San Francisco has the Golden Gate, but Suzhou has the 'Gate of the Orient'. Suzhou is a city in the Chinese province of Jiangsu, north of Shanghai: a province that has the highest GDP per capita of all Chinese provinces. And this 'Gate of the Orient' is a 300m high-rise with an arch on top that is almost finished (it will be completed at the end of the year). But the new facility has already achieved towering success online, after being dubbed 'long johns'. The 69-story building has already garnered more than 3 comments on the site, most of which ridicule the structure. One of them reads: “It would be a great symbol for a cowboy town. Are they long johns or a pair of jeans? They have low crotch."
Construction began in September 2004. We are no longer in the days of building Gothic cathedrals that went on for decades, but eight years seems like a long time for a modern skyscraper. The design, by the British architects RMJM, is based on the ancient portal of the city of Suzhou. The opening between the two 'legs' is 246 meters high. The building is the largest of its kind in the world, and has already been referred to as the "Gate No. 1 in the world".
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