Qianhai Park

This guide to Qianhai Park in Shenzhen starts in 1980, when this whole area was fish ponds and shrimp farms around a small market town almost no one outside Guangdong had heard of, before China named the coastline a Special Economic Zone. It follows the city's astonishing growth from around thirty thousand people, and how a stretch of that boomtown was set aside instead for a flower market that a developer reimagined in 2011 as a tribute to the Netherlands. The narration walks past tulip beds, windmills and giant wooden clogs, and a garden named for Vincent van Gogh, a Dutch painter who was captivated by faraway Japan without ever leaving Europe. Watch for the couples posing for wedding photos in front of the windmill on your way through.