To a half interested observer of one's surroundings, change is on the make in China. Change charging and displayed as change does and not so more obvious in cities such as Chengdu, home of the Panda....and visiting Chengdu to see the Black and Red Pandas in the flesh is worth a trip to China if not for anything else.

But Chengdu has other attractions especially for those who like steps and plenty of them....and willing to trudge upwards to see the 170 metre long reclining Buddha of Leshan and around the bend, the Grand Buddha of Leshan which stands vertically abutting a river and 71 metres in height. The bus trip and visit worth a day and another day hopefully well spent taking a public bus out into Chengdu's countryside to visit another flight of steps and the Qingcheng Shan holy Taoist Mountain.

It was on the day trip to Qingcheng Shan and the steps to Taoist origins that I noticed (sitting patiently by a window on the bus) something of interest to the gardener and horticulturist. It was acres (or hectares) by the hundreds filled to overflowing with tens of thousands (they don't do things by half in China) trees and shrubs growing in-ground in nurseries or tree farms -and these aren't there for window dressing the countryside. These trees are trees, yes fully grown in height (say 6-8metres) with a stem diameter of say 3/500mm or nearly a couple of feet. Lopped and pruned to shape and established in beds for extraction (dug by a hand held shovel) and relocated into landscapes of the instant kind. These are trees guided by the 'hands on a shovel' kind.

Not only are the landscapes of the Dujiangyan Irrigation Project (an UNESCO World Heritage Site and visit on its own right) dotted with these tree farms but underneath the trees are grown shrubs of many kinds and naturally for any worthwhile space, vegetables for the table. Fertile soils aren't wasted in China.

Of interest is the creation of a new city Qingchengshan. It is something for the Westerner to admire and wonder why we can't do that. For example, the Chinese authorities have constructed a four lane expressway to its boundaries and a fast speed two track overhead electrified railway link direct to central Chengdu. We traveled back to Chengdu on the second day of the rail opening and noticed we were gliding along the tracks at about 225/230 kilometres per hour.

The Qingchengshan City landscapes in the making are of the instant garden kind and its streets and boulevards lined with trees and shrubs, six months previously were bare fields. Apartment blocks instantly landscaped with a profusion of trees and shrubs, ready grown, a place to visit and marvel at the audacity of mankind to fashion nature, in this case of the pleasant kind.

These to me are gardens evoking abundant Qi (Chi) energy replacing the inauspicious Qi of concrete, apartments, roads and footpaths now camouflaged by trees, shrubs and lawn. Not the starkness or sterile impact of mankind expressed here. But that of the instant kind, a naturally appealing place manifesting itself, no doubt harmony transcending into these environments and increasing the desirability of such places to live.