I prefer calling it ‘Big Cheap’
Looks like they are meeting on Saturday to decide if the Cirlce Line Phase 1 is ready to open.
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How do you guys like the disco lights?
They’re great! I can’t wait till the new MRT DaPinglin Station Nightclub is open so we can boogie. DJ’s gonna be on Platform 3
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Nope, that is definitely not just a Shanghai thing. All the first tier cities have some bilingual street signs. Probably all the second tier cities too, and some other places. Anywhere of interest to foreigners – tourist attractions, factories, patent offices, and so on – it occurred to some bureaucrat at some point that it would make sense to translate at least one sign into English to tell people about the place. Sometimes you get different generations of signs on the same block, not necessarily made by the same departments/bureaus, with different designs and different levels of accommodation for their viewers. Of course there’s still chabudoism and machine translation here and there, but there is no national rule that qu can’t be translated as District.
I rarely get harassed by lunatics wanting to practice their English, but today was an exception. I had spent six hours standing on my feet and teaching, and just wanted to relax and play my stupid puzzle game on my stupid telephone.
I’m going from Xindian to Ximen.
It’s usually quite a pleasant journey; me playing my stupid game whilst simultaneously glancing up and perving stupid women in stupid short pants and skirts.
Anyway, the train stops at Wanlong. Now, never in my experience, have I seen anyone embark or disembark at Wanlong. It’s a veritable battleground for the undead.
This woman jumps on and rushes to the dark blue seats, reserved for those about to die, the brain-addled, and for some mysterious reason, children. And justifiably so. She does look like she’s about to shuffle off this mortal coil; daubing herself with arcane liquids from unidentifiable vials.
I carry on playing my stupid game.
Horror of all horrors, she sees a seat next to me is open, and charges over.
Now, MRT lunatics are much more infrequent than in the past, but I’ve caught a gem.
She starts screaming at me “Where you from? Where country?”
I resolve to use the ting bu dong technique: “Sorry, me no Ingalishee”
She screams “Oh, you are Spain!”
I carry on ignoring. She peers over at my stupid game and sees that it’s in English.
“Oh! You English puzzle! You liared!”
Then she talks to herself for a bit and hauls out a notepad.
Starts singing (at the top of her voice) a Taiwanese song.
Then a Chinese song.
Then a stupid English song.
Then a Japanese song.
And in between, yelling out “puzzle!”
I was surprised that she didn’t get off at Xiaonanmen, where the rest of the undead congregate. Instead, she got off at Ximen, and followed me around, gurgling “puzzle!”
It was a rather interesting, yet disconcerting, experience.
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Wonderful. My latest encounters have been much less interesting.
And no video? Sad.
I was playing my stupid game.
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PUZZLE! 
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PUZZLE!
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PUZZLE?
PUZZLE!
Sorry I’m a bit late to the thread. The same problem (at least for those of us complaining about it) applies to hiking maps in the mountains. I was trail running on some trails new to me in the hills just north of Neihu and Dazhi last week and found that I just had to pay special attention to landmarks, and forget about which way was north.
That could be a bit more trouble than coming out the wrong MRT entrance
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BTW we really need more ads in Korean. Dunno what holiday they have these days but lately I cannot swing my backpack without hitting an oppa … or two. And this is because they are standing at the doors, staring at the station announcement board as if it was in, well, Chinese. They all looked lost and by the time they figured where they were, they almost weren’t…
Music in the soul can be heard by the universe. — Lao Tzu
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