The park was laid out in 1909 as a French-style garden and has been a public park ever since, which makes it one of the city's oldest continuously used green spaces. The design is formally French: geometric flower beds, clipped hedges, gravel paths, a central fountain and rows of plane trees heavy enough to shade the whole park in summer.
What happens here
Fuxing Park is where Shanghai exercises, dances, sings and plays cards in public. In the morning the paths fill with tai chi groups, ballroom dancers with portable speakers, sword practitioners, card schools around small tables, and men with caged birds hung in the branches. In the afternoon, badminton and chess take over, and in the evening there is often amplified folk singing.
Why it matters
This is not a tourist attraction in the conventional sense; there is nothing to buy and no ticket. It is the clearest demonstration of how public space is used in Chinese cities, where retired residents treat a park as an extension of home. Half an hour of sitting on a bench here tells you more about Shanghai than most museums.
Practical notes
The park is in the former French Concession, close to Xintiandi and Tianzifang, and easy to combine with a walk through the plane-tree streets of the old concession district. It is free and open from early morning to evening. Go before 9 a.m. for the full program of activities. Photography is fine, but ask before photographing individuals, and do not step into the flower beds for a better angle; the gardeners will object, and they will be right.
