Language Log

I was planning to write a post on this chain of phenomenal gas stations cum country / convenience stores (gives a new meaning to that expression), so was tickled when jhh beat me to mentioning it in this comment.

Several days ago, i visited one in the outskirts of Dallas.  As per many things Texas, it was BIG.  Outside, it had more than 80 pumps, and inside it had more than 80 cashiers.  The store stretched on and on and on, longer than a football field.  I felt like I was in a Star Wars space ship cantina.  The store-station was equal to ten of our biggest Wawa station-stores, which I treasure.  It had a parking lot that accommodated hundreds of cars.

Photograph taken at the Ningbo airport: those items are not allowed to be taken into the city of Ningbo.

zìyuàn fàngqì wùpǐn tóuqì xiāng

自愿放弃物品投弃箱

"disposal bin for items voluntarily discarded"

Mark Swofford, who is visiting the Jiaobanshan (Jiaoban Mountain) Park in Fuxing District of Taoyuan City, sent me this photograph of a sign introducing the area:

AntC sent in this snippet of Taiwan history overlaying today's native culture rights movement:  Taiwan News (in English); Liberty Times Net (in Mandarin).  The articles tell a tale of vast amounts of gold stashed away by Japanese colonialists and treasure seekers trying to find it now three quarters of a century later.  The photograph of the excavation site in the latter article looks pretty hit or miss.

Allegedly, the fleeing Japanese occupiers buried gold somewhere near Taitung (city; county) in the  Jhihben Hot Springs (Zhīběn wēnquán 知本溫泉) area. This is a steep gorge running into the mountains southwest of Taitung. There are plentiful thermal springs in the gorge, with huge resort-hotels that (before Covid) were a magnet for Japanese tourists.

It's been a while since we have posted on this sub-genre of Chinglish:

My parents are touring China and spotted this very thoughtful sign…
byu/yumzau infunny

(reddit)

Vito Acosta sent in this photograph of a sign at Tianmu Lake ( Tiānmù hú 天目湖) in Jiangsu:

For a natural demonstration of what diglossia is in the Chinese-speaking context, watch this 0:53 video.  The speaker begins in local Xi'anese (also called Guānzhōng huà 关中话 / 關中話), but at 0:20, when he suddenly realizes that he is talking to a television reporter, after hilariously sprucing himself up a bit, he abruptly switches to Modern Standard Mandarin (MSM):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKwjpGVaf4Q

Photograph taken by Yuanfei Wang in Baihou Town 百侯镇, Tai Po 大埔, Guangdong Province:

So, kurzgesagt, reads the text that runs along all four sides of this two-millennia-old iron writing instrument excavated from an archeological site in London six years ago:

A friend was visiting in Lijiang, Yunnan Province (southwestern China) earlier this week.  She stayed in Yuhu 玉湖 village where Joseph Rock (1884-1962; the famous Austrian-American explorer, geographer, linguist, and botanist) lived nearly a century ago at the foot of Yulong 玉龙 Mountain.  The area around Lijiang has become a famous tourist destination, not only for the beauty of its natural scenery, but for the richness of its local culture (more about that below).  While in Lijiang, my friend was surprised to come upon signs for unisex toilets:

Here is some signage for such toilets in China:

Boris Kootzenko spotted this truly bizarre banner at a service area on the highway leading west from Shanghai in Anhui Province:

Sign on an inn in Shangri-La, Yunnan, China:

Janet Williams sent in this language selection panel from the official Sri Lanka Tourism website: