Flowering plum blossoms

On Sunday I returned from church to find an invitation on my apartment door to join Lorraine, Bob and Shaw at 3:00 for a visit to Plum Tree Park out on East Lake here in Wuhan. Of course! I met my friends at the West Gate of campus and we hopped a taxi to our destination.

As we neared the park the traffic—car and foot—intensified and came to a stand still. Clearly, all Wuhan families had decided this was a great day to see the beauty of the blossoms in full bloom. It lasts about four weekends and this was supposed to be the best weekend. Judging from the traffic, I figured everyone must be right!

As we sat in traffic Shaw explained there are three plum tree parks in China. Wuhan is the largest with 10,000 plumb trees of 262 different varieties on 57 hectares (I have no idea how that translates to acres). Despite the fact that it had snowed on Monday, Sunday the sun was out in full and we had stripped off our long underwear and outer coats. I even got a red nose.

Bob and Shaw haggled over who would pay the 20 RMB entrance fee (8 RMB = $1 US) per person and we began our walk. Not far into the park we met several of Bob's graduate students who were also there enjoying the day. For a town of 8 million, sometimes Wuhan seems like a small place since Shaw saw a friend there as well.

We walked through the budding and flowering plum trees and paused to breathe in their intoxicating aroma. Yellow. Red. Pink. Light lavender. All the blossoms smelled different. Lorraine and I remarked, we can now better understand why Chinese art reflects so much these...they are so incredibly lovely.

Since the plum blossoms are so much a part of Chinese culture, it was very understandable why so many visitors posed within the branches. Lorraine remarked how it seemed like everyone knew how to artfully become a part of the trees' branches to compose a photo that would be a work of art, rather than an American pose of in front of a tree. Perhaps a collectivist vs. individualistic culture difference reaches even to how one poses for a photo?

As we walked deeper into the park we reached an area where the blossoms were totally out on a number a trees. On their limbs we saw hundreds of what looked like small note cards with writing on the back. Shaw explained it was a Chinese tradition for lovers to leave notes for each other as part of the plum blossom festival. Lorraine suggested Shaw buy one of the notes and leave one for Jane (us women must stick together!) and he quickly obliged. Lorraine captured it on film

As we wound through more of the park—we only saw about one-third of it—we arrived at one building where you could purchase and enjoy an official Chinese tea ceremony. Bob did and that's a whole post unto itself...stay tuned!