LongCheng Square, ShenZhen

Angel and I are slightly mystified about the purpose behind this gigantic public square, complete with dragon statue, amphitheater, fountains, and gardens. We imagine it was built for some sort of specific use, but no one has been able to tell us. A neighbor told us that it was the biggest public square in South China. Even google searches have only led me to information about the nearby metro stop, not the square itself, but it's an awesome place to hang out in its own, mysterious way, so I thought it deserved a blog post.

LongCheng, the sub-district of ShenZhen where this square is located, means Dragon City, and aptly, LongCheng Square boasts an impressive quantity of dragons.

On weekends and evenings, this square is a happening place. People fly kites, salesmen with racks of clothing try very very hard to convince you to pay to dress up in a costume and have your picture taken, martial arts are practiced and performed, street food is sold....one time we saw a man with a bunch of aquariums full of goldfish on the back of his motorcycle.

It was decorated beautifully for October 1st, National Day, with lanterns and red and yellow flowers to reflect the flag, so I took some photos of the square all prettified for the holiday:

 The flowers are just for the holiday, they are not normally so numerous.

Also, I don't know what this feature of the square is supposed to be but I needed to take this picture with it:

We're enjoying the little features of our new neighborhood, including the gigantic public squares. Because we're brand new here, Angel and I regularly decide to just start walking down a road we've never been down before, just to find out what's around every corner. If we never explored, then we'd never know, and how sad would that be?