it became a standard practice to name public parks after the revered Dr Sun, who within China is better known by the name Sun Zhongshan.

Dalian’s Zhongshan Park is certainly one of the most chilled-out and slow-paced of the parks named in celebration of “the Father of Modern China”. Entrance to the park is from Huanghe Lu, one of Dalian’s busiest, traffic-heavy roads. Once you come under the canopy of its large trees you only need to penetrate the park’s perimeters by the smallest of distances to put the constant noise and shuffling of traffic on Huanghe behind you.

The first thing that my eyes lit on as I followed the park’s curving pathway was the rich variety of plant life in the park’s garden. It had lots of different Chinese natives but interspersed with these were some exotics like, of all things, pockets of the unforgiving prickly-pointed Mexican yucca (below). Seats, tables and and the occasional gazebo can be found within the park. I liked some of the (minimalist) sculptures too.

Of Zhongshan Park’s many patrons using the park, two groups were of most interest to me. The park’s central square bordered by neat hedges, Weeping Willows and Conifers, was the setting for numerous games of cards – people engrossed in playing cards being watched by equally engrossed onlookers. I noticed, here and elsewhere in this city, the penchant for card games by the locals (cf. the preferred pastime for Liaoning’s other principal city, Shenyang, which is checkers). The card players in the park seemed wholly serious about their games, notwithstanding the fact that no money appeared to be waged on the outcomes.

Meanwhile, diagonally across from the numerous, endless “no stakes” games of poker, or whatever the preferred Chinese card game is in this region (it wasn’t Mah-jong they were playing, I could see that!), an assembly of local seniors were hard at it constructing a commendable Sino-version of “Dad’s Army”, or so it appeared to this unenlightened Júwàirén✻. Led by a no doubt self-appointed “sergeant-major”, the mainly septuagenarian band were strenuously and loudly put through their paces in a set of vigorous military-style exercises…hup, two, hup, two stuff straight from the US military drill-book.

Footnote: I did find one slightly discordant note jarring ever so slightly with the tranquility and harmony of Zhongshan Park. Just about everywhere you walked around the park, you were made aware of its proximity. Towering over the park like a nebulous cloud was a very tall, oddly scientific-looking building…it’s edifice had a decidedly technocratic countenance to it but was a very idiosyncratic, anachronistic appearance indeed. I looked at it more closely later from outside the park, I’m not sure but it may have been a hospital(?) with a wacky space-age facade, but it looked like something out of “The Jetsons” AD2119 to me.

➠➠➠➠➠➠➠➠➠➠➠➠➠➠➠➠➠➠➠➠➠➠➠➠➠➠➠➠➠➠➠➠➠➠➠➠➠➠➠➠➠➠➠➠➠➠➠➠

✻ unlike the stereotype Dad’s Army from 1960s British television though, these didn’t seem like a bunch of aged clowns bungling their drill, generally making a hash of things and tripping over their own shoelaces…they were totally serious and dedicated trainers from the look of it