MORE IN THE PARK.updated 6.20.14

6.2.   This morning around 7:15 I walked out to the park, and it was full of people.   They weren't on the grass, but they were on the west side,  opposite from the usual practice area.  On the east side, the fenced area now had a sign.  It said the green area was open when the green flag was up and closed when the red flag was up.   Great!  We can use the grass!   But today there was no flag.   The standing woman from several weeks ago was back, standing immobile.   Meanwhile, back on the west side, dance groups were actively practicing.  One elderly man, tall and thin, dressed in white practiced tai chi in the midst of the dancers.   My video won't load, so I can't show you the minor spectacle the three groups were at that moment. I seemed to have done a little work-around.   Don't know how this works, but you can sort of see what the video was like.

5.30.14  I noticed yesterday that the workers have finished the re-bricking and fencing around the park.  I went down to practice and noticed no one was in the park--that is the old contingent was missing and no one was working on the lawns, and then I noticed why.  After having finished installing the walkways and the fencing, the lawn areas now are fenced from human use.  Or if you are going to use the lawn, it means that you will have leaped over the fence or squeezed through the bushes.  No one complains, the somewhere the decision was made and action was taken.
This evening I noticed a few people on the lawn, and I saw someone had found that there are gates that will allow entry.   We'll see what happens in the next week.  Of course, it's been warm. Over 34 C. =93+ F.   And in some places in China it was up to 45 C yesterday.  (That's over 110F)
_________________________________________________________________________
 
 

Since the first week of May, the park's users began to change.  There were three groups of dancers for a while, the group of three older tai chi players haven't been around, other individuals have shown up to do their forms, some with swords, some with fighting techniques, some doing a very slow form.  The dancers I videoed seem to have lost their place, usurped by earlier risers, and they moved to a street between two buildings, but over the last 10 days, they've disappeared, and now I don't see the other dancers either.  Of course the weather has been a bit confused, being hot with heavy pollution one day  and cloudy and wet the next.

 ____________________________________________________________________________

Every morning after breakfast, I wander into the park that sits in front of the hotel.  There are really three parts to this park and then there is a building and a track with a soccer field, so this small city campus is loaded with space.  On holidays families sit in the park. On weekends you'll see them too.

But after breakfast, when I venture into the park, I am never sure what I will see.  Often there are two individuals and a couple of small groups of two or three doing something martial, and a dance troupe.  The last couple days there have been several dance troupes.   I taped one doing a fan dance and then a sword dance.   Let's see if the videos will fit in here.  One is pretty long.  OK, the videos did not load.  Click on the links below to see the dancers with the fans and then below, with the swords. [I see that the videos are VERY slow loading.  The links take you to my Dropbox.  If you are patient enough, they are very nice. Some day I'll try again with my phone to video this group.]

Dance with fans  
Dance with swords  

This morning there were three groups of dancers.  One man was doing a fan dance of sorts, but it was looking very martial with deep snake creeps down and very strong pushes.   I didn't have my camera, unfortunately.   It was a very busy morning in the park.  By the way, this is the second day of the holiday weekend that started on Thursday.  Something called International Labor Day.

A few weeks ago, a man dressed in black

 and a woman dressed in white were doing Taiji facing each other.

  

He was doing it on the left side; she on the right.

They looked like Yin and Yang.