New Concepty English

Prior to the Olympics, there was a massive effort to clean up bad English in Beijing. They did a good job of it, and it's kind of too bad, really, the end of an era. Fortunately, China is a big place. It will take many years to make even a small dent in the nationwide supply of Chinglish.

I did find one funny sign in Beijing while we were there.

New Concepty English

One sucks, but the other is oh so easy to get along with.

New Concepty English

Sign seen near a fountain.



Don't play in it, and don't make fun of it either.

New Concepty English for Education of Weekend

Beware of random grumpy sheep.



This is a menu item from one of our favorite restaurants. It is regional cuisine from Western China. There are two different restaurants that we go to, and both are excellent. The regional food here in Jiangsu Province is heavy on the fish, which isn't bad, but also heavy on the oil and sugar, and we don't like it too much. However, this Western Chinese stuff, which has come here with the western migrant workers, is seriously good food.

Much of Western China is Muslim, and this cuisine represents that influence. It is heavy on the lamb and mutton, and has spices similar to Arabic foods. During my time in France, I developed a taste for Arab food, but as some of the dishes are also heavy on the cumin and chili peppers, this stuff also help assuage the family craving for Mexican food. It ain't quite the same, but it's close enough to scratch the itch (there are some "Mexican Restaurants" in Suzhou, but let's not go there. Literally).

They also have another menu item known as "impertinent sheep", but I don't have a picture of that one. When it comes to taking menu pictures, I'm a bit shy ("sheepish?"), because Chinese waiters and waitresses really hover. Actually, that one may be from our other favorite restaurant. Honestly, I'm not sure, as some of the restaurants seem to have previous editions of the menu still in circulation, so I can't always remember what I've seen where. If that isn't confusing enough, remember, as I've said before, that we don't actually know the names of our even our favorite restaurants. We have therefore dubbed this one "The Camel Restaurant", as it has a lighted yellow camel above the entrance.

My guess is that that other sheep is "impertinent" because that is a synonym for "saucy". So, with the Chinese penchant for bizarre literal translations, the mutton with sauce became the impertinent one. At least that one has an explanation at all, because I have no idea why this one is so irritable.

The best part (other than the food itself), is that we can feed the entire family at this outfit for about 15 dollars. We go every Thursday.

New Concepty English for Education of Weekend

Go on, just do it!

I suppose that it is better than going to a "scatological" hospital.

New Concepty English for Education of Weekend

Four samples of signs from local scenic areas. I think that they are threatening us.

New Concepty English for Education of Weekend

This is a business card from a shop in Shanghai that I went to because I really needed some biggilet lie fallowpants. I think "Welcome the lately old customer come" sounds like a good title for a short story.

New Concepty English for Education of Weekend

My semi-weekly roundup of fractured Chinese English.

As I said, last week I helped take the 4th grade class on camp. We went to Agriworld, which I suppose could be described as a Communist Knott's Berry Farm. By that I mean it was built, and is maintained, with absolutely zero evidence that its owners/managers care whether or not anyone ever actually comes.

Everything was very haphazard and cursory, and many areas in it look like someone had a bright idea and then abandoned it. Apparently, it was once a state hydroponics farm of some sort, and has now been reworked into a facility for school outings. Being that it is China, who knows what the real story is. It could be the neglected project of some unambitious child of a Party bigshot, or it could literally be the property of the Chinese Army (I'm not being facetious about that at all, the military has its fingers throughout the economy).

Still, there is fun to be had at Agriworld, and we all had a really good time at camp. At the gate, there are two big signs showing all of the available activities (several of which are derelict, or nowhere to be found). There are a lot of laughs to be had on these signs, but I gave close-ups of the two that amused me the most: for horse riding and for paintball.

New Concepty English for Education of Weekend

I try to avoid posting twice in one day, but oh well... I took this out of a bus window in downtown Suzhou. It is an advertisement for an apartment complex (or possibly a hotel), that is currently under construction somewhere. As usual, click for a larger image.




Why only big men? Why only fifty of them? Is fifty the total limit, or do we have to apply in groups of fifty? Is it big as in large, or big as in important? Is it like being a ten-cow wife? How big must a man be? Am I big enough? If I continue to lose weight in China, will I lose my qualification?

New Concepty English for Education of Weekend

My weekly post of creative uses for English in China.

One of the big reasons I wanted to move the family overseas in the first place was that we seemed to be settled into ruts in which we never did activities outside the house. Part of that was because Phoenix is so hot, but I can't use that as my whole excuse. Our lifestyle was just too sedentary, and I didn't know what to do about it. It felt that every day was a race from the time we woke up until we went to bed, and a lot of things that should be happening just were not.

One of the things that became emblematic of that to me was the fact that I had never actually taught my son to ride a bike. I always felt really guilty about it. So two weeks ago, I bought this bicycle for him. He is getting better by the day, although I'm still not willing to take him out on the streets. The bike was still wrapped in packing material when we bought it, so it wasn't until later that we got a chance to read all the Novelity English.



