In some place in Hunan: "If you have an extra birth, you get sterilized!" What a blunt, decisive ultra-left slogan. |
| ·But compared with a village in Chuxiong, Yunnan — "One person has an extra birth, the whole village gets sterilized!" — that's nothing. |
| ·On a national highway in Shandong there was an absolute classic: "One person sterilized, glory to the whole family." It instantly brings up an image: setting off firecrackers |
| riding a horse, wearing a red flower, and proudly announcing to everyone: "I got sterilized! Come to my house for a drink!" |
| ·On a farmhouse by a country road somewhere in Sichuan, painted in white: "Should be sterilized but isn't — catch them on sight." |
| ·Some place was a bit more pro-women than pro-men: "Female sterilization causes illness, male sterilization is still fine!" |
| ·In a small village on the road from Zheyuan to Likeng: "The nation's prosperity is every man's duty; family planning is the husband's duty." This |
| shows that the main resistance there came from the men. |
| ·Seen in Wuyuan, Jiangxi: "Pregnancy with documentation, childbirth with a permit!" |
| ·A family planning slogan in some Shandong village: "If it can be induced out, induce it out; if it can be aborted out, abort it out; under no circumstances can it be born." |
| |
| ·Next to it was another one: "Popularize one child, control the second, eliminate the third." |
| ·Family planning in Heze, Shandong: "Better the family be destroyed than the nation perish." |
| ·In some county in Anhui: "Better add ten graves than add one more person." |
| ·Seen in many parts of rural Jiangsu: "Better a river of blood than one extra birth." |
| ·A birth-planning slogan in some county in Hunan: "Whoever refuses family planning will have his family ruined and his people dead." |
| ·A mountain village in Sichuan: "First child, give birth; second child, sterilize; third and fourth child — scrape! scrape! scrape!" |
| ·On the road to Detian Waterfall in Guangxi there was an even harsher one: "First child, IUD; second child, sterilize; third and fourth child, kill kill kill!" |
| ·There was an even more evil one in Sichuan: "Should be sterilized but isn't, house collapses and roof falls; should be aborted but isn't, tear down the house and seize the ox." This shows |
| how difficult family planning work was there. |
| ·In some place there was apparently strong resistance to family planning, so the relevant department painted a slogan: "If you drink poison we won't snatch the bottle; if you hang yourself we'll give you the rope. |
| " |
| ·A family planning slogan in Yangxin, Hubei was also very vivid and fierce: "Will it go through or not? Three minutes; if it still won't, cyclone wind |
| !" |
| ·Some place in Anhui: "Resolutely crack down on aborted baby girls!" What a slogan with Chinese characteristics. |
| ·Guizhou was more gentle and tactful: "Friend, have you practiced family planning?" |
| ·In a remote suburb of Beijing: "Have fewer children and plant more trees; have fewer children and raise more pigs!" |
| ·The version seen in Shanxi was: "If mountain people want to get rich, have fewer children and plant more trees." |
| ·The most outrageous was the Northeast three provinces version: "If the countryside doesn't want to stay poor, have fewer children and raise bears." |
| ·A township government in Hunan: "Sterilize the poor, put IUDs in the rich." |
| ·At the entrance to a crematorium in Hubei: "Boost the economy, bring down the population." |
| |
| |
| We also have to talk about the legal system; quite a few of those are also laughable and absurd: |
| ·In Hebei I saw a slogan: "Armed tax resistance is illegal." It seems to imply that peaceful tax resistance is |
| legal. |
| ·On a wall in Wangkou, in flamboyant red paint, a few bold flowing characters read: "Whoever burns the mountain goes to jail!" |
| ·This was seen in Shibing, Guizhou, also a classic: "Set fire to the mountain, sit in prison till the bottom wears through." |
| ·In Yongcheng, Henan I saw a slogan: "Anyone not afraid of death, come to Shibali Township and commit crimes!" Blunt enough! |
| ·On the highway south of Bozhou, Anhui: "Setting up roadblocks privately is illegal; highway robbery gets you sentenced." |
| ·Seen on the railway: "Lying across the rails — even if you don't die, you'll still bear legal responsibility." Truly classic. |
| ·An even better big red slogan at the gate of a power plant: "Touching electric wires strictly prohibited; 50,000-volt high voltage; touch once and you die; violators will be dealt with by law! |
| " ·On a national highway in Henan I saw an explosively fierce one: "Robbing police cars is illegal!" Similar ones include "No attacking |
| police cars!" |
| ·Ten years ago passing through Hengyang, Hunan, this slogan flashed by outside the window: "Resolutely crack down on tendon-cutting!" It made your hair stand on end |
| and sent a chill down your spine. |
| ·One protecting optical cables said: "Steal and cut optical cable, court death!" |
| ·Some place in Jiangxi seemed less vulgar: "Optical cable contains no copper; stealing is a crime." |
| ·A slogan seen in Shandong: "Optical cable contains no copper; stealing it will get you sentenced!" |
| ·The most passive one was: "Optical fiber has no copper, no use stealing it." If there's no copper, there should at least be some other metal |
