Shaocheng Park (Former)

This guide to Shaocheng Park in Chengdu starts at the stone obelisk in the garden and calls the ground beneath it a crime scene. It traces the park back to 1911, when it was a former Manchu garrison quarter turned Sichuan's first public park, and to Zhao Erfeng, the Qing dynasty's last governor of Sichuan, who arrested the leaders of a protest movement furious over Beijing's sale of local railway rights to foreign lenders. You'll hear what happened when crowds marched on his headquarters demanding their release, and how word of it was smuggled out on wooden boards floated down the river. Stand at the obelisk, and you are standing where that crowd once stood.