City preview · NANJING

A Nanjing resident found his sentence fourteen years later

In Zhu Ziqing’s essay, a father climbed over the Pukou platform barrier to buy oranges. On a Yunjin loom, two weavers follow spoken cues from different levels. Nanjing University students named their campus BBS Lily. Fourteen years after Nanjing South opened, a resident found the sentence he had written in high school among more than four thousand inscriptions.

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Pukou Railway Station Historic Area · Editorial illustration, not a historical photo

From the Pukou platform to a station inscription

Oranges, loom calls, Lily BBS, and a fourteen-year-old sentence

Four complete stories and their public sources are shown here; the rest of the collection is in the app.

01 · Pukou Railway Station Historic Area

The Train Stopped by the River in The Sight of Father's Back

Zhu Ziqing's father climbed across the platform for oranges in an era when every rail journey here still had to change to a ferry.

Pukou Station stood where the railroad reached the Yangtze and could go no farther. Passengers and freight arrived on the north bank, then took a ferry to meet the railroad south of the river. In the winter of 1917, Zhu Ziqing's father saw him off here on a northbound train. The Sight of Father's Back records him crossing the tracks and hauling himself onto the platform to buy oranges. Most readers remember the silhouette first; the station, canopy, and river-facing rails supply the transportation problem behind it.

Source: baike.baidu.com Source: dfz.nanjing.gov.cn Source: jtyst.jiangsu.gov.cn Source: nanjing.gov.cn Source: jsxc.gov.cn Source: zh.wikipedia.org

02 · Nanjing Yunjin Museum

Two levels of weavers make one Yunjin brocade

One lifts warp above while the other throws weft below on a spoken cue.

A drawloom divides one pattern between two people. The draw worker sits above and raises selected warp threads in sequence; the weaver below works the treadles, throws the shuttle, and changes colors through the opening. A late cue stops the brocading. Nanjing Yunjin brocade weaving entered UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2009. The list records the name; two pairs of hands must still coordinate every pass on the loom.

Source: ich.unesco.org Source: ihchina.cn

03 · North Building, Nanjing University Gulou Campus

Little Lily First Bloomed on the Campus Network

NJU students packed requests for help, campus business, and arts chatter into a BBS called Little Lily.

Little Lily BBS went online in 1997. Its boards covered scholarship and the arts, but also lost property, student clubs, and the loose ends of campus life. A president's mailbox opened in 1998, giving students a place to send feedback through the same forum. Old posts sank, new questions floated up, and the site became part of NJU culture. Things too awkward for a noticeboard, dorm room, or classroom could line up on Little Lily instead, waiting for alumni to rediscover the thread years later.

Source: nju.edu.cn Source: xiaobao.nju.edu.cn Source: moe.gov.cn

04 · Nanjing South Railway Station, North Square

He found his own words 14 years later

Among more than 4,000 engraved sayings, a Nanjing resident recognized the line he wrote in high school.

Before Nanjing South opened in 2011, the city invited residents to submit "sayings of love." More than 4,000 were chosen and carved into white marble walls in the metro concourse. Zhang Yanan entered a line as a high school student and looked for it on opening day without success. Fourteen years later, he stopped to take pictures and found his own words in the dense inscriptions: "From the banks of the Yangtze to the summit of Purple Mountain, let love fill every last bit of space."

Source: nanjing.gov.cn Source: nanjing.gov.cn Source: jsnews.jschina.com.cn Source: news.sina.com.cn Source: szb.xdplus.cn Source: news.sina.cn

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