This is the caption I often give to the photos of Vancouver’s Stanley Park I share with friends who are still in Hong Kong. Once named by Tripadvisor as “top park in the entire world,” this urban oasis is home to a lagoon, a rose garden, two beaches, a wide variety of wildlife, and half a million trees.

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Since Stanley Park is a mere 15-minute walk away from my home, it is practically my back garden. When I take my long walks there (this I do almost daily), I often listen to “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun,” Debussy’s piece on a half-goat, half-man creature who pursues a couple of beautiful nymphs in his half-sleep and wakes up wondering whether they are real. （參考連結：https://youtu.be/EvnRC7tSX50） The music’s dreamy mood and fluid structure lulls me into a mystical state of mind, imbuing the park’s sights, sounds, and smells with mythical significance – it’s as if I’d been transported to some sort of Garden of Eden.

No matter how unreal Stanley Park’s beauty is, there’s another thing in my new life in Canada that’s even more unreal. Though I’ve left Hong Kong for almost a year, the fact that I’m now in a country where the Chinese Communist Party and its minions in Hong Kong can’t touch me still seems too good to be true.