"Parks in Shanghai are now open to the public for free" are frequent words of praise used by the news media. If I never go to these parks, I will regret missing such a good free opportunity. But if I do go to the parks, I will still be charged. The reason is that in the news, the tail of the above sentence is always omitted, that is "free to the public on the 10th day of every month".

So every month has one free day; and for every year, there are 12 free days. It is these numbers that underlie media claims of a "great step" forward in promoting the life of Shanghai people.

Parks (ordinary public parks) are public amenities that the government provides by using the taxpayer's money. Therefore it does not require much wisdom to see the inappropriateness of the situation when parks second-charge these same taxpayers with entrance fees.

The government certainly has more wisdom than that, so it has started to open the parks to the public for free. But it is really hard to praise the idea of opening the parks for just one day in a month.

One of the apparent disadvantages of such one-day free-opening is that the parks are likely to be flooded on that particular day (especially if the free opening day falls on a weekend). On March 10, the first day of the "free" opening of parks in Shanghai, Shanghai Gongqing Forest Park, located in northeast Shanghai, received visitors numbering 70,000, seventy times that of the same day the previous year. And over 19,000 people poured into Guyi Garden in Nanxiang county, Shanghai, which is only able to comfortably host 3,000 visitors.

It is interesting to see how this scheme for "one day free park admission" can be really geared to the needs of the people. Who will go to the park if the free day falls on a Monday or a Wednesday or a Friday? And if the free day falls on a weekend, it is even more discouraging that, after already losing all the fun that should have been enjoyed, people have to queue up for the toilets or even have to pay 20 yuan (US$2.50) for an advantageous position in the queue (far exceeding the normal park ticket price).

But the media is still boasting about it. The whole scheme is like a supermarket pitch "for free, for free!" But when you get there and are charged, the manager says to you, "sorry sir, our service and products are only for free on the 10th day of every month, not every day, not today. So please be sure that you come on the right day next time."

And parks are worse than such supermarkets at least in two ways: firstly, they are like those supermarkets saying "free" to you but actually charging you a second time for something you have already paid for the day before. And secondly, supermarkets are never praised while parks are.

But the parks are not happy to take the blame. Their argument is that they are always short of funds and if the parks are open to the public for free, who is going to pay for the operational expenses and the salaries of the staff? Parks in China seem to be still stranded in a problematic operational mode and the pockets of some state asset management personnel do not hold money.

It is good that the government realizes the meaning of providing citizens with free access to the city's parks. However, the policy of free park admission requires a material basis. It will run the risk of being reduced to merely an embarrassing show if the right operational mechanism for parks is not quickly established. Prior to that, it would be more tolerable if the media stopped boasting about "free parks" and "enhanced life overnight".

starcomment@yahoo.com