Signs of the Times: Chinglish Edition

The Communist Party of China, in its infinite wisdom, is about to remove one of the most reliable sources of visitor entertainment, the Chinglish sign. So I thought I’d celebrate with the best Chinglish signs I’ve seen over our time in China.

The one above? That’s actually for a toilet restaurant in Shanghai. Yes, a restaurant where people eat out of toilets. (I had only very limited experience of Chinese toilets when I wrote this post, but, believe me, I wasn’t tempted to go in.)

I saw this in a city-centre Agricultural Bank of China (sixth biggest bank in the world, fact fans!). I still have no idea what the Chinglish means.

This, by one of China’s few wheelchair-accessible ramps, is a rather unfortunate literal translation.

This, by contrast, is a longstanding Chinese brand. They changed the “k” in Darkie to an “l” several decades later than they should have done, but the Chinese name still begins “black person”…

This is from a park in Chengdu. I don’t know what the problematic shopping behaviour was, but the Confucian appeal to reason seems to have worked rather TOO well, as there were neither shops nor stalls in the vicinity.

Hmmm… A paedophiles’ charter? Or, if you’re French, a children’s clinic? From the same park in Chengdu. I *think* it was pointing to a play area, and if I were going to take a further guess, I’d say that they’d use Baidu translate to turn the Chinglish into Franglish.

A whole raft of mildly unnerving prohibitions adorned this lakeside park in Changchun. Is it OK to romp in the water if you keep proper hygiene and catch fish publicly? I will never know.

Some genuine creativity, both in Chinese and Chinglish, from whoever crafted this sign for Harbin’s Sun Island. It’s actually rather sweet.

Will you be having horse with that? According to this guesthouse on Tiger Leaping Gorge, you will, even if you’re already having yark meat.

It is extremely hard to render the names of many Chinese dishes, such as “rotten-smelling fish” into acceptable English. So most just stay with the literal Chinglish. As in this Beijing chain eatery, where options include Peking onion ear wire and Hejian belt leather donkey meat.

The English on this sign is actually far too good to count as Chinglish. But as the first sign I came across when we first came to China, back in November 2011, the message bears repeition. And they weren’t messing. There was a grid over the hole in the squat to prevent any inadvertent defecation.

I must confess, I’ll kind of miss the days when one could stand by a historic monument reading the “English” and remain absolutely none the wiser as to the events described, or inspect a rare — nay! unique! — train that was fuelled by “timber” rather than anything so prosaic as coal.

But progress comes to all, sadly.

You can find my all-time favourite sign in this post.

It’s from Makassar, Indonesia, where staff deemed it necessary to remind visitors that they must not throw feces in the museum.