Language Log

China has long had a love-hate relationship with the English language.  Since the late 19th century up till the mid-20th century, things were mostly peachy-creamy.  Then China fell under the tutelage of the Soviet Union and Russian linguistic influence, and English was largely shunned.  After the Sino-American love-fest initiated by Richard Nixon and Deng Xiaoping, English flourished once again as long as Deng was around and his successor Jiang Zemin, who actually knew some English, maintained a benign policy toward the language of Shakespeare.  But as increasingly hardline communist leaders rose to power, English came under attack until now, with the puritanical Marxist-Maoist Xi Jinping assuming full-blown dictatorial status, English is under the gun.

Sign on a truck in Hong Kong:

François Lang saw this sign at the local farmers market:

From AntC:

From Nick Tursi in Qatar:

From Tom Mazanac:

I came across this sign on the subway recently:

On the inside (N.B.) doors of a lift in Wuhan (yes that [in]famous Wuhan):

The following photo is from Guanghzhou and was taken recently by David Lobina's partner who’s there now. 

Notice in a men's room at Dunhuang, far western Gansu Province:

Photo taken outside a casino in Tainan, Taiwan:

Dunhuang (see here and here) is turning out to be a Chinglish goldmine.  Maybe that's because it's so far out in the remote, desolate, desert northwest.

Sign at Dunhuang, at the western end of the Gansu Corridor in northwestern China, where I did my doctoral research more than half a century ago (there were no signs like this in those days):

Photograph taken in Hong Kong: