I thought this wordplay on 「非常態」(abnormal state of affairs) was quite cute. Here they swapped the 「態」tai4 (state) for 泰 tai4 meaning Thailand or Thai, resulting in “extremely Thai” or “VeryThai”. Hope you’re all enjoying the long weekend.
For those of you interested in the story behind the National Holiday commemorating the February 28th Incident, there’s a neat summary in the video below (gleaned from a friend’s Facebook wall).
Click the subtitles icon for English subtitles.
I’ve seen this form of the character 「行」quite a lot, but not sure which fonts give you it. Sorry for the blurry photograph, I was taking it while people were staring at me wondering why I was taking a photo of such an uninteresting sign.
If you’ve seen any weird or pretty fonts out and about, let me know! Enjoy the long weekend!
As I was wandering through the Takashi Ohta Paper Museum Expo (being held at Huashan Creative Park Dec 19- Feb 29) I did a double take, when I saw this sign above many of the pieces of art:
Although I’ve tired slightly of all but the most bizarre Chinglish signage, I thought this one was of note because it can be read as a covert injunction to aspiring paper artists everywhere – “Don’t rely on this kind of work, man.”
To be fair to the Chinglish offender in question, the word 「倚靠」(yi3kao4/ㄧˇ ㄎㄠˋ) in Chinese can mean both “to lean on” and “to rely on”, in the same sense as in English, “leaning on someone” can be extended to mean “relying on someone” (依賴 yi1lai4/ㄧ ㄌㄞˋ）. Having had dealings with the kind of people who run these events in Taiwan, I also know that they have about a billion things to do and very little time and money to do them, so we can’t be too hard on them, and where would we be without something to snigger at.
The exhibition was quite cool, I’ll limit myself to posting the scene from Ximen in Taiwan:
Photo taken at exhibition, will remove on request
The rest you’ll have to explore for yourselves.
親愛的鄰居，
此處 禁止
蹓狗時，狗狗
在此隨地大便
~感謝您的留意~
Dear neighbours,
In this place it is forbidden
When walking a dog, for the dog
To shit anywhere here
~Thanks for your attention
The text I’ve marked in bold (thinner characters on the note in the photo) as if it was added on later, which suggests the person who wrote it was inadvertently accusing his or her neighbours of having a sneaky No. 2 in the alley while walking their dogs before realizing their mistake. They do not seem to have been arsed to redo the whole thing after putting a bit of effort into the ornate characters only to realize their mistake, which resulted in the sign being posted with rather odd grammatical structures. The “此處” (this place) makes the “在此” (here) a little unnecessary and the juxtaposition of “在此” (here) and “隨地” (anyplace/wherever one pleases) is a little odd too, as if the author thought that people might not realize that “anyplace” is inclusive of “here”.
There’s also a pseudo-typo, in that 「遛狗」 is the more accepted way of saying “to walk a dog”, as opposed to the 「蹓狗」 written here. The character 「蹓」 comes from 「蹓躂」, a variant of 「遛達」 meaning to stroll, or to walk. Technically 「蹓」 can be seen as a variant, but doesn’t seem to be accepted as correct. When you type 「蹓狗」 into Google for example, you get the following prompt:
The search results that are currently displayed are from: 「遛狗」
You can change back to search for: 「蹓狗」
「遛狗」 fetches 1,060,000 results, whereas 「蹓狗」 only fetches 181,000, which suggests it’s not in standard use. I think these little idiosyncrasies are what make handwritten notes like this so interesting, as they inadvertently reveal certain characteristics of their authors.
After receiving some complaints about my previous post being more “openly aggressive” rather than “passive aggressive”, I think the 「新愛的 (scatological) 鄰居」 line makes this more of a passive aggressive post.
Let me know if you see any passive aggressive (or openly aggressive) notes in your area and feel free to submit anything you want featured!
Following on from my past post on the passive aggression that results from the limited parking spaces in Taipei, I thought I’d follow up with a similar post about rubbish, after seeing this sign, on a street in the Daan district of Taipei:
If you live in Taipei you’ve probably seen a whole heap of signs similar to this, but the hysterical tone and the interesting use of punctuation of this particular one made it stand out for me. It reads:
Can’t you have the least shred of decency? Don’t pile rubbish up here!!?? Dogs come here to eat it every day and there is shit everywhere.
If you don’t live in Taiwan you may be unfamiliar with the system. Basically, you have to buy special bags at convenience stores to put rubbish in, then at a certain time every day the rubbish trucks will come to the end of your street. Unlike in the UK, you
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Found this store sign quite amusing, which translates to, “Betel Nuts that are Hard to Quit” in the Wanhua district of Taipei.
