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On a trip to China last year, we saw so many funny signs that we filled an entire album with them. Some are quirky (common expressions in Mandarin that simply don't translate well into English), some are obviously just "machine translation gone wrong", and some are laugh-out-loud funny. Here are a few of my favourites.
The Shanghai Park Rules are lengthy, but worth reading. (I love the fact that teasing the crickets is presumably permissible, as long as you are doing it for commercial purposes - capitalism is a very strong driving force in modern China!)
I am told that the sign over the urinal is an English-to-Mandarin-to English translation of Neil Armstrong's famous "One small step for a man - one giant leap for mankind" - so you can guess the intended purpose. (It can be very tricky to "go" at this public toilet if you suffer from "stage fright" - there is a continuous stream of Western tourists - not all of whom are men! - who come in to photograph the sign!)
The helpful "You are here" sign was spotted in Shanghai airport. We were having some trouble finding our connecting flight, and the first airport staffer we found had very limited English, but with a bit of sign language, she indicated we should follow her. She guided us a couple of hundred metres to this sign, smiled and bowed ("Job done!"), and left us.
And as for "More than toilet" - well, what more can be said?
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