From China with love

Written By: admin - Jun• 08•11

I don’t know about you, Dear Readers — look at me assuming I have more than one reader! — but I often find my deepest sentiments expressed perfectly in the pages of Victorian literature.  Okay, I read too much as a kid, probably.  But an example.  I received this picture from my father, who recently voyaged to the Far East without me and, I might add, without a camera, and who is therefore very lucky he had a smartphone with him.  Considerately, he sent this along to me, and my first thought was:

I like it so, it — it makes me feel sorrowful.

No joke, peeps, that is literally the first thing I thought.  Seriously: I read too much as a kid.

In case you can’t see it clearly — I reduced its size rather drastically so the neon wouldn’t sear your retinas, and that’s how much I care, Dear Readers — it says “Country dishs homely dishs.”

I’ve made the point before that I don’t think it’s totally fair to go after non-native speakers, and this is someone who has translated their shop name into English in a country where most of his/her clientele might be expected to speak Chinese, so they get extra extra leeway.  I mean, I can’t even imagine what many of the signs on Chinese restaurants around here must say, but I’d bet quite a few of them are less than grammatically perfect.  So this place gets a pass; I’m not even putting it in the misspelling category.

But honestly?  Doesn’t it make you feel sorrowful, you like it so?  Can you imagine being a Chinese person from some far-flung, rural part of China, which is a very very large place?  You’re far from home and you’re hungry, and then you see this sign, which I’m guessing is saying something like “Down-home country cookin’.”  Isn’t this a place you would eat?

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Comments

  1. Gregm says:

    Beautifully written, Alden. I really think that you need to publish a collection of “the best of Red Pen Brigade” for the rest of the world to see. I’ll bet you could sell thousands of copies!

  2. Alden says:

    Dad, if I sold one copy to each of my three readers, I would sell three copies. 😛

Leave a Reply

WP2Social Auto Publish Powered By : XYZScripts.com