It is Saturday afternoon in Stalin Park, on the banks of the Songhua River in Harbin. A place to sit under the trees and nibble ice-cream, enjoy the light breeze and warm air and watch the trains crossing the bridge and on through the great plains of north China to Siberia.
You can hire a boat for a few yuan and show off your rowing prowess to your girlfriend. But the water is the lowest it has ever been because of abnormally little rain this year.
At one end of the park is a colonnade, around a statue, built ironically to remember those who fought the river's worst flood when it burst its banks in 1952 and flooded the city. In front of it, a troupe of young people in yellow T-shirts show off their skills at roller-skating, watched by an admiring crowd.
This is the bottom end of the city's prettiest street, Central Road, which was closed to traffic last year. It was a great success, and more Chinese cities should do the same. The shops on the tree-lined street have put on a new coat of paint, the paving stones have been touched up and its old European-style buildings carefully restored. In the afternoon sunshine, couples sip coffee or Coke at roadside cafes or have their portraits drawn for 10 yuan (HK$9.35).
World Cup fever has gripped Harbin, like the rest of urban China, and you can watch the games on screens outside a shopping centre on Central Road and bet on the result.
Tonight it is Spain versus Nigeria, South Korea and Mexico, and Holland and Belgium at three in the morning. The newspaper said 20,000 came to watch the games that night. The women, tall, well-dressed and self-confident, joke with their boyfriends in Lacoste shirts and touting mobile phones.
