Travel Notes
中国の知識

Good Good Study, Day Day Up：外国人を腹筋が痛くなるほど笑わせる中国式英語

· #culture#travel#文化

Near a bench in a Beijing park, a sign reads “Please don’t disturb the tiny grass is dreaming.” A British tourist snapped a photo and posted it on Instagram — twenty thousand likes in three days. One comment said: “This is the most poetic thing I’ve ever read on a sign.”

That’s the magic of Chinglish. It doesn’t play by grammar rules, but sometimes it hits harder than proper English.

The One That Started It All

“Good good study, day day up.” If you’ve spent even a week in China, you’ve heard this one. It comes from Mao Zedong’s inscription for students — “好好学习，天天向上” — and has been word-for-word translated by generation after generation of Chinese students.

The proper translation would be “Study hard and make progress every day,” but honestly, who remembers that? “Good good study, day day up” rolls off the tongue, has rhythm, and is oddly catchy. An American teacher who spent eight years in Shanghai told me: “When I went back to the States, the first motivational phrase that popped into my head was ‘day day up.’”

Poetry on Street Signs

The greatest Chinglish exhibition isn’t in any museum — it’s on the streets.

“小心滑倒” (Be careful of slipping) gets translated as “Slip and Fall Down Carefully.” Fall down carefully? Thanks for the tip — I’ll make sure to tumble gracefully. “禁止践踏草坪” (Keep off the grass) becomes “The Grass Is Smiling at You, Please Detour” — the grass is smiling at you, please take another way. That’s not a warning, that’s a haiku.

Chinglish That Makes Foreigners Laugh Till They Cry

And my personal favorite: “此路不通” (Dead end) at a scenic spot was translated as “This Road Is Not Logical.” Philosophically speaking, it does lack logic — a road that just stops halfway? How is that reasonable? Then there’s “禁止吸烟” (No smoking) rendered as “No Smoking, No Dying” — can’t argue with that logic.

Restaurant Menus: Ground Zero

If street signs are the open-air gallery of Chinglish, restaurant menus are its underground laboratory. Every English menu in a Chinese restaurant is a cross-cultural adventure.

“干煸四季豆” (Dry-fried green beans) becomes “Dry Explosion Four Season Beans” — sounds like a biochemical weapon. “红烧狮子头” (Braised pork meatballs) turns into “Red Burned Lion Head” — are we summoning some ancient mythical beast? “口水鸡” (Mouth-watering chicken) becomes “Saliva Chicken” — technically correct, but the mental image is too vivid. “童子鸡” (Spring chicken) turns into “Chicken Without Sexual Life” — probably the most awkward dish name in the world. And “夫妻肺片” (Sliced beef and ox tongue in chili sauce) gets the worst treatment: “Husband and Wife Lung Slice.” A German tourist saw this on a menu and quietly put it down.

Chinglish That Makes Foreigners Laugh Till They Cry

In 2017, the Chinese government finally stepped in. The national standard “Guidelines for the Use of English in Public Services” officially translated “夫妻肺片” as “Sliced Beef and Ox Tongue in Chili Sauce” and “红烧狮子头” as “Braised Pork Ball in Brown Sauce.” Accurate, sure — but missing that absurd charm that made you smile.

Why Does Chinglish Look Like This?

Chinglish isn’t about Chinese people being bad at English — it’s the product of two completely different linguistic systems colliding.

Chinese is a “paratactic” language — it relies on context and word order to convey meaning, with minimal grammatical markers. English is “hypotactic” — it uses prepositions, conjunctions, and tense changes to structure sentences. When you pour English vocabulary into a Chinese thinking framework, you get masterpieces like “People Mountain People Sea” (人山人海, meaning a huge crowd).

A linguistics professor shared an interesting perspective with me: Chinglish actually reveals some beautiful aspects of Chinese thinking. Take “the tiny grass is dreaming” — personifying grass is a perfectly natural rhetorical device in Chinese. The translator wasn’t bad at English; they genuinely felt the grass was dreaming, so why not say so?

Chinglish Is Disappearing

Bad news (or good news, depending on your perspective): Chinglish is disappearing fast.

Beijing launched a massive campaign to correct English signage before the 2008 Olympics, mobilizing thousands of volunteers to check signs street by street. Shanghai did the same before the World Expo. Shenzhen, Guangzhou, and Chengdu followed suit. By the 2022 Winter Olympics, Beijing’s public English signage was remarkably polished. Major cities across China are implementing standardized translations, and those hilarious signs are being replaced one by one. In the metro, “Way Out” replaced “Export,” and “Emergency Exit” replaced “Peaceful Escape.”

Chinglish That Makes Foreigners Laugh Till They Cry

Some people are doing “rescue documentation” of Chinglish. A German named Oliver Lutz Radtke wrote a book called “Chinglish: Found in Translation,” collecting photos of Chinglish he’d taken over more than a decade in China. In the preface he wrote: “Every Chinglish sign that disappears takes a little humor out of the world.”

But Some Chinglish Survived

Interestingly, some Chinglish has been reverse-exported and become actual English expressions.

“Long time no see” — many people don’t realize this is actually a direct translation of “好久不见.” Linguists traced its origin to 19th-century American West, likely brought over by Chinese laborers. Today it’s perfectly standard English, and nobody questions its grammar (even though, strictly speaking, it doesn’t follow English grammar rules).

“Lose face” (丢脸) and “brainwash” (洗脑) are also direct translations from Chinese. “Add oil” (加油) was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2018. Who says Chinglish has no staying power?

A Tip for Visitors

If you spot a Chinglish sign while traveling in China, take a photo. Not to mock it, but to document it. These signs are sparks from two cultures colliding, traces of translators trying their best to communicate, and fascinating footnotes in a country’s rapid modernization.

Besides, a sign like “Slip and Fall Down Carefully” — you won’t find that anywhere else in the world. That’s not a grammar mistake. That’s cultural heritage. Next time you see a confusing English sign in China, don’t rush to laugh — think about it first. Maybe the translator understands romance better than you do.

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