Fairy Lake Botanical Gardens

Last Saturday I went to Fairy Lake Botanical Gardens in Shenzhen. It is a mixture of tourism and scientific research opened in 1988. The garden is named after an artificial lake, Fairy Lake, situated in the middle of the garden. It is located in the Luohu district (northeast part of the city – my apartment is in the west), approximately an hour and 15 minutes by subway & bus from my apartment. It’s probably Shenzhen’s most beautiful park. Admission was 20 kuai ($3). It’s extremely large with foothills, valleys, rivers, and lakes before climbing half-way up Wutong Mountain (the highest peak in Shenzhen). The park is adjacent to Wutong in the east and the Shenzhen Reservoir to the west. The main attraction is the Hong Fa Buddhist Temple situated half-way up the mountain which was very crowded. There are also a conservation center, pavilions, trails, gardens, museums, a petrified forest, pagoda, snack bars, teahouses, as well as a vegetarian restaurant & hotel at the Temple.

The park is nice with lots of flora and fauna. It’s a pleasant, green retreat to get away from the city’s concrete towers. I did a lot of walking. Though you could have paid extra to take a bus to various destinations inside the park, I decided to get some exercise and use my legs. Just to get to the main area of the park from the entrance was probably 2/3 of a mile. Lots of hills and steps to walk (China is very much a country of hills & steps). I did not eat at the Buddhist vegetarian restaurant as I had already eaten lunch and was going somewhere else for dinner. The pagoda was really cool. It was a really tight circular stairwell to walk up but once you made it to the top, the views were great even with the ‘cloud cover’ (u hmm, smog...ssh…I didn’t say that – that offends the Chinese). The trails were nice. The lake was pleasant with families riding in little motorized as well as pedal boats. The petrified forest was interesting. I walked around for probably like 4 hours before heading back for the exit.