Drive one’s pigs to the market

My classmate Zhang Xiaotao is a clever and hardworking man. Although born to a farming family, he got a Master’s degree in the US and settled there. He asked his mother and father to visit him in the US last year.

A note from the Palace Museum

In truth, the only thing really wrong with the English version of this sign, in my opinion, is the placement of the comma. It should read: Because the important activity is gone on a sightseeing tour by you, bring about forgiving inconveniently, please. I guess it is still a bit Chinglishy. I will explain.

Blacklist

Here the writer fails to use the key preposition to make it perfect. As we know, there is the English phrase “to be packed with.” In this sense, the verb to pack is a transitive verb.

Out to lunch

In the Chinese zodiac, the rabbit symbolizes endurance, beauty, peace and hope – and is the animal of 2011. That’s why people like buying things with rabbit patterns or insignias on them.

Difficult to find the police

In my hometown, we find the police at the doughnut shop – this isn’t the beginning of an old joke you’ve heard before. There used to be two police vehicles. We would breeze through town, count cars – one at the stoplight, one at Tim Horton’s – then cruise off into the darkness, anticipating all sorts of wild and crazy things that teenagers with cars do. Surprisingly, most of us lived to tell about it.

Blacklist

We have a noun clause here “What prints are made.” I recently had a heated discussion with one of my friends about the nature of such noun clauses.

A classic tale retold

Last Saturday, on Chinese Valentine’s Day – or Qixi – 35-year-old engineer Yang took his Australian girlfriend, Jessie, to a romantic hutong restaurant near Houhai with the intent of proposing to her.

Careful clothes flower lipstick

This translation seems to have been an amateur one that does not really say what it needs to say. I thought it was Google Translate, but it isn’t. If it was, it would be: “Please take care of you clothes get lipstick.” Huh?

Blacklist

When “to get” means to arrive at a place, it is an intransitive verb. You cannot say: He got Beijing yesterday.

Wenzhou rear-end accident, a horrible nightmare

Chinese student Wu Zheng has studied journalism in an American college for nearly one year. Although he’s abroad, reading news on Chinese websites has become a daily routine for him.