Eric's Beijing Diary

Hanami. That's what they call it in Japan. I means looking at flowers, and it refers, particularly, to the famed "sakura," or cherry blossoms for which Japan is so well known. Last night, at the English Corner, some energetic young ladies asked me if I had ever seen the cherry blossoms at Yuyuantan Park. I was taken aback by the question, because, in fact, I had just been planning to visit that park the next day. I made the mistake of telling them just that, quite without thinking. Well, in about five minutes, they had organized a group tour, and I was included. I am generally a bit nervous about group tours, but this one turned out alright.

It's a little early. Most people I talked to told me to wait, because the cherry blossoms will not be in full bloom for another couple weeks or so. But I am flying to Beihai on Monday, and I will be gone for three weeks, so this may be the only chance I have to see the cherry blossoms. Most of the largest trees had a number of blossoms that were just beginning to open, so the park will probably be a bit more impressive by about the middle of April. Still, the cherry trees, which were a gift from the government of Japan when relations were normalized thirty years ago, are very pretty. Beijing is certainly not the flower city that Kunming is, and the cherry trees are not nearly as abundant as they were in the Japan I grew up in, where the whole town would turn pink in the spring, but the trees that have been planted do well, and although the climate is very dry in the winter, there seems to be enough moisture in the spring and summer to make up for it.