The contradictorily named Leisure Ford Park (Xiaoyaojin Park) is well known in modern China as a famous battlefield. Although history faithful to the truth is a little hard to track down, most accounts in China now go like this.

In the last years of the Eastern Han Dynasty (25-220 AD), a general called Sun Quan, afterwards to become king of the Wu Kingdom, led a troop of 100,000 soldiers towards Hefei, with plans to take the city. The city general, a subordinate of the famous Caocao, named Zhang Liao, had but 7,000 troops under his command. Troops were fearful and restless awaiting the onslaught that was sure to result in the sacking of the city. So Zhang thought he would try to even up the odds.

Taking almost all of his troops, Zhang initiated a night blitz upon the unprepared Sun barracks and the bloody battle that ensued was to eventually result in the rout of Sun's unprepared army. Sun is said to have escaped death by leaping the canal that ran beside the battlefield.

Nowadays the area has lost much of its charm. It was turned into a park this century, and now covers a total of 31.3 hectares. The park is an uninspiring thing that is probably only of interest to Chinese history lovers, botanists and sadistic zoologists. The zoo in the southeastern corner of the park is typical of China's zoos, with small cages and poor facilities. The western corner has bonsai, rare Chinese plants, rockeries as well as mock versions of traditional Chinese architecture. There are also three islets on the lake, that between them hold a cenotaph of general Zhang Liao, a statue of him seated upon his horse and a bridge that is said to be the spot that Sun Quan leapt to freedom.

Add: No.16, Shouchun Road, Hefei;

Opening hours: 06:00-18:00;

Entry ticket: 5 yuan;

Traffic: Bus No.s 2, 129, 136,137 and 801;

Tel: 0551-2654575.

(China.org.cn October 14, 2005)