Fangta Park

Fangta Park is located at 235 Zhongshan East Road, Songjiang District, covering an area of 182 mu. It is a garden with historical relics and buildings as the main body. The park is full of cultural relics and historical buildings from the Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties, and is known as the "Shanghai Open-air Museum." The entire park is centered on the Xing Sheng Jiao Temple Pagoda (commonly known as the "Fangta," a national key cultural relic protection unit), surrounded by the municipal-level cultural relic protection unit Songjiang Fangta Park (composed of brick-carved screen walls, Wangxian Bridge, Lanrui Hall, Chen Huacheng Temple, and Tianfei Palace); district-level cultural relic protection units Songjiang Ming Dynasty Stone Statue and Zhang's House Front Hall; cultural relic protection points Zhuojin Garden Wulao Peak, Sun Garden "Beauty Peak," Dong Qichang's Lin Huaisu "Autobiography" Stele and Jiulian Temple Rulai Column, a total of 8 cultural relic protection units (points). The park also has landscapes such as Qichang Corridor, Helou Pavilion, Qiusheng Pavilion, Dujinlin, Wulao Peak, Beauty Peak, Tiedi Boat, Ancient Moat, and Yangde Pavilion. In the park, the lake water meanders, the tower shadows reflect on the waves, the bamboo forest is elegant, the ancient trees are tall, and the flowers and trees are lush, forming an interesting contrast with the ancient cultural relics and buildings. The entire garden is elegant, simple, quiet, and bright, with the charm of the Tang and Song dynasties and the atmosphere of modern gardens. Fangta Park is the late masterpiece of Mr. Feng Jizhong, a famous architect in China. It was planned in 1978, designed in 1980, and initially completed in 1981. Feng Jizhong was a classmate of I.M. Pei and a master architect known as "North Liang and South Feng" alongside Liang Sicheng. In 1978, Feng Jizhong received the task of designing Songjiang Fangta Park. At that time, the Fangta was like a remnant of winter, with only the Song Pagoda and the Ming Dynasty screen wall standing alone in a large wasteland. This land, with a total area of 11 square kilometers, was once the center of Songjiang Prefecture in the Tang and Song dynasties, where the county government, City God Temple, and Xing Sheng Jiao Temple were located. The Tang Dynasty city river passed through it, and it was once a prosperous scene. People hoped that Feng Jizhong would build a modern park that could accommodate a certain number of tourists. However, Feng Jizhong proposed a design of "new with the old," which put Fangta Park at the forefront of the times, and the construction process was quite bumpy. Under Feng Lao's "dedication and effort," this city park with the nature of an "open-air museum" eventually became a garden architectural work of epoch-making significance. In the eyes of many experts in architecture and gardening, it is "a measure of Chinese architecture," and the architectural history of China in the 1980s cannot bypass it. Professor Ling Delin, chairman of the Taiwan Landscape Society, once wrote: "Fangta Park is the best city park in mainland China." Pritzker Architecture Prize winner Wang Shu commented on Fangta Park: "In this field, I have not seen any work in China that surpasses Fangta Park. It has a faint Chinese traditional atmosphere, but the whole technique is greatly influenced by modern architecture. In the end, the two are combined into an imaginary realm, very simple and plain."