In the cities of China today, especially in the Special Economic Zones, the major highways, hotels, high-tech business parks are all stocked and manicured with enough vegetation to overwhelm every insert, bird and rabbit on the planet. In short, the people with the money have all the green. District governments adorn their highways and byways with enough flowers, bushes and trees to make one wonder, who’s coming to town. Hotels and industrial parks have vast juggles guarding their perimeters. Throughout all these areas in China, the sidewalks, promenades and plazas employ armies of caretakers. Brown skinned and lean, they toil till sun down. Their work is beautiful. And, let it be known, there is a lot more than meets the eye. These are not just trees, roses, and bushes, arranged to look beautiful. Fengshui takes precedence.
Limited space for gardening pleasure
But what about home gardening? What home? A home in China is an apartment in the city or a brick abode in the country. No one has a house. Maybe there’s a scattering of private homes with the advent of millions of millionaires, from China’s modernization. But many of these are not in view. City dwellers are apartment dwellers. Should you visit China, you will not believe the number of units stacked on the land. Where is their room for a garden? Gardening is a peaceful, personal, spiritual process. We grow things and we are amazed with the process of life. A garden is a prayer.
The countryside
There’s a lot of land in China. Plenty of farmers. Take a long train ride through the country and you will see many fields of green, but not from the love of gardening. Scattered around a country house you may see many patches of vegetables growing. They are watered daily because the people want to eat. But those discretely edged fields, some long and wide, others zig-zaging through hills and hollows, still others grabbing what few inches of land they can, are the farmers’ crop for the market. Their gardening hats are not like yours. Theirs are the same color, the same shape and made from the same material. As modernization continues, some farmers are forced to sell their land for less than it’s worth. When they unite and protest they are roughed up and the soil takes on a different hue under the buffalo’s hoof. Then factories spring up where once there were bananas, Litchi, Dragon-eye, and too many vegetables to name.
Not for the joy of watching it grow
Chinese will always be a land of peach blossoms and lotus root. And the Chinese will always be cultivating something in the soil around their home. But the beauty found in the garden is not the joy of planting, it’s the joy of taking a wagon load of fresh ripe healthy produce to town.