The Foreign Service Journal, January 2011

30 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 1 s a native New Yorker, I have always thought of Central Park as an oasis. I’ve often returned to it over the years, even running through it in the 1982 New York City Marathon (time: 3:38). Its reser- voir, model sailboat pond, Sheep Meadow, zoo and statue of Balto, the heroic Alaskan sled dog, fired my imagination as they have millions of other city kids. As the most-visited park in the United States, its 843 acres, landscaped in 1873 by Frederick Law Olmsted, always seemed to me the epitome of an urban park, open to all. Arriving in Hangzhou for a month’s stay in June 2010, I was unprepared to find at its center West Lake Park, dating from the 7th-century Tang Dynasty and surpassing Central Park in natural beauty, scale, upkeep and design. Surrounded by mist-shrouded hills dotted with Buddhist pagodas and tea plantations, it has an indescribable, evanescent beauty. Causeways and dragon boats crisscross its 2.4 square mile sur- face, connecting to dreamlike islands. The 9.3-mile path cir- cling the lake passes pagodas, museums, tombs, carp ponds, botanical gardens, caves, waterfalls and strutting peacocks. Everywhere one sees constant reminders of China’s an- cient heritage. Thousands of Chinese people stroll its vast expanse, contemplating nature — whether Hangzhou’s sig- nature lotus blossoms, osmanthus and mume — or weeping willows lining the shore. Walking paths wind through the sur- rounding 19 square miles of emerald hills and rolling park- land, yielding up sights like the Baochu, Liuhe and Leifing pagodas, where elderly Chinese practice tai chi at sunrise. The surrounding city, whose name became Hangzhou only in 589, is small by Chinese standards, with only 6.6 mil- lion residents (compared to two or three times that in neigh- boring Shanghai, Shenzhen and Guangzhou). And yet, viewed at sunset from the Wulin Hills, its expanse of modern skyscrapers, stretching as far as the eye can see on both sides of the Qiantang River, appears at least equal to that of New York. The capital of Zhejiang, one of the country’s richest provinces, Hangzhou is a bustling, vibrant metropolis with all the contradictions of modern China — though not necessar- ily an accurate mirror of the country as a whole. But to form a first impression of the People’s Republic of China — the largest U.S. creditor, a complex nation that ac- counts for 20 percent of the world’s population and is a criti- cal player today in saving the planetary environment — one has to start somewhere. My Point of Entry The choice of Hangzhou as my point of entry flowed from my son Richard’s faculty assignment at the Wall Street Insti- tute, whose school network in China serves the largest Eng- lish-language market in the world today. WSI’s Hangzhou branches teem with young professionals. I was regularly ac- costed there by dozens of students, determined to practice rudimentary and, in a few cases, advanced English. They in- variably started and ended with “Have you visited West Lake Park?”, “Was it beautiful?”, “What did you see there?”, A T ALE OF T WO P ARKS A RETIRED FSO AND NATIVE N EW Y ORKER TAKES THE MEASURE OF A BUSTLING PROVINCIAL CAPITAL IN MODERN C HINA THROUGH THE PRISM OF C ENTRAL P ARK . B Y R ICHARD L. J ACKSON Richard L. Jackson, a Foreign Service officer from 1965 to 1999, served as president of Anatolia College from 1999 to 2009 and of the Association of American International Col- leges and Universities from 2007 to 2009. He is the author of The Non-Aligned, the United Nations and the Superpowers (Praeger, 1983). A