Signs in Bathrooms
I worked at a place in a kind of shopping mall back in 2008. With very VERY few western foreigners in town, there was no shortage of funny English signs, and this often meant signs in public restrooms pleading for one behavioural change or another. But actually, it’s the signs in Chinese that I really appreciate. Two of the first characters I ever learned were from such a sign: 匆匆冲冲, flush quickly.
Anyway, I stopped by a private Chinese academy the other day to see a friend who studies there and saw this above one of the urinals:
走进一点儿
zǒujìn yīdiǎn’er不然我就告诉大家，
bùrán wǒ jiù gàosu dàjiā,我看到了你的一切。
wǒ kàndàole nǐ de yīqiè
“step forward a bit, or I’ll tell everyone I saw your junk”
I was trying to remember if I’ve seen any particularly poetic bathroom signs, such as you find about grass on public parks (the sleeping grass has delicate feelings, or whatever), but I couldn’t think of any.
How about you guys? Got any good Chinese language signs you’ve seen in the local public restroom?
The following is a classic:
往前一小步，文明一大步
‘a small step forward is a giant leap for civilization’
With both the rhyme and the historical reference, this is my all time favourite toilet sign.
Although I cannot verify this, I think these signs started popping up in the capital in the run up to the Olympics (as a part of the broader 文明 campaigns, I guess)
ah, you beat me to it with the moon landing bathroom sign. I’ve seen that particular potty slogan in various locations. It was one of the first signs I was able to read, back in our first year of language study: http://chinahopelive.net/2007/06/15/junes-slogan-gets-full-marks
There’s a great one I’ve seen in a Japanese bathroom:
急ぐとも 心静かに手を添えて 外にこぼすな 松茸の露
“Still your heart as you apply your hand; spill not the mushroom’s dew outside [the toilet].”
In Taiwan:
雖然你很有自信
也請向前靠一步
Damn. Two people already mentioned the moon landing one.
I’m loving the Japanese one. Kinda graphic in a pretty subtle way.
Southerners seem to like the pronounciation pun in
来也匆匆
去也冲冲
But i think that’s just a variation of yours. A Chinglish site had one like so:
禁止随随便便
＂don’t piss everywhere” making a pun on the meanings of 便, but that’s all I’ve got.
I’ve also seen “来也匆匆 去也冲冲” in Shanghai. I guess that counts as South.
A few technical points on the Pinyin. It should be
“Zǒujìn yīdiǎnr / bùrán wǒ jiù gàosu dàjiā, / wǒ kàndàole nǐ de yīqiè.”
As for urinal signs, I saw a bilingual one in the countryside in Taiwan. The English read, “Please step closer: your thing is not as big as you think.” Unfortunately I can’t recall the exact Mandarin wording. Maybe I have a photo somewhere.
Mark,
Thanks I’ll fix the pinyin. I did this on my phone which doesn’t let me type first-tone diacritics, so i copied the pinyin directly from Pleco to get the Unicode for tones. Odd that it did that as I don’t see any dictionary entry which does 一点的一 as a fourth tone.
edit: the omission of 就 in the pinyin was totally my fault though…
I kinda liked the missing jiu — that revealed the Pinyin was the old-fashioned, hand-crafted kind.
The thing that stood out most to me is the yidian’er. Now, I love apostrophes as much as the next person — perhaps more. It’s just that things are a bit different with those -r endings.
If the phone you type on is an iPhone, there’s something new and useful I’ll be writing about soon.
Anyway, sorry for all the off-topicness. How do I get this all back into the outhouse?
I utterly detest writing erhua to begin with, and will only say it if forced.
I’ve got tools I’ve written to type first tones etc on the iphone. In this instance I just managed to not use any of them.
来也匆匆 is actually for ,,,constipation,sort of that, to put it bluntly, is like, “hope you shit fast and with ease”
去也冲冲 : “plz remember to flush before leaving”
拉也匆匆 might be better for that then 😉
“不准大便”
I saw this wonderful sign several signs in Beijing, and even a few times in Kunming.
[…] ~ The most convenient language practice: Chinese bathroom signage By Joel 大江 ~ var postDate = new Date(ConvertDateToClientTimeZone(“Jul 13, 2011 19:36:36”, “8”)); /* change “8” as needed to adjust timezone offset */ document.write(postDate.format(“DDDD, MMMM D, YYYY”) + ” ~ ” + postDate.format(“h:mm tt”) + “”); | China web debris | One of the first signs I remember being able to read was a moon-landing inspired slogan posted above the urinals in a bathroom in Tianjin. Sinoglot is collecting similar examples from around China and East Asia: Signs in Bathrooms […]
My favorite bathroom sign in China was something to the effect of, “Do not read while in bathroom, it will give you hemorrhoids.” Laughed and laughed for days.
“utterly detest writing erhua”?! Sacrilege, apostasy!
此处禁止小便,否则没收作案工具^^