March 18, 2006
Chinglish Lesson 2: Hotel Bathroom Products
For understandable reasons, much of the thriving demand for Chinglish literature is driven by the hospitality industry.
“Once you’re in our hotel, good luck with you!” declared our budget guesthouse in Guangzhou.
However, to truly experience some of the best Chinglish poetry, lovingly, if sloppily, cobbled together by some of the world’s finest Chinglish wordsmiths, a close examination of the hotel bathroom is necessary. The bathrooms, at least of the more affordable variety of Chinese hotels, all seem to include a basket full of a variety of inscrutable products marked “uncomplimentary” (I suspect in more ways than one). While you may have to pay to open them, the real fun is free right there on the outside of the packaging. Not only are the product descriptions sublime examples of Chinglish, they offer only the faintest clues as for what use the product was intended, making every box and bottle a tantalizing puzzle.
Here are two of my favorites. See if you can guess just what the hell you are supposed to do with these products. (Warning: whatever it is, it is almost certainly pornographic) All spelling and grammatical errors are, of course, reproductions of the original:
1) White box, picture of some flowers.
“Operation Instruction:
The function of this product is to divide the bather’s body bathtub. Attentively, to drive away the embarass feeling thoroughly and Eventually to let you enjoy the fun of this bathing.
This product is matched with imperial milk fragrant soup confected by Holland’s pure milky cow’s verdant milk. That is the best loving fragrant soup of the arching Egypt empress. It can keep natural humid of skin. Adequately lubricate younger velvety particulate the same time the product has the function of relaxing frame of the mind. Stabalize the autonomic nerve To accelerate sleep like a log.
Before vsing this product, spray your head and spray some water around the bathtub then spread the bathtub coating around. When the water comes to half of the bathtub, pour the bathing soup into it and make flow amount to pound. The higher the pressure, the more of the loam. Now the bather can go into the bathtub and soak, to make the skin absorb completely. It is more effective.”
2) “YiErLaiShi,” blue box, no picture
“We distill botanical elite to produce this product by scientific craft. It is maked for anthropometrics by physiological capability and biodegradable intimat interplay. It has a bactericidal and antiphlogistic role. It can remedy masculine impotence or cadaceous flower of coiton. The woman of erotic apathy is remedied to be classy.
USAGE: Jet this matter around pubes then the magical impression will appear amid five or ten minutes.”
The second product sounds much more frightening than the first, although I’m not sure I want to know what a “velvety particulate” is. Still, you sometimes can’t beat the simple wisdom of Chinglish. As they say, “the greater the pressure, the more of the loam.”
Something to think about…