Brad T.
Yelp
I love Columbus Park.
Columbus Park pretty much sits right along the southern boundary of Chinatown, NYC, along neighborhoods of myriad Chinese shops, stores, and restaurants. And you'll find me here for hours on end during every trip to NYC I make. Not that I'll be doing much of anything besides standing in one of the tightly packed crowds watching the men play chinese checkers or the women play card mahjong...or watching any number of groups perform their daily ritual of tai ji...or watching a guy from Shanghai teaching some locals tai ji and gong fu...or sitting on a bench under a nice shade tree listening to one of the music groups playing any number of traditional Chinese instruments...or listening to same groups sing number after number of Chinese operas.
I searched out this park on purpose during my first visit to NYC's Chinatown, looking for just such experiences. I found them all and then some here. During my visit I completely lost track of time once the Chinese opera singers began performing early that Saturday afternoon; to the point that when I finally noticed that the sun seemed to be setting pretty low on the horizon for mid-day and checked my watch I found it way past 6pm (I entered the place shortly after 8am). I'm not a member of Short Attention Span Theatre, but I don't usually get so wrapped up in something that I forget to eat or move on to something else during a weekend of exploring. Thus was the cultural hold Columbus Park had on me.
Yeah, I know, traditional Chinese music, and opera especially, can be, what do they say, "inaccessible" to most western ears. But I like it, and I absolutely loved just sitting here on a bench all day with these nice Chinese folks, many of whom were easily twice my own no-longer-young age, just chilling, chatting with their family & friends, watching their grandkids, listening to the music. Just the sounds of the myriad of conversations around me was fun -- don't know why, but Cantonese and the sounds of other southern Chinese dialects is music to my ears in and of itself.
Apparently I sat there so long that one of the old men propped along the bench wall next to me chatting with his mates offered me an unfiltered Chinese (from the looks of it) cigarette out of politeness. I gratefully accepted it (although I don't smoke) and lit up as he asked me in broken English if I liked Chinese opera. "Yes I do, though I don't know much about it," I said. "Is good," he replied nodding and smiling. "Yes, is very good," I said. And there we sat, smoking like old friends amongst a hoard of old friends, me the lone blue-eyed, blond-haired black sheep, yet feeling as much at home as if I was back in Indiana sitting at a huge table of pop-luck at one of my own extended family reunions back in the day.
Yes, I love Columbus Park. May it live forever.