I found this version of 夜 in Roan Ching-yue’s 《哭泣哭泣城》 The Sobbing City, from which I translated ‘The Pretty Boy from Hanoi’ in a previous post: 
Does anyone know what font this is? All the fonts I have on my computer have both their legs – I like the elegance of this form of 夜 though. Anybody familiar with it? Comment below.
By the way, I’m planning a few more translations from this collection of short stories, so look out for them over the coming months.
For Chinese font watchers, I recently came across this book in a Taipei book store.
I had a little flick through – though budget constraints prevented me from buying it yet. From what I saw it explains variations in the use of font in shop, road and MRT signs, looks to be an interesting read.
Dafont has some additional Chinese fonts for those interested.
I didn’t realize how developed the Scientology infrastructure is in Taiwan, but got this familiar looking leaflet through the door asking me if I wanted a free stress test:
It reads:
Do you know where your stress is?
Is your vitality being drained by past experiences?
Find the source of your stress!
With this voucher you can get a free stress test!
Dianetics Daan Center
This is a professional and very accurate stress test, which uses a refined piece of equipment to help you find what is holding you back in life, the things that are causing you stress, it will also show up your problem areas, that are holding you back from your true potential and happiness. You’ll be able to see clearly what it is that is destroying your life and holding you back from your heart’s desires.
Come now and get a free stress test!
Scientology is called 山達基 in Chinese and their website is here. I’ve been watching some shows on Scientology on the Media Mayhem Youtube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIQaaowQ0PM
Makes for pretty scary watching.
I’ve searched the Taiwanese media, but there seems to be largely positive coverage of local branches of Scientology in the news, mentioning their voluntary work.
提供教會創始人L.羅恩賀伯特所研究的「援助法」，幫助災民舒緩身體緊繃及情緒紓壓。Using the “assistance techniques” researched by the religion’s founder L. Ron Hubbard, to help those affected by the disaster relieve the tension in their bodies and helping them with stress.
but no reference to controversy over the group in the US and they are referred to as a “教會” (religion).
黃彥嘉引用人道主義者L. 羅恩 賀伯特之言「當前文化中，毒品藥物的破壞性勝過一切。」Huang Yan-chia cited the words of humanitarian L. Ron Hubbard, “In previous cultures, the destruction of drugs was greater than anything else.”
I could not find any specific negative references to Scientology within Taiwan, only reportage on the controversy in the US:
There was also a reference in this Australian news article talking of Australian Scientology using Taiwan as a recruiting ground.
There does seem to be some resistance to Scientology in Taiwan and the Chinese-language blogosphere though, like this anti-Scientology Twitter feed, which seems to trace back to this blog. There is also this blog which has a strident anti-Scientology message.
I would be interested if anyone has found any (preferably more in depth) articles written on Scientology in Taiwan, let me know in the comments section.
In case it was not clear already – this is not an endorsement.
UPDATE (2016/8/1): An article critical of Scientology in Taiwan which cites an ex-Scientologist was recently published in the Atlantic.
One of the more amusing campaign leaflets from this guy Kang Mingdao who obviously has expert Photoshop skills.
It says “Battlefield report” on the left.
On the right, under the heading: “Taiwan’s number one gang, the party of dragons, tigers and leopards” is a picture of Jiang Yi-huah, Ma Ying-jeou and King Put-sung (I originally thought it was Hau Lung-pin, thanks for the correction Les) in their Sunday best. The stamp on the right in red is the title of a Hong Kong film Born to be King (《勝者焉王》)although the title is more akin to “History makes the victor a King, and the loser a scoundrel”), the successor to the Young and Dangerous movies (《古惑仔》), based on the Teddyboy manga series by Cantonese manga artist Ngau Lo (牛佬) – which are said to have formed the main stereotypes about the triads. To the right in the vertical text it says, “The three bandits challenge the 23 million Taiwanese people.”
Below it says:
-[They] allowed dodgy edible oil manufacturer Ting Hsin to pose a risk to precious Taiwanese lives by poisoning them.
-In six years, they undermined the stability of Taiwan’s political scene.
-They ask young people to marry and have kids, despite the paltry NT$22,000 a month salary.
-Let’s not let them leave Taiwan when their term in office is over.
This is not an endorsement.
脫箠(凸垂) thut-chhôe to make a mistake, to muck up; Mando: 出差錯
One of my friends used this word in a message he sent me today. The message read as follows:
在工作…客人要來工廠我很忙>_<
我怕我講英文惠[sic. should be 會]凸垂
緊張!!!!I’m working… a client is coming to see the factory [so] I’m really busy>_<
I’m worried I’ll make a mistake with my English
Nervous!!!!
