More than twenty years ago, I wrote a science fiction novel called "China Babel" (still unpublished) in which I described a time in the future when Chinese would merge with English. Judging from current usage, the future of the mid-90s is fast impinging on the present.
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Jenny Chu spotted this ad from a campaign for Nescafe currently being shown in the Hong Kong MTR:
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From Caitlin Schultz:
I was eating at a place called Yaso Tangbao in Midtown Manhattan recently and snapped these photos of Chinese characters and ampersands. I thought it was unusual!
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Pro-Taiwanese language poster on a wall in Tainan (courtesy of Tim Clifford):
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Sticker at a gas station near the Richmond airport, courtesy of Jonathan Smith:
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What's going on here? How did Justin Bieber become an infix (more precisely tmesis) inserted between the "O" and the "K" of "OK"?
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Hard core communist journal for Party members gets hip with English in the title of an article:
"@中共党员: 你该get的精神品质和追求!" (Qiúshì 求是 ["Seeking Truth"], 2018, #3)
I will translate and explicate the title fully below. For the moment, it needs to be emphasized that this article was published in the CCP's leading theoretical journal, Qiúshì 求是 ("Seeking Truth"), which is said to be "yòu hóng yòu zhuān 又红又专 ("both red and expert", i.e., "both socialist-minded and professionally competent"). It appears in "Dǎodú 导读" ("Guided reading"), a column on the official website of the journal. As far as communism in China goes, you can't get more serious than this.
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