People's Square is the formal civic centre of Changchun, a large open plaza surrounded by government buildings and flanked by major thoroughfares. The square itself is unremarkable as a space, but its history is layered: it was designed by Japanese urban planners in the 1930s as the central hub of Hsinking, the Manchukuo capital, and the street plan radiating from it is still the underlying structure of the city centre.
The square is used for public events, national holiday celebrations, and the everyday life that flows through Chinese civic plazas: people walking, children on scooters, the occasional performance. The surrounding buildings include post-1949 government structures and some surviving Manchukuo-era construction. Standing in the centre of the square and looking at the radiating streets, you can read the ambition of the original planned capital even through the accumulated additions of eighty years.