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Signese

A group blog by in General

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Contributors to this blog

  • roddy 143
  • anonymoose 85
  • skylee 61
  • mungouk 11
  • abcdefg 10
  • Publius 8
  • StChris 8
  • Tomsima 6
  • jbradfor 5
  • xiaocai 4
  • somethingfunny 4
  • ChTTay 4
  • stapler 2
  • DrWatson 2
  • Flying Pigeon 2
  • js6426 1
  • murrayjames 1

About this blog

Entries in this blog

skylee

The Hairdresser

By skylee,

I took this picture a couple of weeks ago in Milan. The business of the salon, which was next to an exit of the Porta Romana subway station, was really good. And you know why I took the picture, don't you?

roddy

Eyewitnesses?

By roddy,

Just in case anyone happened to be passing.

1) Which two vehicles were involved?

2) Who was injured?

3) Who should witnesses contact?

roddy

Souvenir What?

By roddy,

From a local shop.

1) What World Cup memorabilia is on sale?

2) Which character did I misread as 罩 when first walking past and what did I think was for sale as a consequence?

3) For extra credit, figure out what a 米米卡 is. I have no idea.

roddy

Turning Left

By roddy,

Ultra-quick one, and should be pretty easy - even if you don't know the vocabulary the characters are simple enough to look up I think. What type of vehicle can turn left?

roddy

Cultural Plaza Management Rules

By roddy,

I snapped this one as the usage of 勿搞 caught my eye.
Of the six rules, which
a) prevents you making some pocket money selling ice cream?
B) prevents a picnic on the grass (to be honest I don't actually recall there being any grass . . )
c) might require you to take out your wallet
d) puts a damper on your bicycle polo plans
roddy

Water Rules

By roddy,

Another user-contributed photo this time, from Dean A. Swanson.
This was snapped from the 919 bus on the outskirts of Beijing suburb Shunyi. Dean has helpfully provided a few questions for you to consider, thus saving me the bother.
If anyone else has anything they want to contribute, attach it to a private message or email ([email protected]) and hopefully we'll be able to use it. Regular contributors can, if they want, be set up to post directly to the blog.
With no further ado:

Why is this river important?
What are the three activities listed?
Are you allowed to do them?

roddy

Those Who Do Not Listen

By roddy,

Just a quickie for this warning on a wall - I don't think I'd seen the usage of 不听者 before, and I felt sorry for the poor little 果, forgotten and then squeezed in as an afterthought like that . . .
skylee

Two (Not So) Old Ones

By skylee,

I have posted these two on the original signese.com website. But because roddy lets me post here I am posting them (being quite recent, really) here again.
One was taken at the border crossing point at Huanggang, the other at a metro station in Hong Kong.
roddy

Presidential Shopping

By roddy,

Just a quickie for this one kindly sent in by Gato, of a supermarket on Nanjing Road, Shanghai. We can only assume that they have no trouble making change.
roddy

Not So Simple

By roddy,

A couple of uncommon characters for you today, although you never know when you might need them - and if you happen to have the chance to casually show off your knowledge to amazed friends sometime, all the better.
This one could be a little tricky to track down, but can anyone figure out what they might find if they were to lift up this manhole cover from inside the Forbidden City?

And while we're at it, which character in the second photo might your teacher instruct you to correct?

You can use the spoiler tags
[spoiler] text here [/spoiler] to hide your answers if you want.
roddy

Domestic Help

By roddy,

This is a poster advertising a range of 家政 or 'home management' services - cleaners, cooks, carers and so on. I've attached a couple of extra larger images of it as I think the chunky text and somewhat blurry photo could present problems for anyone needing to look anything up by stroke order.
It's interesting to see which services are offered and how much they cost. Bear in mind that this is not what the actual worker gets paid, the agency will be taking a cut.
Today's questions, in more or less what I think is order of difficulty.
1) Who costs more to look after, the elderly or the ill?
2) You have 1000Y. Can you afford to have your cat looked after for a week and employ a cook for a month?
3) For a non-leap year February you want to have your kids taken to and from school, your chihuahua washed weekly, and someone to come in for two hours a day Monday to Friday to help around the house. How much will it cost?
4) Which, if any, of these services are for pregnant women?
5) How much would you want paid to offer the 挤肛门线 service?
You can use spoiler tags

[spoiler] text here [/spoiler]
to hide your answers, and if you don't want to read the discussion before answering, close your eyes and scroll down . . .
roddy

Hutong Etiquette

By roddy,

Lets present this one as a quiz (although if it's too easy for you let someone else have a go first):
1) Which two popular activities are referred to?
2) Which character is wrong, and what should it be? (at least I hope it is. Going to look a bit daft otherwise)
roddy

