In one of its famed cartoons, Garfield the cat stares at a sapling, saying, “Someday, tree, when you grow big enough, I might climb you”. Odd as it may sound, that’s pretty much what has recently taken place in Nanjing’s Qinhuai District, often touted as home to the city’s culture.
Nanjing is famed for its Wutong trees that keep the city’s thoroughfares cool during the Southern Capital’s scorching summer. However, the wide embrace of their lower branches often needs to be lopped off, in order to permit traffic to flow unhindered.
After the cut, what’s left is an opportunity, one that has now joined Nanjing’s social media bucket list.
At 3:30 pm on 3 November, around Zhongshan Nan Lu and Mingwalang, scaling a ladder was Luo Tao, with helmet on head, brushes in one hand and paint palette in the other; his ladder resting against a Wutong tree.
Half an hour later, Luo’s ladybug was finished. Nearby, his colleague had completed a dodo on a blue background. A professional painter by trade, Luo told reporters for the Yangtze Evening News that the initiative was the doing of Qinhuai District’s Urban Management Bureau. Before the ladybug, he had painted eight trees around him that day.
Over on Taiping Nan Lu, the Wutongs have been painted with owls, Zhanyuan Lu is decorated with flying gulls and butterflies, while puffy gills adorn the branches of trees along Jiangning Lu.
Elsewhere, chewing little squirrels and giraffes with tree trunk for neck join Garfield sporting his mischievous Cheshire grin.
Wei Xin, Assistant Director for Qinhuai District’s Municipal Facilities Comprehensive Maintenance Centre, spoke with local media, saying, “The parts of the trees we paint all stem from injuries. The required shapes and sizes for the pictures are different, so we choose different styles and animals, but they are each unique”.
Back in his cartoon, and with Garfield’s tree now mature, the cat finds himself up there clinging to a branch, wondering, “Why do I always get stuck in trees? … It must be the cat in me”.
