Love notes in the Wishing Trees

Monday, August 6, 2012 in Canada, Richmond | 1 comment

Wishing Trees, Richmond Night Market

The cherry blossom Wishing Trees at the Richmond Night Market. Photo by David Lansing.

I spent some more time at the Richmond Night Market this weekend (so much food, so little time). The Care for Life Foundation, a charity focused on helping intercity youths in China, has this amazing Wishing Tree Pavilion. They have set up a couple dozen faux cherry blossom trees and if you make a $5 donation, you can write your wish on a piece of paper and hang it on one of the branches of the cherry trees, which look quite spectacular at night.

There are a lot of the usual wishes (“For Peace and Happiness for All”; “I wish everyone to have a great year”) as well as the expected pleas for “me to get through this quarter of college without flunking out” or “to make mom healthy again.”

But the ones I found most evocative were the plaintive love letters: “I wish I can win my love back.” Or my favorite: “Max –For us to meet again in a different place + time.  jen”

It’s like the beginning of a short story or a movie, isn’t it? Can’t you just see this trio of college buds—two roommates and one of the guy’s girlfriend—wandering  around the Night Market and the two guys goes off to get the girl some dim sum and while they’re gone, she writes down her wish and pins it to the tree? And then they all sit under the note and eat their sushi? Without the guy she really loves ever knowing what she’s done? Of course, sooner or later he’d have to find out? Right?

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1 comment

  1. Barbara Stoner’s avatar

    Barbara Stoner on Monday, August 6, 2012 at 9:47 pm

    David: Just finished your 2010 adventure to Lake Paradise, and have decided to follow you about for a while. I feel almost as I felt when I finished I Married Adventure all those many years ago. I know now that I will probably never get to Africa (I’m nearly 70), but I did make it to my favorite places in Europe and a few other adventures as well. I liked that you said the folks at Elephant Watch Camp might have once followed the Dead around, because I did that too, but then I didn’t really like the guy. They might have followed the Dead, but they’d be like those guys who don’t like anything past 1972 and hate Bobby songs. So thank you for that trip in the wayback machine to my days of idolizing Osa.

    Here is my ode to Osa: http://www.barbarasbookhouse.com/Nagapate There is an error. I never knew the kind of safari car they drove and assumed later it was a Landrover, but I think the first of those was built in the late 30′s?

    Like the wishes in the trees. They used to tie them on the holy thorns in Glastonbury, but now someone says it hurts the trees. I wanted to tie one on when I was there a couple of years ago, but the practice is forbidden. I could have wished for Africa.

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