Fuddland

After my comments on the conduct of the public when boarding the underground, in the interests of balance I took a photo of something I see every Saturday morning on my walk to teach: a long queue of people [mostly students], snaking several times back on itself, patiently waiting for Sūzhōu (苏州) Library to open.

Like many important [or old] buildings, it uses traditional Chinese characters instead of the simplified versions that were introduced during the 1950s and ’60s. In traditional script, the first character of Sūzhōu is written 蘇, whose two components 鱼 and 禾 mean fish and cereal crops respectively, giving more of an insight into what the region was historically known for.