Second in a series about my recent trip to Shenyang. You can also read Part One below.

Horticulture is, by definition, unnatural. And yet, on our third day in Shenyang, we paid 50 RMB and took a packed and slow-moving train 20 km out to the Botanical Gardens where we were told we could, in fact, see “nature.”

But as I said, an International Horticulture Expo isn’t nature. It’s a zoo for plants. It’s nature put in its place. Nature doesn’t come in neatly manicured rows. Nature is abstract, haphazard, balanced. Most of all, nature is quiet.

The main road is a river of sightseers, noisy and pushy, hurried and obnoxious. Every few minutes a tram cuts through the crowd, honking non-stop and tearing along the sidewalk. After an hour of this, we turned down a side path and walked into a “forest” of young trees.

Almost immediately, Windy started moaning that we’d get lost. Will showed her where we were on the map. I pointed through the trees to where we could still see the road and the crowds. And if we really got lost, we could always just follow our noses. The smell of urine and methane led us straight to the toilets. Those things stank 30 feet in every direction.

Will and I decided early on that the real exhibit here isn’t the plants. It’s the people. We watched trams fly by, packed with tourists, very few looking happy to be there. At times, they barely moved faster than those on foot, until the driver saw a slight clearing, then he’d punch it. The honking never stopped. People bumped and bustled. They argued and pushed each other, all to get a few pictures of someone making a peace sign in front of a small clump of flowers.

The “International” part of the show comes from a few dozen “country gardens,” little enclaves meant to represent some country most Chinese will never see. But most of them were awful. Had any random kid been doing a report on foreign countries based on these gardens, here’s what he might have told his teacher:

The French have nicely arranged yards with lots of shrubs and flowers, but they don’t water any of them, so everything is brown and wilting. The Greeks don’t actually have plants in their gardens, or not many. Mostly they like concrete. Italians like fountains with naked people but don’t use plants either. The Dutch have lots of flowers and live in red and green windmills.

The Bridges

In the middle of all this pseudo-nature is what might be the park’s most entertaining feature: The Bridges. Basically, it’s a family-oriented water park set around a series of precarious crossings over a shallow green river. Some bridges are little more than two cables or a wobbly set of planks strung together. Some are nearly impossible to complete without getting soaked.

We watched three teens attempt one bridge where they had to swing on a rope from one platform to the next. The last jump was the longest, and for a half-hour each boy would swing out, fall short and either drag his legs in the water coming back to the platform or just drop in entirely. The water isn’t deep—about waist level on most people—so they could have just climbed out at any time. This was a pride thing, though, and to give up would mean losing face. Finally, they called a friend on shore, who caught the legs of each swinger and pulled him to safety.

We sent Windy across a plank bridge, which was unsteady but simple. As soon as she made it a few steps, Will began jumping on the other end to shake the bridge. She made it to the other shore and glared back at us, waiving her fist.

Another woman on the same bridge had a complete breakdown. She froze halfway, where the water barely crested the wood slats. She bent over, crying out in torment, while a friend tried to encourage her from behind. Another person came from the other side to lead her across.

I almost wanted someone to push her in, just so she’d realize the water wouldn’t kill her. It was, at most, a meter deep. We saw another girl, probably in her 20s, curl into a sobbing ball on the shore after falling in. She had to be carried out of the water by a friend who just walked in, got her, and walked out.

A Sardine Can Cleverly Disguised as Mass Transit

We took the train both ways. It’s supposed to be a short ride, about 20 minutes, costing 3 RMB each trip. For the outbound trip, we reached the gate 15 minutes before departure. A guard held us there for a moment, letting everyone cluster a bit in anticipation, about a dozen people primed like race horses waiting for the bell.

The gate opened, and we raced down the platform. Why are we running? And to where? I had no idea, so I walked and shouted ahead, “Save me a seat.” Stupid me. Sitting.

We packed into an alcove between the main compartment and the connecting tube to the adjoining car. At least 10 people crammed into a space not meant to hold anyone, maybe 12 feet by four feet. I leaned against a wall and tried to read. A man lit a cigarette, and Will (a smoker) told him to put it out. The man looked at us like we’d just asked that he kindly stop breathing.

The train left at 9:30 a.m. By 10 o’clock we were slowly cooking as the train inched along, stopping and starting, then stopping again. We reached the Expo Park at 10:30.

The return trip was shorter, but getting on that train was worthy of combat pay. I’m really surprised more people aren’t trampled to death getting on trains in China. There were probably a thousand people in line when we bought our tickets. If we stayed at the back, we’d never get on board. “Why don’t we just cut in line,” I said to Windy, half-joking. She walked to the front of the line. No one said anything.

A whistle blew, and we surged forward, pushed by the anonymous crowd behind, stepping into each gap ahead. If someone fell here, they’d never get up.

The stairs over the tracks slowed this cattle-drive a bit—maybe people better understood the danger of tripping here—but at the bottom we were pushed again. No train awaited us, just numbers painted near the tracks indicating roughly where each car would stop. People clustered around these numbers, not shoving now but still trying to work their way forward. It would have been easy to knock anyone near the front down onto the tracks.

We waited like that for 45 minutes. Will, Windy, Brenda and I had a spot near #12. Too boys (teens or college students, I can never tell) inched over the white line, toying with the guards patrolling the gap. We ate the rest of our snacks and whined about the boredom.

The train arrived at 5:45 p.m. Again, the waves of people rushed forward. There was no line, no order, just hundreds of people trying to squeeze through a meter-wide door all at the same time. I was pressed from all sides. People behind me pushed forward; those in front resisted. On both sides, people elbowed and shouldered their way forward. My rib cage felt compressed like I was underwater. I took a deep breath, thinking I could force an opening.

I inched forward, eying a red railing at the compartment door. I lunged. My fingers brushed the metal, then caught it on the second try. I pulled myself forward, out of this human quicksand that kept trying to suck me down.

My foot hit the first step. I lifted myself momentarily out of the chaos, though I was still being pushed. My arm blocked a woman’s way. Courtesy dictated that I let her through, but the crowd had drown my sense of politeness, making me feel vindictive. And I was afraid to let go of that bar.

Most of the seats were taken, but I found a middle-aged couple alone in a booth. I grabbed the remaining space and guarded it until Brenda, then Will and Windy made it on board.

The ride back took exactly 20 minutes.

More coming soon…

This entry was posted on Monday, October 9th, 2006 at 11:47 pm and is filed under roadside blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.