When we were leaving the Great Wall, we were, I suppose, asked to come back again, by means of the a gigantic banner overhanging the entrance to the market area: Welcome to the mutianyu Great wall next time.
During our day trip to Suzhou, we visited Suzhou No. 1 Silk Factory Co, Ltd. and observed a sign reading this way:
The silk reeling is a production procedure to change the cocoon into silk. The multi-ends silk reeling is to cohere a number of cocoon silks together from several cocoons in light of the thickness specification requirement of the raw silk after the cooked cocoons have been manually brushed and picked into correct end cocoons with one end from one cocoon. When end dropping arises during silk reeling, it's necessary to add in the picked correct cocoons in good time to always maintain the fixed number of cocoons, so as to ensure the specifications and quality of the raw silk.
On the road on the way home, we passed an industrial park where a huge billboard announced Vocational and Technical College of Silicon Lake Cradle of Grey Collar Talents Developed. In the shopping mall which we were able to walk to from our room in the Shanghai Hilton, we entered a young teens department called YOUNG EXCITING STREET.
Here we found numerous really amazing t-shirts. I was tempted to buy one, but even the large was not quite my size. I am kicking myself now for not taking photos of these shirts. They were so nonsensical as to be impossible to remember. One featured a poem about love, and another described in detail the sands blowing across a beach highway. I really had no idea whatsoever as to what concept was trying to be expressed in either shirt. Our tourguide had told us that Chinese is a very poetic language and that many times it just does not translate, which is why so many attempts of translation sound so laughable. The poetic nature of Chinese is evident in names of many of the buildings in the Summer Palace at Beijing:
Site of the Garden of Full Spring
Pavilion of the Mountain Scene and the Water Brilliance
Pavilion of Blessed Shade
Purple Cloud Gate Tower
Garden of Virtue and Harmony
Tower of the Fragrance of the Buddha
Chamber of Distant Gazing
In the same location where I saw the parasol girl posing, I snapped a photo of a restaurant announcing Entry in Yuyuan Eating the WorldWide Delicious Food Here we have Chinese Cakes preparing for foreigners Foreign Cakes providing for Chinese People And Shanghainese can taste Nationwide Cakes
and a sign on the road advised this way: FRIENDSHIP TIPS Welcome to the YuYuan Tourist Mart! To create a more beautiful travelling and shopping environment, the buildings are now at the construction stage. As for your inconvenience, we depress deep regret! Hope you kindly understanding! Please note security!We will always provide you high quality for the goods and services!
The funny thing here, was that the word DEPRESS was pasted over another word as a correction. I wonder what the original word was and whether "depress deep regret" was actually an improvement.
In the Forbidden City in Beijing, we were admonished by this sign, not to touch and thereby ruin ancient treasures. This was posted near the a massive gilded cauldron which at one time held water, kept on hand for fire protection.
Even the wold renowned Terra Cotta soldiers museum had problems. While all the signs were in very good understandable English, the movie shown in the 360 theatre had been produced years ago, without benefit of editing by a native speaker of English. I mentioned at one point to one of my friends on the tour, that it was amazing that the Chinese did not hire native speakers of English to make sure that all these signs and movies and placards were done "right". She said "I hope they never do". And she was right. The lyrical merriment in the whimsical signs is truly a highpoint of any trip to China.
No comments:
Post a Comment