Out & About

Proud of your voice? Then sing out loud for the dancing grass at Beijing Botanical Garden. It will dance for pleasant, soothing sounds, but refuse to gyrate for grating noises. Thus your karaoke potential can receive its verdant verdict.

This is only one of the wacky ideas the new garden is preparing for visitors when the largest exhibition greenhouse in Asia opens to the public on October 1.

Modern technology enables the place to be home to plants previously incapable of surviving in Beijing naturally, including the above-mentioned Yunnan dancing grass.

Founded in 1956, the 200-hectare Beijing Botanical Garden lies at the foot of Xi Shan near the Fragrant Hills. That space will double when the new greenhouses open. The old ones were too small, too backward and not presentable enough, according to Dr. Zhao Shiwei, greenhouse director.

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The Botanical Garden has won awards for its design.

"As the country's major botanical base, this garden's greenhouse should accommodate plants not only from tropical areas as it does now, but also from the subtropical and frigid zones."

Upon completion, a team of no more than 10 botanists will be stationed at the hothouse studying plant taxology, cultivation and ecology. They will also provide materials for bio-chemical research.

Marching towards its goal of becoming an international metropolis, Beijing needs an advanced greenhouse like those of New York, London, Berlin and Frankfurt.

"A first-rate greenhouse, bringing people close to nature and teaching them to respect it, is as indispensable here as first-rate libraries, museums, or infrastructure facilities," Zhao said.

He promised the greenhouse to be a special treat for those crazy about nature's beauty and always eager to get closer to it, and to spellbind many others who have never dreamed the plant world could be so fascinating.

Occupying 5.5 hectares, the greenhouse reflects the romantic idea of "the green leaves' memory of the roots" conceived by Zhang Yu, its designer. While the outer part's sliding roof is held by an intricate steel frame symbolizing plants' rhizomes, the central part is like a flower's pistil.

The design topped the list of Beijing's 1997 Ten Best Designs of Public Constructions.

The greenhouse is divided into four parts: the exhibition area for tropical rain forest, the exhibition area for flowers of all seasons, the exhibition area for desert plants, and a complete display of "certain plant categories."

To go along with the plants, other necessary decorations like rocks and sand were also applied to create the characteristic scenery of tropical, subtropical and frigid zones.

The greenhouse took 16 months' hard work to build. More than 3,000 plant species collected from across the world have been moved into their new home.

Some displays enchant with their extraordinary beauty or exotic atmosphere, like the "aerial garden" where tropical orchids and pineapples grow and blossom splendidly on trees instead of in the soil.

Others will show how plants can be bloody murderers or the most enduring, grand, and mysterious life forms on earth. One banyan has so many aerial roots that it makes up a small forest all by itself; another is strangled by a Middle-Eastern Phoenix Tree that happened to be planted on it by a passing bird.

Of the eight plants subject to state first-class protection, the greenhouse only lacks the wild ginseng. Zhao said he would obtain a specimen shortly.

The most valuable plant in purely monetary terms is a giant buttress from the tropical rainforest of Yunnan Province. Besides the transportation, it cost over half a million yuan (US$60,000) to buy and dig out.

Once put into operation, the hothouse will keep the garden lively all year long, saying goodbye to the comparatively boring and lonely winters of the past.

While the new giant greenhouse will no doubt become a powerful tourist magnet, there are still much more to enjoy in the garden.

Compared with the plants in the greenhouse, the tree-peony, herbaceous peony, rose, ornamental peach, lilac, crabapple-cotoneaster, magnolia, mume flowers and bamboo may seem plain to some visitors. To locals, however, they still hold the irresistible charm of familiarity.

The garden also offers much more than its beautiful plants and flowers.

They can bury themselves in culture and history by touring the Temple of Sleeping Buddha, Longjiao Temple Relics, the Memorial of Cao Xueqin, and the Tomb of Liang Qichao, or do some physical exercise practising on an artificial skiing course or climbing up the Cherry Valley.

How to get to the Beijing Botanical Garden: Take bus 360 from the Beijing Zoo, bus 318 from Pinguoyuan, and bus 333 from the Summer Palace to the Temple of Sleeping Buddha and walk north about 100 meters
Hours: 7:30 am -- 5 pm on weekdays,
6 am -- 8 pm on the weekends.
Admission: 5 yuan
Telephone: 6529-1683