Chinglish

On a lighter note now, some Chinglish I encountered all around in China. Don't worry, this post won't contain any stories told by animals and won't show any photos of slaughtered protected animals. We've returned to Beijing now, and back to this century. It snowed here a few days ago (but see this: China lets it snow to end draught )



I have collected quite a selection of photos with 'Chinglish' (English translated literally from Chinese, or otherwise funny English.) I am always surprised to see huge (and expensive) bill boards or traffic signs with spelling mistakes in them. I recently saw a building with large neon letters: "Hunan Agricultural Development Bnak". Doesn't anyone notice this over the years? Probably not, or perhaps the people just don't care. It is not like anyone actually speaks English (outside the three largest cities of China) so what's the use anyway.

Brand names use the same rhetoric. I always have to laugh about the variations of the fashion brand 'Playboy'. To name a few: "Playboby", "Boy Play", "Peony Boy" and "Player Boy" (these are just cheap copies of the real brand name, but still funny without it being meant to be). There are countless more examples of funny brand names or packaging. In the supermarket I found shampoos called "Sod" and "Gays", and tea that mentions that it contains "poison".

Vegetarian Style meal, including Traditional Roast Duck

This is the menu of a famous Beijing Roast Duck restaurant

Toilet door in a train

A DVD I bought. I didn't notice the spelling mistakes at first

Another photo taken in a train

Potato ships

Not really 'wrong', but it has a funny sound to it
Sign in a bar

This is typical Chinglish; translated word by word from Chinese

A tea pot we bought yesterday. "Keep fire pot" ~ I like the sounds of that!

Da Niang dump[l]ing restaurant

Another sign in the bathroom of a train showed: "Dumping place". Perhaps too obvious...?