English is pretty much the international language and it takes many shapes around the world. In China, it takes turns that are sometimes hard for a native English speaker to follow.
Following are photos of signs that we have taken along our California Native tours of Yunan Province in China.
Although they don’t follow our idea of English, we are sure that the persons who made the signs speak English much better than we speak Chinese.
| From a hotel in Dali: |
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| From a hotel in Beijing: |
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| On a street corner in Lijiang: |
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| Sign leading to a temple at the top of a hill in Lijiang: |
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| Sign at Leaping Tiger Gorge: |
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| Sign at Wild Elephant Preserve in Jing Hong: |
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| This sign was intended to warn visitors of slippery salt on the trail: |
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Traveling through China, especially in the more off the beaten path areas, is always fascinating. And rarely visited Yunan Province, spanning an area from the tropics to the Himalayan highlands, is home to more ethnic groups than any other province in China.
On my 3 trips to China, we always got a chuckle out of the inaccurate translations, albeit with a nod to their enviable command of English compared to our lack of Chinese. At the time, a common phrase in North America was “bite me”. Some marketing guru in China had translated the phrase and we spied scores of t-shirts shouting “eat some skin” . Ah, the joys of language!