Lan Wangji examines it, intrigued and yet feeling some quiet trepidation at how much must have changed in more than a thousand years. The shape of its coastline is familiar, or familiar enough, but the idea that all these provinces and people came together under the heading of a single country is still an unusual one. Even so, he takes the pencil; his writing is not polished without a brush, but he can draw acceptable characters with some stubbornness. He writes 姑苏, perhaps midway down the portion of easternmost coast that protrudes after it dips in with the incursion of the Yellow Sea. It is slightly west of the coast itself, just beside Biling Lake, whose broad expanse he carefully draws in for reference.