Skip to main content

The Changzhou Library

Poster inside the elevator

I was so happy Wang Jian took us to the library.  He had never been, but he has been pretty great at helping us figure things out when he can.  Architecturally, it is a way cool building and other nearby buildings were similar.  From pictures I've seen they are even more awesome at night.  




It has 10 floors, each floor has a different purpose. I didn't take a picture of the floor labels and purposes, but the 10th floor is for 'acient artifacts and documents'. Tragic how much money must have been spent on the signage for each floor to have a misspelling; but I guess they don't know!  We started on the 3rd floor with the Children and Parent reading area.  We were not allowed to enter because the girls were too old.  I had hoped I could go in and just take a few pictures, but no.  Here is what I did get from that area.

The next floor is for youth books.  We spent a great deal of time here.  We all found a few books to read. On the picture book shelves, about every 4th book was in English. 

I found a few books to read.  I even read one in Chinese with Google Lens.  Very laborious, but doable! 
This is Ghost Scared:

A ghost is on a mountain and meets a rabbit.  The ghost asks the rabbit a question.  The rabbit gets scared and runs home and tells someone about the ghost on the mountain.  This rabbit in turn tells another and another, each time the ghost description becomes more exaggerated and frightening.  
At the point of the story where the father rabbit is told about the ghost, the ghost who is now outside the rabbit's window hears this report of a very fierce ghost and he runs home to his mom.  From the translation, I couldn't quite tell whether the little ghost was offended or frightened, (he was scared per the title)  but it was a great read for a beginner reader such as myself!  (Ha, I didn't even attempt to decode the characters!)  But it was entertaining and it followed the pattern that I learned about in Children's literature all of those years ago--that there are some stories that are consistent across cultures and time periods. I will probably spend a great deal of time in this section on our future visits. Pretty fascinating.
In the novel section, the bookends were all in English.  This one made me laugh.  "Guten Tag" (which is German), then a slight variation of an Eleanor Roosevelt quote (sans citation):  "The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams. Eternity is not a distance"
We will probably go back once school starts and spend the some days there doing school.  (At least for this year, we are doing online school again.) You can see how the windows curve from the inside; each floor has more curvature than the floor below.  All of the architecture inside is pretty cool.
I found myself a plant book to read,
 a recipe book to look at,
and a couple of art periodicals.   
And by then the girls had become bored and I knew it best that we leave very soon.  We tried to visit the room for the reading impaired, but it was closed. (What does Chinese braille look like? I'm super curious!)

WJ says I can get a library card to check out some books, but he doesn't know how.  Maybe we'll try that at some point, we'll see!

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

While We Are Waiting: Temples!

I love the temple.  When I first learned of the possibility of us moving to China in December 2019, one of my first questions was "How can I leave the temple?"  That question was answered in part during the closure of temples in 2020. However, when the joint venture was signed and Tom was officially offered the position in China in November 2020, I began fasting and praying that I would be able to attend the temple just once before we left.  Our original flights were for July 7, 2021 and just a few weeks before that, our temple opened up and miraculously we were able to get 2 appointments for baptisms and 4 other appointments for Tom and I before our departure date.  I can't express my deep gratitude for those 6 precious appointments.  Then when we didn't obtain a visa in time for those flights and access to nearby temples was given, I took up a new hobby.  Temple scheduling.  The girls teased me it was a bit of an obsessed hobby; but since we will go ...
2 comments
Read more

An Accomplishment!

 The process: Cut the recipe in half so that the bread will fit in your teensy tinsy oven. Convert everything to metric--- ingredient amounts and water temperature. Get your purified water to the right temperature. Measure ingredients out. Mix it up.  Humidity changes things.... Hope you did it right. Shape and let rise. Convert oven temperature to Celsius. My little oven heats up nicely, but you get to guess when it is preheated. Notice there are no smoke alarms in your kitchen. Hmm.   Decrease the cook time and cross your fingers that is right.  Add a cooking thermometer to the shopping list. Let it cool for a long time because you only have a small serrated knife for cutting it. Slice and eat.  It probably could have tasted pretty awful and we would have thought that bit of home tasted very delightful!  But it was quite good! Needs a little more salt, but that is an easy adjustment.   And it could have been crustier, but we're at a point o...
Post a Comment
Read more

Food

Food has been one of the hardest aspects of our quarantine.  Food is emotionally comforting, so we're missing out on that--especially the girls.  We're not used to the smells.  It is cafeteria type foods.  Much of the time we don't know what it is.  Always an adventure...not always a pleasant one!  That said, incoming meals are the most exciting time of the day.  Originally we were getting 4 meals a day.  But the only thing the girls were eating from them was the rice and there is way too much rice in that container for one person.  So we had it cut back to two. Breakfast is the hardest meal of the day.  I already knew I didn't love Chinese breakfasts.  Tom had told me that every breakfast he saw from watching quarantining videos had a boiled egg.  I knew I could eat that if I had some salt and pepper.  So I brought some.  We're doing okay on the salt--supply wise.  We're rationing on the pepper.  I'm so tha...
Post a Comment
Read more