Click for larger images.

Emmelle is the brand name, so that makes sense at least. Beyond that, there are so many questions: Is the bike especially likely to fall down? or are you supposed to FEEL IT? The name could refer to Aeolus, a minor Greek god of wind, but why would someone put that much work into researching a mythical name without proofreading any of the other English? I guess feeling the wind is better than breaking it. "Ripals" are obviously "rivals", but are you competing with them for things to be "novel" as in new? Or perhaps for notoriety?

I'm so confused.

New Concepty English for Education of Weekend

This is the first of another weekly feature I'm going to start. It is dedicated in name to New Concepty Cuisine, a local restaurant that is, sad to say, no more. The kids had wanted to eat there just because the name was funny, but we never got the chance. One day the sign was there, and the next day it wasn't. Two days after that, a big new sign went up for the 369 restaurant. One day after that, the 9 fell off the sign and landed in the parking lot. I don't know if anyone was hurt.

In any case, this weekly post will not be about shoddy construction, but about all of the weird garbled English we see around here. As I said once before, English is often used for decorative purposes only, and verification and proofreading of that English is irrelevant. I'm not mocking the Chinese too harshly for that, because it does go both ways. For example, I've been wearing a tie to work that has Chinese characters on it, and the Taiwanese kids tell me they don't make any sense. Fair enough. Nevertheless, even when the English here is supposed to be saying something real, it still often makes no sense.

For this feature, the ground rules are that I am only going to use photos that I or the family have taken. If you wan't to see a lot more of this sort of thing, I recommend http://www.engrish.com/. It is primarily centered on Japan, but it's got good laughs.

This is the ATM closest to our house. The machines work the same here, although sometimes the number pads are reversed. They always have an option to choose English, although sometimes they don't tell you in English how to chose English. A variation on that are the ones that require you to choose English before you put your card in. If you fail to do that, you are going to have to figure out in Chinese how to get your card back. Lee got caught by that one a few days ago, but she limped her way through the Chinese menus and successfully made the withdrawal. An additional quirk is that the button labeled "Correct" means go back and correct your request, not that you are correct and now you can move on. I can't get used to that, and I'm always cancelling my transactions halfway through.

However, when you finally figure out all the steps, you do get the sweet victory of having your Transaction Comleted.

A society of illiterates

One of the main features of life so far in Chinese is what it feels like to live in a place in which you can't read anything. Humiliating doesn't even begin to describe it, although it would doubtless be more so if all of us Westerners were not all in the same boat around here. We live and work among dozens of college educated professionals who cannot read street signs and package labels. Actually, street names are not so bad, because they are almost always written both in Chinese characters and in pinyin (the Romanized version, but few Chinese can read it, so it doesn't really help all that much with taxis, directions, etc). When it comes to stores, at least we can look in windows and see what they are selling. A lot of product advertising has English as well, although often it is more for decorative purposes than for actual useful information. Verifying and proofreading English is irrelevant to the Chinese. The following is one example, from an ersatz "Western" restaurant. We have seen plenty of others.




I'm not exactly sure what Boston Butt is, but it looks tasty.

My real point here is what it does to your life and your way of thinking to live in an environment in which you cannot read and write. I've spent time in Europe. Not being able to talk to anyone is a pain, but you can always read enough to get by. If you know a bit of Latin, or one of the Latin languages, you can at least read signs in Europe. In China, all bets are off. We can't talk, we can't read, we can't write. We all are reduced to hoarding package labels so that we can buy the same thing in the store next time. We all carry around stacks of "Idiot Cards" listing place names and addresses in Chinese to show to taxi drivers so that we get where we are going, and then have some hope of getting home again.

One of our sets of Idiot Cards, note that one says Pizza Hut. We haven't tried it.

A few days ago, Lee went on our first evening date in China, leaving the kids home alone. I had a recommendation from another teacher on a good place to eat. It was a Chinese Muslim restaurant in downtown Suzhou. His directions on how to find it are a classic illustration of the predicament I am describing: "Go down to Bar Street, find the Shamrock (bar). The restaurant is across the street, look for the ladies wearing the little hats."

There you have it. College educated professionals, and the best we can do is tell each other to look for the ladies with the little hats. Actually, we couldn't even really tell the taxi driver where to take us. First, we had to ask around to even find someone who knew the Chinese name for "Bar Street", which is, of course, only what the Westerners call it for not knowing the real name of that one street that has a lot of bars on it. Then, we found an idiot card for another joint on Bar Street, and got the taxi driver to take us there. We had to walk nearly half a mile after that, looking for the Shamrock. And then for the ladies with the little hats. (Muslim headcoverings, by the way).

Incidentally, the food was excellent. Truly phenomenal. A lamb stew in a deep plate lined with bread. At least the menu was partly in English, although garbled. We are going to go back, but we have no idea what the name of the restaurant was, as it was written in Chinese (there was also something on the sign in Arabic). We took a business card from the register... it is our only hope.