The Chestnut Shop

By roddy,

Holder of the Guinness World Record for highest number of times the word chestnut has ever been written on a shop. In case you were in any doubt about what the place actually sells, they also hang out a megaphone (not pictures) to keep you up to date.
Gulou Dongdajie, at the Gulou end.
skylee

Line character - Cony

By skylee,

I asked the shop assistant to let me take a photo, explaining to her that people who don't speak Cantonese might not understand what the words mean at all.
So, do you know what the words mean?
roddy

Fishy Business

By roddy,

Another contribution from our aquatic correspondent, Dean A Swanson, who earlier provided us with this contribution and has now brought us more riverside rules.
So your questions, again provided by Dean, are:
1) There's something fishy going on here. Actually, a couple of things. What are they?
2) Which of the two things is considered "good"; which is considered "bad"? Why?

roddy

Lunchtime!

By roddy,

Here we have both sides of the tabletop menu from popular (with me, at least) local eatery 零点. You've got a selection of cold dishes on one side, and on the other various noodle and 抄手 options - which as far as I can see are 馄饨 by another name.
I'm generously providing you with a 15Y lunch budget - what are you having?
roddy

Yongan Lu Scene

By roddy,

Another user-contributed photo today, from edelweis, bring us an idyllic scene from Yong'an Lu in Changping, Beijing (I'm assuming that's the 永安路 it is, correct me if incorrect.)
If you'd like a couple of questions to engage with . .
a) What are your dining options on this particular stretch of thoroughfare, and what will you personally be choosing?
B) You need to get your mobile phone fixed, book a train ticket, and buy a pair of shoes. Can you do this all here?
roddy

Nine Beijing Snacks

By roddy,

One for gluttons today - an opportunity to drool over some (admittedly small) images of delicious Beijing 小吃. The street-side menu lists nine scrumptious snacks, all you have to do is match them up with the thumbnail images I robbed off the Internet. Assume the menu is numbered 1 to 9 left to right, so if you think the first one is Snack B, you have 1. B. etc.
A bit of a hint:
and a lot of a hint for those who can't be bothered looking up the characters the hard way:
I had to cheat slightly on one of the images - I'm sure you'll forgive me. The letters for each image are in the filename, mouseover to see it.
roddy

Bus Stop Scam

By roddy,

It's quite common to see adverts offering various illegal services and opportunities to be scammed plastered on bus stops and elsewhere around the city. They get taken down fairly regularly, but put back up just as soon.
Common examples are offers to provide various types of certification (ID cards, degree certificates, whatever) or high paying work in hotels and karaoke joints. The end result no doubt varies, but you can probably expect to end up poorer, and quite possibly a sex worker.
This particular version is new to me, so obviously I took a photo and scampered home to phone Li Xiang's lawyers put up a blog post about it.
1) Who is Li Xiang married to, and where does she reside?
2) What situation does she wish to avoid?
3) And to this end she is looking to find a man to do what with? Will this take place in Hong Kong, or elsewhere?
4) What do you think will end up happening to the unwitting victim, who to be honest probably deserves everything he gets.
roddy

Three, Random

By roddy,

Don't have anything ideal for the quiz format handy, so I'm just putting up a few random signs I've snapped over the last week or two. Feel free to come up with your own questions, or just do your best do decipher them with your dictionaries, wits and elite Chinese skills. Or translate them. Or have them tattooed on your upper arm.
roddy

Chalk Handwriting

By roddy,

This is a hand-writing chalked advert for a more or less medical service - how many different ailments and diseases can you identify, and which part of the body are they associated with. Good luck though, there are parts of this one I've given up on figuring out . . .
roddy

Bus Audio

By roddy,

Moving away from the photographic today, we have a mere fifteen seconds or so of audio for you, recorded for you in the entirely authentic setting of Beijing's 107 bus.
Some questions to keep you interested . . .
1) What should all passengers do as the bus starts off?
2) Where should recently boarded passengers go?
3) What two forms of payment are mentioned, and what are the associated verbs?
4) Given that this is the east-bound 107 bus, we're in Beijing, and you have access to the Internet - what stop did you get on at?
roddy

Excellent New Manhole Cover

By roddy,

Proud to add this to my collection of photos of manhole covers. It's quite rare now that I see a new type of cover, but this is the first one I've seen marked excrement. The character is 糞, the full form of 粪 (fèn), although the proportions make it look as much like 米田共, a euphemism based on the componenents of the full form character. I assume it leads to a septic tank rather than a pipe carrying turds around the city.
Manhole-enthusiasts can find this gem at the corner of Wangfujing and Meishuguan Dongjie.

roddy

Two On The Wall

By roddy,

A mere six characters here, and you shouldn't even need to look them all up.
First, which service does the sign refer to, and what has the business recently done.
Second, what gets delivered into the blue box?
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