In China - 6

Half of the fun of traveling in China is seeing strange things, including of course, the weird english... they say they are trying to get rid of as much of it as possible before the olympics, but it looks like there's still a lot of ground to cover.  I showed you ' Crude Crad' and the like in my last few blogs, but this entry is 100% humorous or strange photos from last week's trip. ;-)

このブログは先週の中国旅行の最後です。面白いの英語看板と猟奇品の写真です。多分日本語まで翻訳できない。。。　：－P

Sometimes you get a really long message in Chinese and a very short English translation:

That's not a request, that's an order!

When I saw these vendors selling giant white spheres of cotton candy I was reminded of my friend mio,  who recently wrote an amusing blog about gigantic cotton balls they use at her hospital...

この綿菓子を見た時、美緒ちゃんのコットンボールのブログを思い出します。。。

Some from stores that I snapped w/ my phone:

Choose Zhong Lao Nian Brand Yak Marrow Bone Dust!!　何ですか？食べられる？

One of the weird things about China is that Alcohol is actually one of the least expensive beverages:

Suntory (of China) for only 2.80 RMB for a giant 750ml bottle! (thats like US$0.40). A 500ml bottle of coke costs more!)　中国にビールはコラより安い。この大瓶は~40円だけ！

Yes thats right, Doraemon's own Deep Sea Pearl Moisturizing Body Lotion!  It takes a magical robot cat to master the art of Pearl Extraction.  :-P

On the back you can find some interesting English too: "Directions:  Get some cream and smear to whole body after bath to keep skin softening and moisturizing"

And the last part was sort of humorous because of its sparsity: "Caution: No swallow.  Please stop using if feel uncomfortable."ドラえもんの深海真珠保湿液！使いたいですか？

In the fancy Shanghai South Rail Station:

Lost and Found = Losting Found!

Many chinese shops specialize in very inexpensive novelty items that no one really needs, but still people buy, just because they're interesting and/or extremely cheap:

On the left are cigarette lighters (that most likely play music when you open them).   Its nice to know that smokers can now get a lighter w/ Audrey Hepburn's face on it...

On the right are two new versions of the inexpensive hand-powered LED flashlights they have been selling in China for the last few years.  In this case they have gone a step further and made them into the shape of recognizable characters... SORT OF...  the pink and white one is supposed to be Hello Kitty (but everyone knows Hello Kitty doesn't have a mouth). The blue one is supposed to be Doraemon (notice the skin softening!).  Kind of creepy...

コピーの懐中電灯です。。。でもドラえもんとKittyちゃんあまり見たくない。

Last but not least, this one was from the Hangzhou airport,  they sell a special West Lake (Xihu) brand of beer:

Zoom in on this picture and try to read the text in the red box...

yes thats right, it says 'Free From Formaldehyde'... if they feel the need to write that on the can, suddenly I'm very suspicious of all the other brands...