Tianhe Park

This guide to Tianhe Park in Guangzhou opens with more than twenty trees recorded as over a hundred years old, survivors of a state forest farm the city carved out of these hills in nineteen twenty-nine. You'll hear how the land cycled through timber, farming and orchard uses, then through a run of names, Zhongshan Park, Forest Park, East Suburban Park, before Tianhe Park in nineteen ninety-seven. It traces how Tianhe went from a mostly rural district, only formed in nineteen eighty-five, to one losing roughly a thousand mu of farmland a year through the nineties as apartment blocks and offices rose around it. Stand under one of the old trees and look at how far the skyline behind it now reaches.