Culture:

Signs in China

Tuesday, 12 September 2017

I’ve posted on the weird and wonderful signs you encounter in China on previous trips and I certainly saw plenty on my recent Silk Road journey.

▲ Sometimes the signs were potentially very useful, but never seemed to appear at the right time. On more than one occasion I came down to a hotel lobby in the morning to find it had just been washed with something so slippery you could pretend you were ice-skating across the tiles. On those occasions there was never a warning sign.

◄ I don’t think they were really congratulating you on how tall your child had grown at the cablecar ticket window at Huangshan in Anhui Province, truthfully you were just being told ‘tough luck, we’re charging you more for your big kid.’

▲ Maintaining civilization was clearly important, this was on a highway service centre urinal in the men’s toilets. Careful when you pee!

▲ Now just behave! This was on the descent from lookout tower on the final stage of the Great Wall of China – the Overhanging Great Wall at Jiayuguan in Gansu Province in the far west of China.

▲ Nearby at the Jiayuguan Fort there were more warnings and again civilization came into it. I frequently noted ‘Warm Prompts’ which in English would generally have been a ‘Polite Notice.’

▲ I really liked this warning sign at the Dongguan Grand Mosque in Xining, Qinghai Province. Low-cut dresses and short skirts? At other times of day they’re fine.

◄ Lots of things they were willing to provide for the Three Lesser Gorges river trip from Wushan in Chongqing Province. But ‘special population supplies?’ Condoms perhaps?

▲ I definitely agree that surmounting during a thunderstorm is never a good idea.