Watching cherry blossoms at Yuyuantan Park 1 ~ kind Chinese man and his girlfriend

In last weekend of March, my husband and I went to Yuyuantan Park (玉渊潭公园) to see cherry blossom.

You know, as a Japanese, I can’t skip watching cherry blossoms.

In Japan in the springtime, people enjoy getting together and having a party/picnic with good food and beer or sake under gorgeous cherry blossoms in full bloom.  We call it hanami (花見). For Japanese, hanami is a kind of special event to celebrate that spring has come.

Even though the air was bad because of a sand storm (also a sign of spring in Beijing…), I NEEDED to go. Come on, husband! (He is a Taiwanese American)

Luckily, in Beijing, we have Yuyuantan Park (玉渊潭公园) which has many cherry trees. Yay!

We took the subway and it took about 30 minutes. So convenient.

As we expected, there were A LOT of people in the park. Did we come here to see cherry blossoms or crowds of people?  I realized how large the population in Beijing is again. But I don’t care. I got used it.

There were some different kinds of blossoms including cherry, peach, Forsythia, and so on. I was quite satisfied. But I didn’t see many people having party, eating or drinking on blankets.

 

In the park, I saw a young Chinese couple. They both were tall and good looking.

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The young woman put her leg on a rock, and the man, maybe her boyfriend, was scrubbing her shoe. I guess he was cleaning her shoe.

It looked like nobody else paid attention to what they were doing. I did though. I mean, I was impressed by how much he cared about her and was cleaning her shoe. He treated her like a princess.

I don’t think this would happen in Japan (or it rarely does). In general, Japanese men are usually too shy to do it, or they think it’s too cheesy. Japanese people care how other people think about/look at them A LOT.

But anyway, I thought the way the couple acted was cute.

 

When I was painting this illustration, I recalled a young Japanese woman whom I met recently. She said she likes Chinese men’s kindness for women. I guess what she likes is just how the man treated his girlfriend. (She talked about a similar episode like this actually.)

I heard that in general in Southern China, like Shanghai or Hong Kong, men are especially kind to women. Is it true? (Of course it depends on the individual person though.)

I know a Chinese woman, her husband drives to pick her up when she finishes her work every day, and he gives her nice presents, for example a brand bag or roses for her birthday.

I also have a Chinese friend, whose mom doesn’t do cooking or cleaning rooms at all. Instead her dad does most of the house work.

They are all Southern Chinese.

Oh,  I see men helping hold their girlfriends’ purse in Beijing. It also looks cute to me. Japanese men won’t do it. (My husband does it. Good.)

I think Japanese men are kind too, but just they are shy and the way they take care of their girlfriends/wives is different.

Anyway, I enjoyed watching people and pretty flowers same time at the park.

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