11.6.19 Aunties Dancing in the Park/Shanghai

Guangqi Park
While Emma took an exam at Shanghai Advanced Institute of Finance, and before we begin our tea and sacred mountains explorations in Yunnan, I spent the morning in this delightful park of winding paths, koi ponds, ...orienting myself to this time zone. Such peaceful joy, birds singing, leaves fluttering in the slight breeze.. I strolled by individuals playing their flutes or violins softly, couples practicing what looked like a version of the swing “yi, er, san,si....yi, er, san, si...” and found a shaded bench in front of these five hills - a tomb for Xu Guangqi, a famous scientist from the Ming Dynasty, who died in 1633, yet this woman spent much time in standing meditation in front of it before sprinkling water along its length. A man came up and performed a quick series of energetic movements facing the hills and moved on and then... two women and a man, dressed alike in employee uniforms, (it was lunch time) placed a speaker by me and began moving in what I would describe as Asian forms of country line dances, soon joined by other women passers by. An elderly man sat down close to me, tapping his cane to the music and rolling carved wooden balls in his other hand, occasionally happily exclaiming to me in some non-Mandarin dialect. Preschool aged children raced their little scooters nearby, laughing in happiness.
Emma told me later that the aunties often use their breaks to dance in open spaces as exercise and that anyone could join in. I wish I had!