China: Its English = Chinglish

The hegemon's idiom has prestige, so people try to use it though they don't really command it. I remember being reduced to happy convulsions when E.M. Forster's Muslim hero in Passage to India encouraged himself by saying, "One can but die the once!" Throughout our China trip we found instances of English misused in the effort to add panache to a product. The motto of gated multiplexes going up near Guilin: "Still excellent Manor So Scenery Life."

The most astonishing testament to our language's prestige I found in a business magazine, Expression, published for airline travelers and hotel guests.* The magazine, handsomely laid out and with sharp color photos, is printed on coated paper finer than any American magazine's. Except for article titles, which are given in Chinese and English, and article synopses and parts of a few ads, all the magazine's text is in Chinese. But so great is the aura of our language that China's most glamorous people, its economic superstars, have to be sprinkled with it. Here, seven synopses:

In the globalization progress, the Chinese business enterprise is awarding social responsibilities in the shoulders. This is the inevitable process of growing up, also the good choice if Chinese business enterprise to do spring.

Liu Wui Heart Farming in Seasons. By experienced China economy changes for several years, Liu Wei more and more thinks himself is a very tiny, because facing the world too abstruse, proposed question too formidable, there upon one become more adore and honest.

Jiang Jun Decisive Kick. To portrayed Rong Wei as a mid- to- high brand marketing, he moves it in a car, have the exquisite surgical.

Hun Jun Controls Second and Third Front. One week a month to run around outside, the average one-half to one day run a city. Eventually more than 50 county towns throughout the country.

Guo Jihong Dancing in the World Dreaming. A woman who attempts to melt herself into Television Arts and life is not lonely, not complains what is gain or less. She will be happy as well.

Zou Qifang BDS with Two Hands to Grasp. 8 years marketing management experience, and two years manages theories from The Wharton School, all finding out to use in start a business of 7,8 years of ground.

Pure and Pretty Concretion in West Pond. Peacefully sit in the afternoon west pond, this is the living appearance which looks forward endocentrically, don’t need prosperous, don’t need extravagance, needs pure river water and a wisp of sound in the boughs and feelings is slim to the utmost in the very tiny breeze.

And three ads:

Cheer Jagermeister Up High. The Jagermeister effect blended the feelings of tasty Jagermeister in the bar, expressing a happiness, wild, relax, brave, share with friend topic.

TAG Heuer World Cruises Exhibition of Beautiful. The images deduce beautiful, the moment touch the abyss of time. The watch of TAG Heuer expects to a kind of more emollient, more vividly way to express the brand fine wishes that establish a fairer and equal world through their hard work.

Have a good reputation in Sanya, can be Comparable to International Standards.



*“This periodical is designated for flight passengers of the Hainan Airlines Co., Ltd, China Xinhau Airlines Co., Ltd., Chang’an Airlines Co., Ltd, Shanxi Airlines Co., Ltd. and Deer Jet Co. Ltd[,] Luckyair Co., Ltd. This periodical is designated for room guests by Hainan Xinguo Hotel, Hainan Kangle Garden HNA Holiday Inn, Sanya HNA Hotel, Hainan Bo’ao HNA Hotel, Hangzhou Huagang HNA Hotel, Hainan Meilan HNA Hotel, Beijing Yanjing HNA Hotel, Shanghai HNA Hotel, Shenzhen HNA Hotel.”

China: Guilin*

The China most Westerners carry around in our heads comes from the province of Guilin, where views like this occur at every turn.

Why do they? Whence the scenery, the mist, the absurdly beautiful mountains?

From what I understand, the mountains are the result of volcanic activity under limestone domes. The mist is due to the (non-rainy) season of our visit, sand blown from Tibetan deserts, and illegal surface mining and subsequent burning of soft coal.

Chinese art work has taught tourists that the place to see Guilin's landscape is from, or alongside, the Li River. Today, tourists go by motorboat, and the trip includes a meal cooked at the back of the boat.

While a meal cooks below them, Irene, Nettie, Lucy, and our tour companion Ester Martinez agree to pose.

On the Li River also is a famous rock anomaly, Elephant Trunk Hill.

For the tourists who come here, the Guilin elders understand that the ambient motif has to be elephants. The children's playscape

the bridges

and the benches

For tourists unexcited by elephants, the elders, knowing from their youth that the island facing Elephant Trunk Hill is a hangout for neckers, call it Love Island and fill it with embracing statues.




In Love Island's parking lot gather the trinket and fruit sellers and three young women from "ethnic minority" groups in their native costumes. For pocket change you can have your picture taken with them.

Guilin's limestone mountains are full of caves and grottoes, and we were taken to the most famous, Reed Flute Cave, so called because the reeds used for making flutes grow, or grew, by the cave mouth. I'm not a big cave lover, but this one is spectacular, a fact only hinted at in my pictures. (For overlit views of the cave, go to http://www.molon.de/galleries/China/Guanxi/Reed/).

The photo I'll keep is the one everybody takes well: a stone city across an unrippled black pond that perfectly reflects it.

China: A Visit to the Wall*

Our second day in China we climbed the Great Wall at Badalling, its highest point. The Wall there runs beside the logo for China’s 2008 Olympics: “One World One Dream.” (Look hard.)

Here are Lucy, Nettie, and Irene as we started to climb in the blustery cold. Nettie and Irene made it to the Wall’s highest point, which is, they tell me, beyond the farthest tower at the left of the photo above. I got only as far as the second tower in the same photo.

While waiting for the women to come back, I took an emblematic picture in which the river apparently winding through the rugged hills is in fact a highway.

China's Lions*

For the Chinese, the royal animal is the lion. Which is why public buildings and many commercial establishments in China—and Chinese restaurants the world over—have a pair of lion statues beside the entrance.

As you enter, the lion on your right is a male and has his right paw on an orb, symbolizing power and authority. The lion on your left, a female, has her left paw on a baby lion, symbolizing fecundity and life’s continuity.

Symbolizing authority is no problem: an orb is a globe or a ball, and the male lion has his paw on something round and solid. But the lion cub, neither round nor solid, generally becomes a wadded pulp beneath its mother’s paw.

Not in Shanghai’s Yuyuan Park, where we find the cub above, to which an exceptional sculptor 100 years ago, working in and against tradition, gave an identity despite the tiny creature’s helplessness.