Olympics Ban Cannot Break Beijing’s Love for Chinglish
Chinglish = Chinese English
BEIJING (Reuters Life!) - With the Olympics nearing, Beijing has made heroic efforts to wipe Chinglish off menus and road-signs, but this quirky, nonsensical language has one last, seemingly unassailable, stronghold: the chests of millions.
A stroll down any street in the city of 15 million exposes English-speakers to a parade of brightly colored and mentally baffling T-shirts, whose crimes against grammar range from spelling mistakes to paragraphs of total gibberish.
But most Beijingers don’t care.
A woman walks past a sign that reads: “We Perfume and Make-up You” outside a store selling perfumes and cosmetic products in Beijing April 16, 2007.
[Photo: REUTERS/Claro Cortes IV]
“I gradually became indifferent to the words,” said a young woman, wearing a brown T-shirt adorned with nonsensical sentences as she shopped in the trendy Xidan area in the city’s west.
“Everybody wears them. The design and color are most important,” she added, declining to be named.
Official campaigns to eradicate embarrassing, erroneous English translations before an expected 500,000 overseas visitors arrive for the Games saw Beijing get serious with Chinglish.
A hotline was set up for the public to report the language, and big bucks spent correcting hundreds of road signs such as the infamous “Racist Park” signpost for the Ethnic Minorities Park.
“Some of the translations are confusing or even offensive to foreign visitors,” Chen Lin, a consultant with the Beijing Speaks Foreign Languages Program told the China Daily newspaper.
“As Beijing is developing to an international metropolis, we must change this situation,” he said.
BLIND SPOT
For many, the inexpensive shirts sporting the banned language are an irresistible deal, even if their meaning is a mystery.
“It’s not a problem. Almost all my shirts have English on them,” said another shopper in Xidan whose top was emblazoned with “Seasea Surf” and disordered descriptions of waves.
Retailers who sell thousands of Chinglish shirts every week said most shoppers have a similar devil-may-care attitude.
“The designers just copy the pictures and words from TV. Nobody knows what it means,” said stallholder Xiao Fang.
Her current top seller spells out the perplexing message “Stone walls do prison make” in stitched-on sequins.
After studying English for 12 years at school, Fang said she knew some of the words but didn’t know their meanings.
“I have forgotten most of it,” she confessed. “The teacher just asked us to recite. It’s not a good way to learn English.”
Inside a 13-storey mall’s warren of clothing shops, 21-year old Xinxin’s box-like stall is draped with fashionably long white T-shirts all carrying blockish, black English slogans.
She also did not know what the words meant but said she had, on occasion, asked her factory to correct the English.
“If a customer insists we change a word we do it. Twice in the past Chinese and foreigners said the English isn’t good. But as long as it’s not a bad word, it’s no problem,” she said.
CLOSET FANS
For some Beijingers who pay attention to the meaning of their wardrobe, Chinglish is inspirational.
“The best Chinglish embodies a kind of childish yet devilish cleverness, which can be lost if one tries too hard to capture it,” said fashion designer Scarlet Page, whose sells T-shirts with deliberate Chinglish online.
“There is no way the government can police the T-shirts,” she said. “I don’t think the average Chinese bureaucrat is even aware of the sheer amount of Chinglish walking the streets.”
Seattle-born Page says her favorite is the enigmatically romantic “I’ve written you letters that I’d like to send. If you would just send one to me.”
Others see depths in Chinglish’s superficiality.
For her latest project, photographer O Zhang posed models wearing Chinglish T-shirts in front of Olympic icons such as the Bird’s Nest national stadium.
For her, the bastard language is a powerful metaphor for, and marker of, the incredible speed of China’s development and its desire to catch up with the rest of the world.
“We want to achieve so many big goals, but we are making a lot of mistakes, because we want too many things too fast,” New York-based Zhang said.
“We should all collect some Chinglish T-shirts, because they record a special time in Chinese history.”
(Additional reporting by Michael Wei; Editing by Miral Fahmy)
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