Tai Tung Park

I went in to Chinatown to teach the class at Little Panda. We had to do Kung Fu in a different area because of construction of a new park. (not Tai Tung Park which I will be talking about today.) After wards I had the time to walk around Chinatown a bit. I had already bought my $1 Veggies. Hmm (maybe I should do  Chinatown "haul" the way those moms do the dollar tree hall.) Except I already cooked and cut up everything. Oh Well.

I passed by Moh Goon, empty, and passed by Tai Tung Park several times. This is the one we should really call Dinosaur park because most people think of Tai Tung Park as the Park inside Tai Tung village.

Here are some pictures of what it used to look like.

Now instead of the mural of Northern Chinese looking children there is a mural of Koi fish. Apparently $10,000 was allocated to clean up the park. The truth is the park looked great in terms of structure and painting before. And it looks great in terms of structure and decoration now.
So why did it need $10,000.00 to clean it up? Because it did and still does look like crap. In fact today was one of the crappiest I've ever seen it and it was just cleaned up this summer.

I've brought my sons there to play and eat plenty of times. Before I had kids I recall some of our students playing in there after an August moon only to discover that the homeless man lying there was not asleep, but dead.

And at times I have let my children play there while a homeless man slept. I have no problem with homeless people cohabiting the playground. I understand that the rubber ground is softer and often drier than other brick and concrete that can really let the feng seep into your bones. But there is a difference between crashing somewhere like moving in.

Even if you have a bunch of stuff, a back pack, blankets, why not clean up afterward? In fact it isn't really the problem of sleeping, it's all the glass bottles and other nasty paraphernalia left behind that I don't want my kids touching. It's the garbage that people leave there. It's not the Chinese people with kids who live in the area that do that. Why would they do that if their kids are going to play there? Notice the BCNC playground doesn't get like that.

And the Asian homeless guys don't hang out at this park. They hang out in Chinatown proper, adult area, or the park where all the old men and women are playing cards and smoking anyway. Granted the ground there is hard, but still some dry and warm areas to crash.

There was like three people sleeping there at 11:00 am with full gear and bed covers and everything and trash everywhere. Now gentrification is hard to fight. That's another blog post. But something like this pissed me off. Why does this park have to be so nasty?
Again I'm not fond of picking on the homeless people. But why can't they get kicked out of there? The rich people use this park too. And frankly most of the Chinese kids you see playing in Chinatown are part of some program, a school or daycare and they aren't really from Chinatown. You can't say they aren't bothering anyone because the day cares use this park. And again, it's midday already. Time to move somewhere else. I mean, there are a lot of fields that have fancy astro turf. But you only see someone sleeping at this particular park. Probably because Chinese will never call police unless there is some sort of action. And technically sleeping isn't an emergency.

I also realize I should have taken a picture. In fact I need to bring my Camera around with me (that's right I don't have a new phone) because I realize more than ever that what I see is not what most people. So I need some kind of proof don't I? I mean if you are imagining three people with back packs, that is not what it was. It was like you took the inside of a crack house and put it in our playground.

Photo Credits: Ling-Mei Wong, Sampan Newspaper

Update:

Here's a picture of the park I took today. It's pretty nice right now. The problem, again is in the mornings if people have camped overnight. But then again, I suppose it will look nicer as the weather gets colder. But then you can use it can you if it's covered in snow.