Weird Bill Clinton Monument in Wuxi

If you look very carefully at above photo you will notice something slightly odd. On the right side of the picture, you will see the face of the 42nd President of the United States, Bill Clinton. 

Before I really get into what this is about, I should talk about the location. This is located in Wuxi, which is two cities over from Shanghai, and it's the city next to Changzhou, where I currently live. This monument is in the northern Huishan District. There is a huge cultural park there dedicated Wu culture. Wu was one of the many states that existed when China was fractured into many kingdoms -- that were often at war with each other, too.  What was Wu is currently Wuxi, Changzhou, and Suzhou. It's also the variant of Chinese that forms the basis of the local dialects in the region.  When Clinton was in office, the people administering the park felt the need to send the White House two books. One detailed the intricacies of Wu architecture. The other was about local idols. Clinton airmailed them a signed thank you note.

So, the park made a stone monument to that thank you note. 

And, yes, they replicated the thank you note. It reads "Thank you so much for your kind gift. I appreciate your thoughtfulness and generosity. You have my best wishes."  Weird thing is, I really couldn't find much of anything on this after searching the internet for any press coverage of this. Honestly, though, I never stop being surprised when i run into Americans featured in local Chinese culture.