On a major street in a neighborhood not far from Sinoglot’s Shangdi offices:

Apologies as always for pairing a cheap cell phone camera with the world’s worst photographer. The text says:

红灯停车，违者必纠
Stop car on red / Violators prosecuted

Since I’ve heard a local or two giggle about this particular sign, I don’t think written stoplight instructions are terribly common, but feel free to tell me I’m wrong.

The important linguistic question, though, is: what does it mean?

From a purely descriptive standpoint, I’m going to offer the conjecture that the native drivers interpret this as a (written) speech act in the tradition of Protesting Too Much. That is, if someone took the trouble to write out instructions for stopping at a red light, there must be good reason to run it.

And run it they do. At first I thought I might try to get a better pic by stepping into the intersection when the light turned. It did, but I didn’t, because it would have meant doing battle with a never-ending stream of drivers in harmony with the spirit — if not the letter — of the speech act.