A Letter from Autumn: Shanghai’s Hidden Oil Painting Forest!｜Gongqing Color-Seeking Guide

When the first breeze turns the ginkgo leaves yellow, when the pond cypress forest gradually soaks in caramel-colored light, Shanghai’s most poetic season quietly settles into Gongqing Forest Park. This city’s “green heart” not only hides the light and colors reminiscent of a Monet painting but also awakens an entire fairy tale kingdom in autumn—if you haven’t experienced autumn here yet, you’ll truly regret it for a whole year! People often say that Gongqing’s autumn is like Monet’s garden’s sister lost in the city. But I think it has even more vitality and spirit than the painting. Especially the pool of clear water beside Camphor Square, it’s as if autumn personally adjusted its colors—the golden ginkgo, the crimson sweetgum, and the unknown tree shadows in dark purple all fall into the shimmering waves, making it seem as if paint is slowly flowing on a canvas. You don’t need to deliberately find an angle; just raise your camera, and every frame naturally carries the impressionistic hazy brushstrokes. If you walk slowly along the riverside, you’ll be even more surprised. Large patches of planted flower beds spread along the slopes like a spilled palette: pale pink smartweed flowers, goose-yellow small chrysanthemums, and dark red grass spikes gently intertwine with the colorful leaves of the Chinese tallow and elm trees by the shore. At that moment, you suddenly realize that Monet’s garden has never really gone far; it just quietly moved to the place where Shanghai’s autumn is most intense. And the little red train chugging through the park must be the key to the fairy tale. The approximately 2-kilometer track winds through the dense forest, and the train windows are like moving picture frames—one moment showing the warm yellow silhouettes of the pond cypress forest, the next moment the golden fragments scattered along the ginkgo path, with sunlight dancing on the seats through the branches. Many visitors raise their phones but hesitate to press the shutter because the flowing painting before their eyes is more vivid than any photo. Autumn here never settles for monotony. The red of sweetgum, the yellow of ginkgo, the orange of Chinese tallow, the green of cedar... all the colors seem to have agreed to celebrate wildly at this time. You can step on the rustling “ginkgo carpet” and watch the falling leaves flutter like butterflies; or stand by the water and see the reflection of the pond cypress forest perfectly mirroring the real world—every snap is a cinematic autumn chapter. This season, why not spend an afternoon at Gongqing? Bring a picnic mat, a leisurely book, or just a heart eager to be embraced by autumn.