Chinglish

Chinese does not always translate smoothly to English, so I see many signs that are amusing and others that leave me scratching my head trying to figure out what they mean.  Many of the signs are warnings and they are unfailingly polite and helpful.  The sign for a newly mopped floor does not say "Caution," but rather " Warm prompt."  It is a good idea not to climb and fall, but if you do, fall (slide) carefully.

At Pingyao, there was a walkway about six feet wide around the Wang family compound with walls on either side.  And on the wall was this sign:

Huh?  I hadn't a clue.  It turns out that the wall has cutouts in them and you should not jump across (span) them.  So you can walk on the wall?  No.  Later there is a simpler sign that says "no climbing."  Another sign at the same site:

Huh?  Line up for what?  Again, I didn't have a clue.  It turns out it was shorthand for stay to the right and don't push people.  Oh.

This very helpful sign was on an escalator.  You should stand straight and not lean over the side.  And this one was in the middle of a park.  Good advice, I think.

I liked this one when we walked through the Panda Center:

It took me a few minutes to decipher that we were on a one way path through the panda nursery.

In the lobby of my hotel in Chengdu, the polite signs tell you which cups are clean and where to place your cup after you drink the tea.

Translations of food names often left me scratching my head.  This very simple sign was near the bread at a breakfast buffet.

At first I thought it meant wheat bread, but I noticed some twisted rolls also, so did it mean braided rolls?  Or something else completely?

These signs were outside a restaurant, proudly listing the specialties of the house.  Some of the translations are not helpful and hardly appetizing sounding to westerners.  Ancient city bowl bald?  Shanxi oily meat?  And some are just indecipherable.  What is Pingyao Wang?  Or Fat calf kao lao lao?

Many restaurants have menus of dozens of pages with pictures of each dish and its name in Chinese and English.  I'm not sure I would order "Salt helps chicken feet" but I have a pretty good idea what it is.  But "Razor blade li xiang"?  I haven't a clue even after looking at the picture.

Typos are common on both t-shirts and signs.

A sign outside a nondescript storefront said "Habit training center."  I wondered if they teach you good habits or help you break bad ones.

Sometimes the confusion is not in writing.  All of the Chinese who deal with tourists have an app on their phones that allow them to speak or type something in Chinese and have it come out in English.  I purchased a necklace in a jewelry store from a clerk using her phone translator.  Last week, in the middle of a massage, the therapist stopped and spoke into her phone.  The phone then said to me, "Your meridians are not as clear as I would like.  Would you like to rest for two minutes?"  I politely said yes although I had no idea what we were talking about.  I managed to decipher the second sentence:  she wanted me to extend the massage, but the first sentence left me mystified.  For three days I wondered what she had actually said that came out as "my meridians are not clear."  Well, it turned out that the joke was on me.  A few days later on my Yangtze cruise, a Chinese doctor gave a talk on traditional therapies such as acupuncture and acupressure.  He began by explaining the scientific basis for those therapies - the meridian channels that run through the body and connect various organs.  Who knew?  So there really was a problem with my meridians.  Who knew?

And sometimes, no matter how many times I read a sign, I never succeed in deciphering it.

The English translations at many museums and historical sites are very impressive sounding.  For example, the introduction to this museum:

The Sichuan Science and Technology Museum is a large science popularization infrastructure in Sichuan for implementation of the strategy of prospering Sichuan with science and education, building a powerful cultural province and comprehensive enhancement of scientific quality of citizens.

Totally understandable.  But in Pingyao, I went to sites that are not visited by many westerners, and it was clear that the English signs had been translated by a Chinese speaker with a very rudimentary knowledge of English.  I'm not making fun at all; the unknown translator knows far more English than I do Chinese, and I appreciate his efforts.  But I want to share my amusement and bemusement.

Here are some signs about the first Wang and two descendants:

And one more that didn't photograph well:

Wang Shi, whose surname is Cheng Zhai, from Taiyuan, moved to ... due to the war.  During the period of Huangquin in 1323-1313, he is the tenant, gradually for farming, and then devoted to the trade.  He has passed 28, children all over the world.

The comma mystifies me.  Did he pass away at 28 or have 28 children?  And I want to know how Wang Ziqiao became immortal before he passed away. And most importantly, what does it mean to be abolished, and why would someone be abolished due to his integrity and frank?

Now for descriptions of the house.

Then we went to the Ma Family Courtyard which had even better signs.

My guide was also surprised that behind every successful man is a bad woman because the Chinese saying is similar to the English one.  But that was how it was written in Chinese, too.  Hmmm....

Anyway, Pingyao is the most delightful place that I visited and the wonderful signs made it that much more fun.

Chengdu - City of Giants

Chengdu is another large city; I'm still waiting to see the countryside.  But there were two giant things to see in Chengdu: the Giant Buddha of Leshan and the giant pandas.  The Giant Buddha is carved out of stone and is over 230 feet tall.  The people standing at the bottom of the picture don't even come up to his toenails.  First we took a short boat ride to get a good look at the whole statue from the river, and then we climbed up a few hundred steps to see the statue up close and personal.  Very impressive.



And what can you say about the giant pandas?  I know they are bears, but they really are cute.  There are dozens of them at the panda center, so we walked through for a couple of hours, watching them.  We went early in the morning when they are most active and got to see two youngsters wrestling.  Most of the older pandas just eat bamboo and sleep a lot.  The nursery was mostly empty as only two babies were born this year.

