The 9-square-kilometer Sunqiao Modern Agriculture Park offers a unique rustic experience. There are hundreds of fruits and vegetables, farm produce, and demonstrations of scientific soilless farming. [Shanghai Daily]

Go ahead, fling off that suit, kick off those high heels. Grab a shovel, a basket, bring in the harvest, get dirty, work up a sweat. The whole family enjoys autumn at Sunqiao Modern Agriculture Park in Pudong.

It's that time of year again, time to breathe crisp late autumn air in the countryside, time to roll up your sleeves and enjoy the harvest season.

To be a farmer for one day, try the Shanghai Sunqiao Modern Agriculture Park in Pudong New Area. You can be active and pluck ripe oranges, squash and other vegetables, or take it easy, strolling through greenhouses and sheds of colorful, oddly shaped vegetables and fruit.

The 9-square-kilometer park south of Zhangjiang High-Tech Park offers a unique rustic experience. There are hundreds of fruits and vegetables, farm produce, demonstrations of scientific soil-less farming, historic exhibits, medicinal mushrooms and ganoderma, desert plants, a kids' play center and old-time animation and childhood neighborhood games.

The exhibition hall of modern agricultural implements features ceiling-high silos of grain, paddy rice, maize, millet and wheat. They symbolize a bumper harvest and affluent life for traditional Chinese farmers.

Rusty furrows, plows, hoes, shovels, mill wheels and many other old tools used manpower, horse, oxen, or water power.

In the Orange Garden nearby, juicy, organically grown oranges dangle from trees, just waiting for you to pluck them.

Every year from October to March, the Self-Picked Garden is always filled with enthusiastic urban visitors. Taro root, squash, melons, carrots, potatoes, herbs, corn and many other vegetables are there for the taking (after paying a fee).

The Sunqiao Agriculture Park provides its organically grown produce, mushrooms, fungus, honey and other products to the city's high-end hotels, restaurants and supermarkets. Some are sold in Hong Kong.

You can pluck the freshest produce in the field, toiling and sweating in the sun, and staff can make up a gift package for you, simple or elaborate.

The 3-hectare Soil-less Planting Garden features plants grown in nutrient-filled water in a high-tech environment. The no-soil growing technology was introduced from the Netherlands several years ago the park's experts are developing it further.

New technologies increase quality, productivity per square meter, and eliminate soil pollution and disease. More than 20 types of organic vegetables are growing in water in ceiling containers, on the walls and around pillars. They include cucumbers, tomatoes, eggplants and green peppers.

The vegetables are nourished on pure natural rain water, specially compounded nutrients and carbon dioxide -- all controlled by a central computer that also adjusts temperature and humidity.

A 5,000-square-meter Water Planting Area produces more than 20 types of lettuce, which are grown around the pillars and on planting tables.

The Garden of Exotic Melons and Vegetables features weirdly shaped, oddly colored melons, squash and vegetables that look like they grew on another planet.

The pumpkins can be as big as a one-year-old child the largest weighs more than 100 kilograms, the smallest is no bigger than a fist.

The newly opened Garden of Desert Plants and the Garden of Mushrooms and Lingzhi (ganoderma lucidum) combine the most advanced Chinese technologies.

The desert garden under glass contains plants native to scorching-hot climates. The greenhouse's environment is monitored by computer, so plants that love heat and arid climates can thrive.

The fungus garden displays rows of bonsai (potted, dwarf plants) of ganoderma lucidum and grotesquely shaped mushrooms. Lingzhi is very famous as a health tonic prescribed by traditional Chinese medicine for many problems. It strengthens immunity, fights aging, benefits the respiratory system and is said to be helpful in killing some kinds of cancer cells.

Children will love the 800-square-meter DIY Zone that offers flower arranging, colorful mud sculpture, weaving and other creative activities.

For mom and dad, the Old Game Zone lets them play simple games of their childhood in the 1970s and 1980s. They include che ling zi (spinning a top on a rope, one end in each hand), gun tie quan (rolling an iron hoop with a stick), jump rope, sandbag tossing, playing with bamboo dragonflies, and many other games.

At noon, those who love nostalgia can enjoy some of the China's earliest animation movies in a mini theater, such as the "Monkey King," the country's first color cartoon movie in the 1950s.

When on the farm, do as farmers do. In this agriculture park, you can take off your city clothes, nice shoes or high heels, grab some boots and overalls, pick up a shovel and have a good sweat in the autumn sun. Better yet, wear old clothes and boots.

You can toss firewood into the big clay oven, grind soybeans with an old stone mill, grind rice with a stone pounder, power the water mill by walking barefoot on it, make straw shoes, and even build a scarecrow.

Modern Agriculture Park

Admission: Adults 30 yuan, students 25 yuan

Hours: Daily, 8:30am-4:30pm

Address: 185 Mianbei Rd, Sunqiao area, Zhangjiang Town

Tel: 021-5857-2522, 021-5857-6357, 021-5857-9189

(Shanghai Daily November 1, 2008)