This Saturday, Maggie took a group of her students for an outing, and was kind enough to invite Tim and I along to join the fun. So at about one in the afternoon, we congregated at Beihua before heading out to a...well it sure was a place of sorts, and we did enjoy ourselves.
However, I'll frankly be darned if I can properly explain exactly what kind of park it was. Embarassingly enough, I can't even recall its name.
We think that it was partially a local historical park, based on the building replicas and statues everywhere. However, that's as much as we were able to make out. None of us were able to figure out whether it was supposed to be for an old town that used to stand here, or possibly a fort. Considering that Jilin City used to be famous for shipbuilding, it's quite possibly that this was somehow tied in to its semi-nautical past, but unfortunately all we could do was speculate hopelessly.
In retrospect, we really just should have taken the few minutes to ask literally any of Maggie's English students.
So to say the least, it was a most peculiar place to visit, but it made for some great photo opportunities and a few chances to enterain ourselves in a fairly childish fashion.
Tim and I believe that we should title this particular shot "The Most Hopeless Staring Contest."
If I ever had to diagnose a park with multiple personality disorder, I might have to pick this one. No sooner had we passed through the first building replica when we passed through a curious playground, with equipment that was definitely a bit less than safe.
Lord knows exactly what the odd log-walk had to do with the history of the region.
But at least we knew that this for sure absolutely no histoical value whatsoever to speak of.
For the two minutes we toyed around on it, Tim and I had arguably had far too much fun on it.
Again, I cannot tell you exactly what you are looking at here. I would have better luck turning stones into bread before I could explain what the purpose of this structure was. It had cannons outside though, so maybe it was a....fortification?
To say the very least, my Chinese Studies degree was of shockingly little use on that outing.
Fact: The character for "mountain" is 山, or shan.
And when Tim and I came across this 山, we felt that we of course felt the overwhelming desire to scale the mighty peak.
Here you see what's definitely a boat frame, which adds at least a little bit of weight to the theory that this park was somehow related to the city's nautical heritage.
And.....maybe this stands for the bygone era when the region was ruled by earth-dwelling archer giants.
Frankly, the entire place only became more and more puzzling the more we all explored. For example, here you see a little cluster of buildings and statues that we assumed was supposed to stand for the traditional way that people used to live here a few centuries ago.
However, nearby that little histoical set-up was....
I know it's a door, but why did it have to be built into the wall like that? As Tim shows, yet again we found ourselves without a single clear answer to stand on.
It was around here that the park really made quite a jump from quasi-hisotical site into full-blown minor amusement park, complete with grassy, shady areas to laze about and eat lunch and various rides and attractions whose safety was highly suspect.
I admit, I had never seen such a small "swinging boat" before in my life.
However, I confess that I only noticed the ride's size after my attention was nabbed by the cartoonish sun's unsettling facial hair.
Probably what was most eye-opening of all was the water-fun area. Mind you though, that was only because we were almost shocked by what we were looking at, such as this little number here.
Solid rock stairs with water running through and children playing atop it; if that's not a recipe for a few boo-boos, then I don't know what is.
However, that wasn't quite as bad as the various bridges that lay nearby and stretched across the pool of disturbingly brown water. While one of them was a legitimate bridge, the others were....
Well, what else is there to say? This one was literally two lengths of wet, interlocked metal chain.
Bless the hearts of those who were daring enough to play upon it, for all the other teachers and I could do was gawk at it in disbelief and ask again and again, "Why? Why?"
Event hat had to be topped off by what stood nearby - a walkway constructed of chains, and wet, round (and I presume slippery) logs.
As we watched children try and make their way across, a part of me wanted to pluck every single one of them off and take them somewhere to safety.
I dearly wish that there was a term could meant both amusing and painfully bewildering, for that would be the absolute perfect term to describe the day's field trip.
Apologies all around to the lack of commentary on my part, but I truly believe that this is one of those experiences where words can do absolutely no justice in trying to make some sense of it all. I think in the very end, your only choice is to do like we did, and just look (though whether you want to do so with interest, bafflement or alarm is entirely up to you).
I am sure this is a niche for cheap, unsafe theme parks somewhere in the market. That place was built by visionary entrepreneurs!
Posted by: Chris | 05/21/2012 at 02:38 AM