Winter Coats, Shanghai
The coming of 2012 has made me nostalgic, and I started sorting through my archives and came across this gem I took all the way back in 2009:
Not sure what it is? Good, me either! I guessed back then that it was a winter coat for this lucky bush, and that’s still my best guess…
I mean, it’s definitely shaped like a coat, but why? Wouldn’t some sort of wrap or cover fit the form of a bush better than a coat seemingly made for people?
And then I thought maybe they were coats that only my apartment complex used for their bushes because they were strange like that… But then I came across this other bush this winter…
And discovered that Chinese people definitely have winter coats for their bushes… Or maybe it’s a person-coat loaned to the bush to get through the chilly winters here.
It certainly looks silly to me, but it’s also kind of heartwarming to see Chinese people loan their oversized outerwear to plants during the winter.
You are so funny! It is kind of charming to loan coats to the plants. I guess you could think of it as a kind of street art.
It’s curious, isn’t it? I’ve seen the same thing done with comforters on nicer days during the winter. On any given day that was somewhat sunny, I could expect to see tons of comforters hanging on anything that would suspend them above the ground (rails, windows, bushes not so sure about). My best guess is that their owners were trying to air them out and kill bacteria in the sunlight.