These critics weren’t padding their opinions.
A proposed train station in Nanjing, China, looks like a massive sanitary pad, social media users said after absorbing the design renderings.
Chinese officials said the North Nanjing station’s design was inspired by the plum blossoms the city is known for, but that hasn’t halted a steady flow of sarcastic comments online, according to the BBC.
“This is a giant sanitary pad. It’s embarrassing to say it looks like a plum blossom,” one commenter wrote on the country’s Weibo platform.
“Why can we all tell it is a sanitary pad immediately, but the architects can’t?” another user said.
“I think we should take this chance to call for society to pay attention to period shaming. This design is ahead of its time,” someone else joked.
Construction on the site was expected to begin over the next two months, and would cost 20 billion Chinese yuan, or $2.7 billion, the Nanjing Morning News reportedly said in 2017.
The design was approved by the government of Jiangsu province and China State Railway Group, according to state-owned media.
It’s not the first Chinese architectural project to be associated with the nether regions.
The Beijing headquarters of a state-owned broadcaster is known by some as the “big boxer shorts” building, for its resemblance to “a pair of walking legs, a person squatting over a toilet, and female genitalia,” China Digital Space reported.
