People have fun on Shanghai streets now carpeted by golden autumn leaves. Photo: Yang Hui/GT

A number of streets in Shanghai covered with fallen leaves have been left unswept so that residents and tourists can admire the beautiful autumn scene, KNEWS reported on Monday.  

The 41 unswept streets will open on Tuesday for visitors to come and admire the colorful platanus and ginkgo leaves. 

Although the leaves have not been swept, they are not scattered around and left in a mess, local environment authorities explained. Sanitation workers carry out careful cleaning work everyday to ensure that there is no garbage mixed with the leaves, so that visitors can enjoy the pure beauty of the autumn landscape.

To provide a better experience for visitors to take photos, the Administration of Green and Urban Aesthetics in Shanghai published a list of deciduous landscape roads as a reference.

In the event of rain, haze or other special weather or major urban activities, the leaves on the roads will be thoroughly cleaned to ensure the safety of pedestrian passages, so that the daily lives of residents will not be affected. 

This new tourist attraction in Shanghai has drawn admirers on China's Twitter-like Sina Weibo. "Our environmental protection agency is starting to get romantic," one netizen joked.

Residents from other cities in China also called for similar streets in their own cities. "This can only appear in southern China. Beijing also called for the fallen leaves to be left unswept years ago, but the strong winds did not allow the leaves to stay in one place," one comment read. 

Global Times