我家有“秘密花园”，你有吗？

We call it the "secret garden", even though it's public and uncultivated.

我家把这个无人管理的公共区域称作“秘密花园”。

For our family, it has recently served as a place for magic moments among tragic times, especially during the three months we didn't leave our neighborhood when China was in the full grip of COVID-19.

三个月以来，我们因为疫情待在家里，把这里当做魔法之地。

It's an abandoned lot on the university campus where we live in Beijing that's on the border between the school's quiet, green grounds and a bustling patchwork of plazas.

我们住在北京的一所大学校园里，这块荒废的魔法之地位于校园与外界相邻的角落。

And it exists in metaphorical limbo between a manmade and wild space.

这里是人类世界与野外空间的分割线。

The spot seems to be little known among our neighbors, since there are typically a handful of people there at most.

貌似很多邻居不知道这个地方，我最多只在这里见过几个人。

That is, it's not only a romantic place in the connotative sense but also Romantic in reference to the philosophical and aesthetic movement in which gardens in places such as Portugal were cultivated with the intention of letting them become wild over time.

因此，这里不论在哲学或美学层面，都是一处浪漫之地，就像葡萄牙的花园都被故意打理出野外的感觉。

The "secret garden", however, almost certainly wasn't planted with the intention of letting it overgrow. But we're grateful it has.

虽然大学的“秘密花园”不是人工特意为之，我们还是感谢它的存在。

The flowers blaze like fireworks. Their petals shimmer like sparks.

这里的花丛好像烟花绽放，花瓣好像花火。

Indeed, there's such an assortment of blooming flora that they appear as if the shrapnel of a rainbow that exploded above to sprinkle the trees and ground below. 

这些花好像彩虹一样点燃了树木和大地。

Butterflies flutter next to magpies. Pigeons coo from a coop that suddenly appeared on the garden's edge a few weeks ago. 

蝴蝶飞舞，几周前也能听到鸽子叫。

Our 4-year-old son and 8-year-old daughter climb the trees, something I worried they wouldn't experience growing up in a megacity. They sit on branches bejeweled with blossoms.

四岁的儿子和八岁的女儿爬上树，坐在开着花的树枝里。我之前还担心他们在大城市不会有这种体验。

We enjoy picnics, juggle devil sticks, toss Frisbees, strum ukuleles, kick jianzi (Chinese shuttlecocks) and even hide Easter Eggs among the wildflowers that roil across the ground.

我们在这里野餐、玩游戏、踢毽子，甚至藏了复活节彩蛋。

This Easter, several curious grannies watched me stash plastic eggs packed with candy in tufts of ground blooms and crooks of lilac limbs.

今年复活节，我在几位大婶好奇的目光下，把装满糖果的塑料彩蛋藏在花园各处。

I expect they wondered what on Earth this foreign guy was doing concealing colorful orbs in the "weeds".

她们可能很奇怪我这个老外的奇怪举动。

A group of children playing nearby decided to find out for themselves.

住在附近的几个孩子决定找出彩蛋。

Once they discovered there were treats inside, I had to call my wife to bring our kids as soon as possible if there were going to be any left for them.

这些孩子们发现彩蛋里藏着糖果，我赶紧让妻子把儿子女儿叫来，否则他们就没有彩蛋可以找啦。

The, ahem, Easter Bunny, rather than Mom and Dad, still hides the eggs, as far as our kids know. Or knew. 

我们的孩子一直以为是复活节兔子藏了彩蛋。

Some of the children told Lily they'd seen me concealing the treats. She later told me she'd pretty much guessed my wife and I are the "bunny".

其他孩子们告诉我女儿，我藏了这些糖果。我女儿后来也说，她几乎确定我和妻子就是“复活节兔子”。

It was adorable to watch our kids and the local children dash around searching for the hidden treasures, especially considering the Chinese kids had most likely never joined one before.

中国孩子们基本没有过这种体验，所以看见大家在一起找彩蛋让我很欣慰。

And it was particularly sweet of the older kids to share their eggs with our 4-year-old, since he didn't find as many.

大孩子们还和我儿子分享彩蛋，因为他找的少。

Probably all of us have some kind of comparable hideaway, our own "secret garden". Even the emperors built summer palaces.

也许每个人都自己的“秘密花园”。皇帝们还修建了夏宫呢。

Since few people visit, we've used it as a refuge to simultaneously escape from our apartment and the risk of infection before the outbreak began to retreat. 

我们不想待在家的时候就来这个人迹罕至的花园。

And we likewise used it as a place to escape the sometimes-gloomy feelings conjured by the uncertainty that clouded the outbreak's early days, replacing a shadowy horizon, figuratively speaking, with the light of an actual sunset over the mountains.

这里也能帮助我们脱离疫情期间的郁闷心情。

That darkness has since essentially subsided throughout China.

中国的情况正在好转。

But, indeed, a field forsaken by landscapers yet not flowers will remain the setting of our brightest memories during that gray time.

但这个花园会成为灰色时间的最闪亮记忆。