Flower season in Shanghai

Last Sunday, Leon & Vicky took us out to escape town. It was busy on the highway, as 'everyone' was out to enjoy the flower season. After crossing four ring roads we arrived at a huge artificial lake with salty water. All the trees and plants around it were brown because of it. One of many planned areas in order to host a growing population.

Families were setting up their barbecue, children ran around with kites and we drove on through a nature reserve, past a now empty local government area, (big enough to fit the Forum Romanum) past the main port towards a small town.

After a delicious lunch at a hotel we stopped by at the Shanghai Flower Port. A flower company with a large park around it that displays it's tulips, orchids, lilies and of course:

Three Dutch windmills. Now that was a little bizarre. A sign said: "These mills are not for fun. They are for serious purpose".

I was most intrigued by all the people with superduper cameras (usually man and wife both with one)  crawling between the flowers, trying to shoot that one perfect picture of a pink petal against a blue sky (What is actually a perfect picture in this cultural context?). What did people do before we had the time and money to buy SLR's?. Leisure is an interesting phenomenon. With an ever expanding middle class, free time has become booming business here. People don't just go on a picnic, they bring their QUECHUA tent, their Canon camera, their Eastpak backpack, their MBT shoes, everything to create that perfect relaxing experience. 

It strongly reminds me of the 'Story of Stuff' that explains the vicious cycle of needing to work harder in order to spend more in our free time, I'll quote Annie Leonard here: 

"So we are in this ridiculous situation where we go to work, maybe two jobs even, and we come home and we’re exhausted so we plop down on our new couch and watch TV and the commercials tell us “YOU SUCK” so gotta go to the mall to buy something to feel better, then we gotta go to work more to pay for the stuff we just bought so we come home and we’re more tired so you sit down and watch more T.V. and it tells you to go to the mall again and we’re on this crazy work-watch-spend treadmill and we could just stop."

After all, we just wanted to get out of town and see the flowers, right?