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!