Pu Tong Khwa...! (The old language)

I've only been here about a week and here's some of the peculiarities I've noticed in China already. It's a great place most of the time... comfortable, clean and the people are polite... but somethings stand out pretty glaringly... and are often funny for the western traveller!

- One symbolic example: While travelling from Beijing to Beidaihe by train, we chanced upon a volume control panel for the speakers that were piping music into the rail car. Using the term "volume control panel" is a bit of an exaggeration - what it really was, was a single switch with just two settings - 'On' or 'Off'!

- Yesterday while on our way to dinner, we stopped at the Hard Rock Cafe in Beijing to grab something to drink. It was quite obviously an old public building of sorts and carried this huge sign on the front. Now I'm sure they meant it to sound differently when read in Mandarin but the English translation was probably a little too direct: "No Drugs or Nuclear Weapons Allowed!" Delphy couldnt help joke about how he'd now have to leave his backpack outside with the valet - "Oh.. I thought this place didnt discriminate against people with weapons of mass destruction!"

Now you have to understand that Mandarin is a language that deals in concepts - for example 'Taxi' is actually "rented car" and 'Shop' is "products/ goods building". So you're often putting two existing concepts together to make up new ones. They use the words "Steel"+"Ground" to indicate railway tracks and so on and so forth. So these next two examples shouldnt be all that funny to understand. Unfortunately the translations written underneath are often direct english equivalents of what is being promoted and so you have these grammatical gaffes:

- A sticker on the side of an SUV: 'Jeep Off Road Package'

- But my personal favourite was an ad-sign for a new apartment building coming up around the Central Business District (CBD): 'Exquisite platform viewing for far Beijing'