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Remembering when trees graced our streets and offered shade
By Wan Lixin |
July 28, 2010, Wednesday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
ACCORDING to Monday's Xinmin Evening News several residents wrote to the paper to air their complaints about the lack of shade when they walk on the pavement downtown.
One resident lives near No 1 Metro's Changshu Road Station, where the streets used to be lined with leafy plane trees.
These trees were uprooted when the Metro station was built many years ago and since then in summer passengers have to walk about 200 meters in broad sunlight on the overheated concrete pavement, to and from the Metro.
Another resident wrote to say that when she showed some of her overseas relatives around the Bund recently, she was dismayed to find the west side of the Bund totally devoid of trees.
As a matter of fact, even the riverside has been reduced to a concrete square dotted with a sprinkling of grass and shrubs, probably to afford an unobstructed view of the stylish buildings on the Bund and a chiseled skyline in Pudong.
Mere trees are out of favor with our landscape designers.
There is an increasingly tendency to see trees as obstructive, especially for those in cars.
For the past month I have to walk around 200 meters from the Pudong Children's Palace on Yingchun Road to the Metro exit.
The pavement is totally devoid of trees.
To avoid the burning sun, fashionable women must use umbrellas to afford them shelter.
This barren design is deliberate, for about a dozen meters away there is a planted area at least two hundred meters deep.
In strict conformity to progressive Western standards, the space right next to the pavement has been converted to lawn, and a little further, a curving bed of seasonal flowers.
Lawn was unknown in China when I was young, but in recent years it has spread like wild fire, even though it creates noise (lawn mowers), pollution (highly dependent on fertilizers and pesticides) and waste water.
As downtown streets steadily get wider, sidewalks are usually squeezed to their limit, and then trees become hindrances.
We now would rather have bourgeoisie grass or weeds than trees.
If you see Bruce Dale's picture of the Bund taken around 1980, you can see the two sides of the Bund still lined by trees in thick foliage, affording plenty of shade.
And in Nanjing, an ex-mayor axed the city's legendary plane trees because they obstruct the view of neon lights at night, making it so unlike a dazzling metropolis.
One resident lives near No 1 Metro's Changshu Road Station, where the streets used to be lined with leafy plane trees.
These trees were uprooted when the Metro station was built many years ago and since then in summer passengers have to walk about 200 meters in broad sunlight on the overheated concrete pavement, to and from the Metro.
Another resident wrote to say that when she showed some of her overseas relatives around the Bund recently, she was dismayed to find the west side of the Bund totally devoid of trees.
As a matter of fact, even the riverside has been reduced to a concrete square dotted with a sprinkling of grass and shrubs, probably to afford an unobstructed view of the stylish buildings on the Bund and a chiseled skyline in Pudong.
Mere trees are out of favor with our landscape designers.
There is an increasingly tendency to see trees as obstructive, especially for those in cars.
For the past month I have to walk around 200 meters from the Pudong Children's Palace on Yingchun Road to the Metro exit.
The pavement is totally devoid of trees.
To avoid the burning sun, fashionable women must use umbrellas to afford them shelter.
This barren design is deliberate, for about a dozen meters away there is a planted area at least two hundred meters deep.
In strict conformity to progressive Western standards, the space right next to the pavement has been converted to lawn, and a little further, a curving bed of seasonal flowers.
Lawn was unknown in China when I was young, but in recent years it has spread like wild fire, even though it creates noise (lawn mowers), pollution (highly dependent on fertilizers and pesticides) and waste water.
As downtown streets steadily get wider, sidewalks are usually squeezed to their limit, and then trees become hindrances.
We now would rather have bourgeoisie grass or weeds than trees.
If you see Bruce Dale's picture of the Bund taken around 1980, you can see the two sides of the Bund still lined by trees in thick foliage, affording plenty of shade.
And in Nanjing, an ex-mayor axed the city's legendary plane trees because they obstruct the view of neon lights at night, making it so unlike a dazzling metropolis.
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