Anyone who has been to China or any other country where English is the second language knows how humorous a translated sign can be. I come across them a lot, but I don’t always have my camera handy. My New Year’s resolution is to carry my camera wherever I go and to take as many pictures as my battery will let me. I don’t want to go home to find that I don’t have as many pictures as I should.

I know that whomever is translating these from Chinese to English tries very hard, but sometimes I think that they should hire a more fluent speaker of the foreign language if it is going to be in the public eye all the time. There are enough expats here in China who wouldn’t mind taking over the job for a small fee. But then again, if all the signs were proper, I wouldn’t have some much to laugh at as I walked around town.

Below are just a few of the many humorous signs I’ve seen. I have a pretty funny picture that I got from inside of a taxi in Shanghai, but that I don’t have it uploaded to Blogger yet. It said something to effect of not allowing psychos in the taxi. Heh. I’ll make a point to start taking more pictures as I see them, and I’m sure I’ll see plenty.

On the back door of our hotel in Shenzhen.

One of the stores in Hangzhou. Do they know what monopolized means?

Here are a few pictures from our little trip down to Hong Kong. We were only there a few days, but I must say that I really liked it there. It was a bit too expensive for my blood, but the city was clean(and I mean very clean), easy to get around(I loved the subway), and it had many interesting things to go see(even though we were only able to see a few of them). One of the things I really liked was the big buildings. I’ve never been to New York City, but I imagine that Hong Kong is a lot like it. As soon as I got off the subway and walked out to the street, I could feel the buildings hovering over me. I felt like a little bitty ant. At night the buildings were really fantastic. The light shows they put on were something else. I liked walking down the streets just to see all the different displays on them.

Nice photographing skills, Phil! I wish these were the birds visiting my bird feeder!

This is another picture taken at Hong Kong Park. We don’t have arches like these back home, but they are nearly every where in China. I remember hearing about their significance at one point, but my memory fails me right now. If I ever have a big enough garden in my backyard, I am going to put a slew of these in it. They are like gigantic frames and the scenery of the garden are their pictures. Gotta love Chinese architecture.

A nice place to wander around and get lost.

Okay, this doesn’t have much to do with Hong Kong, but after Phil took a picture of it at one of the McDonald’s we ate at, I couldn’t resist putting it on here. You have to admit that it’s pretty freaking hysterical. Before you go thinking that this is just some more Chinglish, I have to tell you that the original message on the box was – Sweet Taro Pie. Taro is a potato. Phil just thought it looked much more interesting the other way and photoshopped it. After giving it the name, we’ve both had a hard time calling it by it’s original one. You must know how nick names stick, especially if they are funny ones. The real kicker is the picture of the girl kissing the guy. The expression on his face is just great. The “Caution, I’m hot” adds to the humor as well.

Oh, my Sweet Tard Pie.

Take a looky at this graph and tell me something doesn’t look a little abnormal to you.

Maybe it is March Madness for blogs and no one has informed me, but for some reason the number of visits to my blog has sky rocketed during the first part of March. I can’t figure it out. Nothing much has changed. I know that I have been posting more lately than I did in the past month or so, but geez . . . I nearly got 62 people visit yesterday. Now granted, a few of them were me and Phil as we attempted to make the blog cooler, but the majority were people who visited on their own accord, stayed for a minute and read a post or two. Even my keyword search has increased. In March so far, I’ve had 28 searches lead to my blog. In the entirety of February, 34 visits were through keyword searches. I’ve started putting labels on my posts, but I don’t think that would cause that much of an increase. Whatever has sparked the interest in my blog, I hope that it continues. Comments and traffic keep me going and makes me think that someone out there actually cares what I’m writing. I’m sure other bloggers would agree.

Oh, and before I go, I’d like to introduce you to Ray. He is Chinese and lives in Beijing, but has a English blog. I thought that was pretty cool. If you would like to enter into his daily life via his blog you can go here – http://snow.blogsome.com/. I found it to be a very interesting read.