Kasey and Ruby joined me in Chengdu to visit the Giant Buddha and the giant pandas.

Besides the giants, in Chengdu I saw a few interesting things about modern Chinese life.  As usual, the central park in the city is the People's Park, and as usual, retired people were ballroom dancing, line dancing, or exercising.  It does seem strange to me to see people ballroom dancing in the middle of a park with a boombox as accompaniment.  But that was not the strangest thing that I saw in People's Park.  Of course, the parents of unmarried thirty somethings have a marriage mart although it is less elaborate than the one in Shanghai.  There, the posters generally included a picture of the prospective mate.  In Chengdu, the papers have just the important information about the "child" ... his age, profession, salary, and whether he has a car or house.

Locals sit for hours in a tea house where the tea is served in large thermoses.

Some of the people are not just drinking tea.  While sitting in the restaurant or elsewhere in the park, someone is cleaning their ears with a set of instruments that look like they belong to a dentist.  My guide proudly told me that ear cleaning was a Chengdu specialty.  When I mentioned that I had seen it once in Xi'an and wondered about it, she became very defensive, telling me that the practice was originated in Chengdu and could not be authentic in Xi'an.

Okay.  Chengdu is the city of giants and ear cleaning.  Who knew?

Xi'an

The weather forecast was for rain all three days I was in Xi'an but just when I arrived, the rain stopped and the skies cleared, so my guide took me directly to the old walled city. The wall is intact with a twenty foot wide walkway on top of it. I jumped on a bike and rode the nine miles path.

Unlike Pingyao, a large modern city has grown up around the not-so-small walled city. 

Modern Xi'an has a population of over nine million. Just a small town in China.

After my ride, I went to a local restaurant for a dumpling banquet.  The specialty of Xi'an

is dumplings of every variety and in different shapes.

The next day I went to the site that has been bringing tourists to Xi'an for forty years: 

the terra cotta soldiers. In ancient times, when an emperor died, his servants were

buried alongside him - not a strong inducement to work for an emperor, especially

an older one.  But the first emperor of the Qin Dynasty decided to be buried with

symbolic, rather than real, soldiers. While still very much alive, he oversaw the

construction of thousands of lifesize soldiers, officers, cavalry, archers, chariots,

and horses.  Reportedly, more than 700,000 laborers worked on the project over

a period of more than thirty years.

The Chinese have dug out trenches with some of the over one thousand unique figures,

and enclosed them in huge pavilions.  They also established a museum were you can

look at a few of the figures up close and personal. Pictures do not do this one justice;

this is one place you really have to see for yourself.

After we visited the Xi'an City Museum, my guide told me we would be going to the

Provincial Museum which included much more.  I heard "provincial" as in small

and backward, but he meant the museum for the province (state) which of course

was more comprehensive than the city museum.  Both were excellent with an

overview of the history of the region from prehistoric man through the present.  

Then we visited the Big Wild Goose Pagoda. According to ancient stories of 

Buddhists, there were two branches, for one of which eating meat was 

not a taboo. One day, they couldn't find meat to buy. Upon seeing a group 

of big wild geese flying by, a monk said to himself: 'Today we have no meat. 

I hope the merciful Bodhisattva will give us some.' At that very moment, 

the leading wild goose broke its wings and fell to the ground. All the monks were 

startled and believed that Bodhisattva showed his spirit to order them to 

be more pious. They established a pagoda where the wild goose fell and 

stopped eating meat.  Yeah, I guess that makes sense.

At a break for lunch, I encountered these eco-friendly chopsticks.  Small sanitary

disposable wooden tips come in the little pink package.  You insert the tip

in the blue, ceramic washable body of the chopsticks.

Finally we visited the Great Mosque in the Moslem quarter of the city.  Xi'an was the

eastern (Chinese) terminus of the Silk Road which took many routes to the west,

ending in India, Damascus, Cairo, Turkey, Venice, and other several other places. 

Because of the Silk Road, Moslems came to Xi'an as early as the seventh century,

and there is still a large Moslem population. Well, large is relative. The guide told me

there were over 200,000 Moslems in Xi'an and I thought that was a lot.  But he said,

yes but in a city of nine million, it is nothing.

Walking down the streets of the Moslem quarter was like being in a cross between

the Kasbah and China.  Food vendors constantly shout out their servings, something

that does not happen in other neighborhoods, so there is a loud, vibrant feel to the

street.  But all the vendors look Chinese.

I understand that the Moslems do not eat pork, the primary meat in the Chinese diet,

but there is one thing I could not understand.  In both Xi'an and Pingyao the food stalls

sell squid and octopus on skewers. But we are more than 1,500 miles from the ocean.

This can't be a traditional food.  When I asked the guides, they both said that

transportation is good in modern China and you can get fresh seafood inland. Yes, but.

This can't be a traditional food here.

Traditionally, every city in China had a bell tower and a drum tower.  The Chinese day

had twelve hours, each the equivalent of two hours. During the day, the bell would

be rung to mark each hour and at night, they would sound the drum.  I am staying at

the Bell Tower Hotel and have this lovely view of the bell tower which is lit up at night.