Two Years Ago - the signs remain the same

2009:



2011:



2009:



2011:

Equal Opportunity Surrealism

Just so you don't think that the Chinese have the market cornered on the surreal signage here, a sign found in a Western Bar advertising televised ...rugby matches? ...Aussie rules football? ...animal cage fights? Well, something Down Under-ish, anyway.



Someone help me out here - does a bulldog really have a fighting chance against a dragon? And is the shark vs. rooster matchup on land or in the ocean? (If it's on land, I'll give 3-2 odds on the rooster, provided it can run fast enough.) And what is a Rabbitoh, anyway?

(Full disclosure: I come from a region where people proudly cheer on Hoosiers, so I really don't have much ground to stand on here...)

Your freindly local... um, say what?

"Hey, honey? You free? I was wondering if you could pop on over to SCSHHSYYXYZRGS for a sec and pick up a few things..."

"Go where?"

"SCSHHSYYXYZRGS."

"Where?"

"SCSHHSYYXYZRGS!!! You know, the place with the ... stuff. Rhymes with DJVKHSYYXYRGS!"

"Oh yeah, yeah, SCSHHSYYXYZRGS! Sorry, for a second, I thought you said LVMCHSYYXWDFS, and they're closed Mondays."

"No, LVMCHSYYXWDFS went out of business last month."

"LVMCHSYYXWDFS went out of business? You've gotta be kidding me..."

Public Service Announcements

Also spotted on our field trip: This rather faded message board on the edge of the town square near the police station, with some fairly faded posters exhorting citizens to behave safely and properly. My Chinese is still a bit sketchy, but I think I've progressed enough to give you a rough translation of some of the lessons to be learned.



"If you are planning to jump off of a tall building, make sure that you spin sideways or keep your tongue sticking out."



"Don't leave your television set unplugged, or else a cartoon dog will force you to do jumping jacks with your eyes closed."



"Always make sure you apply conditioner BEFORE leaving a burning building."



"If you and your friend work together diligently enough, you can make a school bus pop a wheelie."

Have a good weekend, everybody, and hey hey hey...

Let's be careful out there.

Sometimes it's cool to be a dummy

Spotted on (the backpacker-filled) Khao San Road, Bangkok

the Teacher Tibetan Medicine Fumigation Church

Located in the new art neighborhood of Caochangdi, Beijing. I really really wish I could see what their worship services are like....

Some signage, most excellent...

Bangkok, near Chinatown in a neighborhood that specializes in automobile engine reconstruction


"Fried Chicken, Tofu, Tempeh"
Indonesia is full of roadside restaurants like this one with their specialty animals painted on them. Did I photograph any? Of course not, except for this one in Bali, near the end of our stay in the country.


The sign that pointed to our restaurant on the beach, on Bali's north coast. (Well, okay, actually the place that we ate at a lot - you know what I mean)


..and another sign from Bali to round out the group. Happy noticing, everyone!

The word of the day

... is "travel" (at the upper left of the picture, in white). And "tools", and "types". Photograph is of the side of a building awaiting demolition. Dang, am I the only one that loves this wall?

"Zhi-jia-ge, zhi-jia-ge, that toddlin' town..."

Got a small dose of instant homesickness when I passed this construction fence in downtown Chengdu the other week. For those of you who aren't familiar with one of the greatest underrated cities on the planet, it's a view of downtown Chicago at night, probably taken from the observation lounge at the top of the John Hancock building, probably lifted from a Google image search somewhere and used without permission. (Said view, incidentally, being vastly superior to the one from the Sears Tower in that instead of paying $12 or so for a ticket up to the observation deck, you are obliged to purchase an overpriced martini at $7 and up, so you get a view and a drink.) Photos like these are quite typical around the new apartment towers that are springing up all over the place, probably because they convey a sense of wealth exoticism, and exclusivity. Pair them with a poorly-translated phrase in pseudoEnglish, and you're good to go. Ahh, the power of stereotypes...

Incidentally, 芝加哥 (Zhijiage), the word for "Chicago" in Chinese, translates character for character as “of - add to - older brother", or something like that. This happens because, of course, Chinese lacks a phonetic alphabet, so foreign names are simply collections of random characters thrown together to approximate the sound of the word in question. To make things even more confusing, Chinese has a little over 400 different spoken syllables, as opposed to somewhere around 4-5,000 in a language like English. This leads to most foreign place names in Chinese, for example, being only rough approximations of the original name. This makes for some exotic-sounding places (密尔沃基 - "Mi'erwaki", or 克利夫兰 - "Kelifulan") and another whole chunk of vocabulary to learn.

Finding color where I can get it

So speaking of cold and gray, one does have to find antidotes somewhere...







Don't know if it says more about China or about me , but I've been appreciating some fine bouquets of signage lately.