Just two minutes into our stroll through the neighborhood park, my grandpa spots an old pal amid the bustling morning crowd. 啊! 今天气不错啊，出来活动活动? (Great weather! Out for some exercise?) His friend, dressed in a windbreaker that looked like it withstood a couple revolutions, cracked a few jokes about getting too fat before we resumed our walk.

In the half hour it takes for us to walk a few laps around Rendinghu park’s central pond, my grandpa will get stopped six or seven more times. As far as I can tell, these friends are an odd collection built over decades, everyone from old bosses to fellow stamp collectors and the guy who sells him roasted chestnuts at the corner shop.

Unlike American parks, Beijing parks are not a place where one finds Walden-esque solitude with nature. In fact quite the opposite. I have yet to visit a Chinese park where music did not spill into every corner, usually compliments of a beat up cassette-fed stereo producing opera songs for a group of grandmas folk dancing. Nearby, a couple of kids kick around a 毽子 (jiànzi), a similar game to hacky sack, but with a shuttlecock that makes a satisfying metal clink if you kick it just right. The air is further punctuated by the percussive beats of hand drums, played by a man sitting under a willow tree. The symphony never stops.

The music, the old friends, the tai chi groups open to all—this is the third space that city planners dream about. As far as I can tell, there is no close western analog, but perhaps the closest comparisons would be the dependability of a classic 24 hour diner mixed with the warmness of a Sunday church potluck.

I assumed that this wonderful haven of community I found was an exclusive feature of Rendinghu park, but after visiting a good handful of Chinese parks over the years, I’m finding it’s universal. Every park seems to possess the same constant elements: the Soviet-era stereo, the tai chi posse, the sausage cart vendor that would give an American health inspector a heart attack. So if park culture in China is universal, I wonder, what catalyzes that vibrancy?

The most obvious factor is the population dynamics. Beijing is an incredibly dense city, as are all Chinese cities. In China, you either live in a city high rise or in a rural village; White picket fence suburbia is a fairly western phenomenon. With a population density of over 20,000 people per square kilometer in my grandparent’s neighborhood of Xicheng, it’s no wonder why the singular local park sees a lot of foot traffic.

The average Beijing park-goer is also a longtime inhabitant of their neighborhood. Many older people live in apartments that were distributed to them by the state during the planned economy era of the 1990’s. Culturally, they tend to stay in those units, instead of migrating to Sarasota or La Jolla like American retirees. If you see the same familiar face at the park every day over the course of thirty years, how could you not say hi?

These park-goers are very distinct from the 9-9-6 salarymen that rush through ordinary Beijing sidewalks. China has a lumpy population pyramid overrepresented by the 65 - 80 demographic, and these elders take their time. They shuffle slowly, perform tai chi movements with meditative calm, and they yap. For that lifestyle, there is no better venue to linger.

In fact, it seems that the architecture of Chinese parks was designed with that use case in mind. In an archetypical American park, you’ll find a large grass field with a winding concrete walkway surrounding it, a couple of basketball courts, and a playground surrounded by tambark. It’s a great place for kids to hang out, but for adults, it’s a fairly liminal space. You show up, walk a couple of laps around the field, and go home. What else is there to do, swing on the monkey bars?

Chinese parks, on the other hand, invariably feature a expansive plazas, a lily-covered pond, lots of benches, and brightly colored exercise machines, which are fun to flail around on but frankly do not seem like a good workout. There are no baseball fields or basketball courts, no slides and very little grass. If you’re a kid, you’re limited to scootering around the walkways and trying not to mow down a tai chi group. In China, the adults rule the park, filling the plazas with dance, the exercise machines with low-impact exercises and the wide pathways with slow walkers. There are ample spaces to loiter, pagodas to find refuge in shade. If form follows function, it’s clear that the retirees are the park’s target demographic.

The great thing about old people is they outgrew any concept of shame decades ago. In Chinese parks, anything goes. Men meader with tank tops rolled up above their stomachs and there’s a guy trying to sell you earwax cleaning services right on the sidewalk for 10 yuan. The woman playing a bamboo flute is kind of out of tune, but no one cares. Hell, if you come at the right time, there will even be conferences of grandparents trying to set you up with their single grandchildren, in one of China’s infamous marriage markets. In the absence of formality, you find wonderfully choreographed chaos.

I’ve seen many third spaces, but I’m always enamored by the constant block party that is Chinese parks. Vienna has its sidewalk cafes, Singapore its hawker centers, Madrid its plazas, but there is no space as bohemian and communal as a Beijing park. I imagine that most retirees would feel the same. Surrounded by old friends, nostalgic music, and cheap food, you’d want to linger under a willow tree too.