Shanghai Century Park 上海世纪公园

Today is somewhere nearby since it was our driver's day off. After being here for 4 months, we decided to visit the Century Park 世纪公园 which is very near to our apartment. We took the shuttle to Century Park subway station and walked across the street to this park.

Being the National Holiday and all, there were lots of people visiting this park. People were queuing up to buy the entrance ticket. Entrance ticket is RMB10 for adult and children is free.

Entrance Ticket

We entered through the side gate Gate 7 instead of the main Gate 1 because it is near to one of the Century Park subway exit.

Park guide map

There are a lot of greenery in this park. First place we reached was one part of the lake in the middle of the park. Here, we could see the lotus pond.

Green Space

Small lotus pond

Some trees growth

The Bright Lake 镜天湖 is located in the center of century park, with 14 hectares wide. It is the largest man-made lake in Shnghai at present. There are a lot of swans, mallards and 300 thousand fishes inthe lakes. The lake looks like a static mirror on sunny day, the clouds are inverted reflection in the lake, calm and propitious, so named Bright Lake.

Various scenes of the Bright Lake

Our next stop after Bright Lake was the Music Square 音乐广场. There is a large arena with the stage in the center surrounded by rows and rows of seats in a semicircle arrangement.

Stone carving structure leading up to the square

The Music Stage

Family photos

This is quite a large stage area and we spent quite some time exploring and taking photos. I have taken 2 panorama photo shots of this vast arena as shown below.

Panorama view from the stage

Panorama view from the audience seats

The arena

More of the music stage

There are lots of people and family having a light stroll along the lake. If one is too tied to walk, one could choose to take the tram car instead. For a fee of course.

I explored the Viewing Platform 观景平台 area that needs to walk up to quite some height. Up there, there are quite a large number of unknown trees. I could observe some buds that is potentially going to bloom.

I went through there stone steps to reach the Viewing Platform. Later found that actually this is a back lane. One could go up through the main section that has well laid out concrete steps.

Within the park there is an amusement park. It offers the roller coaster ride as shown below.

We were trying to find the famous flower clock within the park but it seems that it is actually located in front of Gate 1 entrance. Thus, we exit the park to get to this flower clock. If we had not exit through Gate 1 because we want to have lunch at the Science & Technology Museum then we would have missed it.

The many faces of Flower Clock

Family photo with Flower Clock

Gate 1 is actually Century Park's main entrance and it also links to the Science & Technology Museum 上海科技馆. Between the flower clock/main Century Park entrance and the Century Square, there is a raised up platform that is decorated with flowers. This is the platform as shown below.

The Century Square 世纪广场 links between the Century Park and the Science & Technology Museum. It is a place whereby family comes here for outing and also you could see some people flying the kite during good weather.

The Century Square

Some flora and fauna found along the square

Our overall impression of Century Park is that it is a very contemporary park. Quite deviated from our normal impression of what park should be in China after we have visited so many old parks with gardens, pond, pavilions, etc. It is a good place for families to come for an outing but not quite our cup of tea.