ISpyShanghai

Can I just make it clear that this last week or two isn’t going to be some golden age where I pull out all of the stops?

Now that there’s cleared up, here’s some Chinglish from the fortress of Carrefour- most hateful of all the supermarkets.

(Note for the new: I live in an area of Shanghai called Jing-An)

Whilst I had a wonderful Christmas season in England, it was good to get back to Shanghai- after all, as the old saying goes Jing-An make us much warmer and fragranter.

Some people say that Jing-An isn’t central in Shanghai, that it’s a little too far north to be amongst the good bar and restaurant action. What these people forget is that the melody of civilization is singing from here. 

And they’d do well to remember that.

Fools.

In the Yu Gardens- Shanghai’s #1 tourist spot there is a restaurant sign that says:

“Dumpling stuffed with the ovary and digestive glands of a crad” 

It’s been photographed more times than Paris Hilton’s knickers because -hey- Everybody Loves Chinglish!

I’m not so easily impressed though (”Crad“? that’s tourist stuff).
If you want the real hardcore chinglish, the next level shizzle that’ll make your eyes sizzizzle, you need to go to a Hong Kong restaurant that opened recently near the Bund.

Several dyadic bitterns

The Chinglish in this place is so thick with meaty goodness that they should sell the menu as a souvenir at the door, along with t-shirts that say:

Why have Hamburger when you can have the Dyadic Bittern of a Tide Goose Movie? 

I was grabbing a bite there on my way to watch “Quantum of Solace”  (007/10- keep the fighting, but more Bondliness next time please) and nearly missed the start of the film because I was taking so many photos of the names of dishes.

Pigeon English

I’m going to get the address off Emma in fact, because the food was actually really good.

In fact maybe the people behind this place are a whole level smarter than we imagine and the funny dish names are, in fact, a clever marketing ploy! Oooh psych.

Chinglish crablish

Click below for my absolute favourite anyway- I don’t know how they come up with this stuff, I really don’t.

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Lord knows we have enough fun laughing at poor english written on t-shirts and signs around China, so it’s about time we had a look at the flip side of the coin.

English people are fascinated by Chinese characters (also Japanese and Korean since 98% of them can’t tell the difference) so it’s very common to see restaurant signs, the odd bit of clothing and (especially) tattoos with characters scrawled on at random.

Emma’s parents have recently moved into a new house where the previous owners had decided a few characters might look nice on the wall of the spare bedroom. Chinese readers / students can have a go at working out what they were aiming for. I’ll play along too:

中  (middle)
A good start here, couple of extra little flourishes at the bottom, but I think the point comes across

开  (open)
Still looking good with the second character- I don’t think we can rule out the possibility of outside help. Maybe they ordered some delivery Chow Mein?

文 (writing, culture)
Not perfect by any means which is a bit ironic considering the meaning-
(did I ever mention that Emma used to pronounce the word “Pronounciation” incorrectly? Not good for an English teacher)

川 (river)
I’m guessing on this one, the random dots and dashes are starting to look a bit like a cross between two codes: Morse and Hobo

? (???)
No idea what this is supposed to be.
The thing about a 5,000 year old writing system is that you can’t just make stuff up when you get sick of trying to copy the writing on your Kung Fu uniform

文 (writing, culture)
Another crack at “Wen” here with not much more success, it’s nice to try and mix things up though, keep the reader guessing.

Marks (for trying): 3.

Samples of my own Chinese calligraphy will be available: never.

Is this a menu item or a frigging cryptic crossword clue?

Good food in this place though.

I forget the exact address but it’s a Chinese restaurant in Beijing, shouldn’t be hard to track down.

WARNING- today’s I Spy Shanghai features some extremely salty language.
Sorry Mum, it was the Chinese that did it, not me.

When you break medicine down to its brass tacks, it’s all about the nasty stuff; rashes in places you shouldn’t scratch, swellings in places that should have only limited swelling.

To avoid talking about this stuff, patients and doctors mix it up a bit and use words that are not so bold. So for example it’s called Gynaecology and not…

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Recently this website has been accused (by the cream of the Swedish intelligentsia) of being too difficult to understand.

With that in mind, here’s a quick overview of the current situation in Tibet (if there are any long words you don’t understand, ask a teacher for help)

“You don’t take me seriously, I want my independence!”

“When you act like a grown up, I’ll treat you like a grown up”

“That is SOOOOO unfair, you never even let me have my friend Dalai come and stay”

“I’ve told you, if he promises to behave himself, he can stay as long as he likes“

“But I want him to stay noooooowwwwwww!”

“That’s it, you’re grounded“

Tomorrow: more Chinglish!

Putting up photos of bad english signs is like shooting fish in a barrel out here, you could throw a can of bamboo shoots in a Supermarket and hit ten signs that say things like:

“Beware of caution!” or “The Ice Made Of Cow Lactation Fluid”

One major reason for it is that given a list of four possible translations, the Chinese thing to do is to pick whichever looks the most “impressive”- the most letters, the craziest spelling, the most unusual.

So instead of “Traditional Style Bar” you get this:

And instead of “Knife” you get:

Xyster – n. A surgical instrument for scraping bones.