Parks and Public Spaces of Rizhao, China

Rizhao has a series of creative parks and public spaces much like Millennium Park in Chicago that fascinated us. There is Olympic Park with its replica of the eggshell shaped thin cup with long stem from the Longshan Culture. There is Tidal Ware Park, a park built on a tidal plain, and Milky Way Park. And there is Bamboo Park that we all missed.

In a recent column "Harmony and the Dream" David Brooks of the New York Times compares what he calls the collectivist society of China and the individualistic societies of the West. In the article he says "the ideal of a harmonious collective may turn out to be as attractive as the ideal of the American Dream" and he describes the Olympic opening ceremony in Beijing as "a high-tech vision of the harmonious society performed in the context of China's miraculous growth". Parks are certainly a manifestation of collectivism.

At our first banquet dinner in Rizhao our main host Dr. Li Zhaoqian mentioned Danial Burnham and the Chicago Plan of 1909. This plan was created soon after the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago and reflected the City Beautiful movement, popular then, that advocated "a social device for creating moral and civic virtue among urban populations." The City Beautiful movement influenced many cities in the United States and the rest of the workd. Public parks were a big part of the plan and the movement.