The small print says this:
Welcome you to visit Mutianyu Great Wall. For your and others’ security, Please pay attention to the following items:
1. Please don’t carve arbitrarily on the Great Wall. Protect one brick and one stone consciously.
2. For your personal safety, Please don’t climb crenelated wall.
3. Please walk carefully on abrupt slope and dangerous way. Don’t run and pushes to pash violently and the laugh and frolic.
…
6. The fire is forbidden here. Please don’t take tinder.
Let’s just stipulate that giggling at signs in “Chinglish” — poor translations of Chinese into English – springs forth from a not-very-nice place in the American soul.
Read about this place, and get a few more giggles before you get grim again on Perceptive Travel or on USA Today.
Other stories I’ve written on language and travel:
- There Must Be Some Misunderstanding: My seatmates have an argument during a flight from Shenzhen to Beijing.
- Dissolving the Language Barrier: In Mexico, I find myself speaking a language called “Spench”.
Please tell me you rode that ridiculous toboggan thing down. Only in China I tell you.
P