The design reveal of a new train station in the Chinese city of Nanjing has not gone as well as authorities might have expected, as internet users compare the building to a “giant sanitary pad”.
The Nanjing North train station is intended to resemble a plum tree blossom, which is a symbol of the city, but stops one petal short of that. While plum tree flowers have 5 petals, the design of the new building only envisions 4 lobes, bringing in the unapologetic mockery of the online world.
“Why can we all immediately tell it’s a sanitary pad, but the architect doesn’t??” somebody wrote on Chinese social media platform Weibo. “I think we should take this chance to call for society to pay attention to period shaming. This design is ahead of its time”, another user joked.
While some joked, others said that instead of being a proud new addition to the city’s landscape, the current design is rather shameful and an insult to the plum blossom symbol.
This is a giant sanitary pad. It’s shameful to say that it looks like a plum flower.
Weibo user
Plum blossom or sanitary pad, the project, and its design, was approved not just by the government of Jiangsu province, but also national authorities, as well as the China State Railway Group. Construction of the 20 billion Chinese yuan (€2.6 billion) development is set to start in the first half of the year.
Spanning over an area of 37.6 square kilometres, Nanjing North will become the city’s largest train station. Nanjing has 8.5 million inhabitants and the new station is expected to see about 36.5 million passengers annually.
This is not the first time an important development project is critically received in China. The already over a decade old Chinese Central Television (CCTV) building in Beijing, now a landmark of the city, is frequently referred to by locals as the “big boxer shorts” or “big pants” building due to its peculiar shape. Dutch architect and author Rem Koolhaas has said the CCTV building “could never have been conceived by the Chinese and could never have been built by Europeans. It is a hybrid by definition.”
