Believe what you read
One of the oddities of life here in China is the attempts at bilingual packaging and signage. There are many times when we see English words here. Sometimes it is a genuine attempt to offer a bilingual package. Other times it seems to be more of a fashion statement. In either case, the quality of the English used is... well, unique. I mean, it may not necessarily be inaccurate, it's just definitely not something written by a native speaker. One recent example is a menu we were using in Kunming the other week. Our group went to a place called Stone House Restaurant. (Good place. Beijing Lu, No. 427, in case you're interested.) The treat was that they offered Italian food. It wasn't an Italian restaurant--they had just bought the recipes from one--but, hey, in these parts you learn to appreciate "close enough". Not being a pizza person, nor in the mood for a mound of spaghetti, I was trying to decide between some chicken dish or Italian sausage. I was leaning toward the sausage, but the menu said that it came with "potato salad". Not what I'd choose for a side, if I had a choice. In the end, I figured to go ahead and order it. We were ordering some bread and salads for the entire group and I figured I could always fill up on those. Anyway, I did, and when my dinner arrived, I was surprised to see on my plate sausage, french fried potatoes and a salad. Potato. Salad. What a difference a comma would have made. (Well, actually not, I guess, since I ordered it anyway.)It's this lack of accuracy (and illiteracy in Chinese) that leads us to trust our instincts more than what's written here. Of course, sometimes our instincts let us down. Earlier this week we were in the supermarket looking for some chicken. The place we usually patronize used to carry frozen chicken bits as a staple, but within the last few weeks they haven't had any. We were at a different store and were perusing their freezers to see if they had any. We didn't find the chicken legs for which we were searching, but we did find a package that had the English words "chicken breast skin" on it. We thought, "hey, breast fillets with the skins attached" and bought it. Surprise! A couple of days later, when Yau Neih was starting to make dinner, we discovered that we had purchased exactly what was advertised: a pack of chicken skin. sigh. Sometimes you really should take people at their word.
posted by John @ 3:38 AM
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