| in it that could be sold for money. Absolutely hilarious! |
| ·Outside the wall of a Buddhist nunnery in Zhejiang it said: "Evade taxes, and in your next life you'll be punished by becoming a nun." Leaving aside the insult to monastics, |
| whenever I see nuns now I feel they must all be hiding wealth brought from their previous lives. |
| |
| |
| Let's look at some others. Actually, even some seemingly ordinary slogans can produce comic "effects": |
| ·Anhui, a slogan about repaying agricultural loans: "A man's death doesn't wipe out his debt; the son's to repay the father's debt!" |
| ·In Heilongjiang, apparently local investment promotion was having difficulties, I saw: "Whoever infringes on investors is an enemy of the people |
| ." |
| ·A securities company's slogan: "Educate investors!" |
| ·Somewhere in Hebei: "Don't marry an illiterate wife, don't marry off a girl to an illiterate man!" |
| ·On popularizing compulsory education: "Raising a daughter without schooling is no better than raising a pig! Raising a son without schooling is like raising a donkey!" |
| ·Tongren, Guizhou, on the road to Fanjing Mountain, a slogan at a slaughterhouse: "Use the Three Represents to guide our slaughtering |
| work!" |
| ·Near the tourist pier from Xiamen Gulangyu to Kinmen, drumming up business: "Illegal cross-boundary sightseeing — beware being swept away by bullets." |
| |
| ·Rural credit cooperative: "The rural credit cooperative is the close friend of ordinary people's lives." |
| ·A huge banner in a township by the road from Jining to Wenshang County in Shandong: "Collective petitioning is illegal, petitioning to higher levels is shameful! |
| " Fooling the people has reached a shocking degree. |
| ·At some school: "Warmly welcome people's congress representatives to our school for open and covert inspection!" |
| ·A big slogan in Rizhao, Shandong: "Warmly welcome the leaders of some national system to come to Rizhao!" |
| ·An even better one was at a breeding station in Renhe Town, Chongqing: Renhe Fine Breed Pig Breeding Station. |
| ·A slogan from grassroots cadres in a poor county: "The focus of our work is to manage two mouths well: fill the upper |
| mouth, block the lower mouth." |
| ·A slogan from some local leader was: "You should care little for fame and gain, and strengthen clean government construction." |
| ·At an intersection in Wushan County, Chongqing: "Out-of-town vehicles are generally not punished within Wushan territory." |
| ·Chinese people all know "If you want to get rich, build roads fast." But along a railway in Henan someone changed it into something extremely |
| reactionary: "If you want to get rich, steal the railway!" |
| ·At the door of a driver's team in some work unit: "When the motor starts, focus your thoughts; when the wheels move, think of the masses." |
| ·On the flags lining Pudong Avenue in Shanghai's Pudong New Area: "Sort garbage, start with me!" It turned itself into garbage first |
| ! |
| ·At the zoo: "Protecting wild animals means protecting ourselves!" Better to become an animal than become garbage. |
| ·At some breeding farm: "Dear people from all walks of life, please bring your cows in heat here for breeding." |
| ·A roadside small shop: "Meals and tire repair." |
| ·In Yanbu Town, Nanhai, Guangdong, there are many underwear factories and their products sell all over the world. For a while the town government's wall had |
| a slogan painted on it: "Developing the underwear manufacturing industry is our basic national policy!" It really won't stop unless it shocks people! |
| ·On a lawn in Nanning there was a signboard. The first line said: "Carry out creative" The second line said: "sexual activities" |
| ·At a corner there was a slogan painted in white lime: "Turning yourself in is a crime" — a huge shock — then after turning the corner it continued: |
| "criminals' only way out" |
| ·Another classic had on the top: "The masses have diffi" and below: "culty finding the jingcha". I think it probably meant: |
| when the masses are in trouble, it's hard to find the jingcha! |
| |
| |
| ·After the 15th Party Congress a number of slogans were put forward. It is said that after some place hung them on the highway, the effect was like this... "Hold high the great banner of DXP |
| Theory!", and next to it a road sign: "Height limit 5.6 meters"; "Closely unite around the Party Central Committee with Comrade JZM at the hexin |
| !", and next to it a road sign: "Please keep your distance"; "Accelerate the pace of reform and opening!", and next to it: |
| "Speed limit 80 km/h"; "Keep going down the road of socialism with Chinese characteristics", and next to it: "U-turn permitted here |
| ." |
| |
| ★★Besides these strange slogans, even those commonplace slogans we see all the time, if you think about them carefully, often have plenty of problems |
| too: |
| ·At construction sites you often see slogans like: "Work hard for ** days, the project will be completed ahead of schedule!" For a project with strict construction standards, |
| I really don't know whether this "completed" ahead of schedule means "completed" or "finished for good." |
| ·For example, at an intersection it says: "Please stop at a red light." But I think if someone doesn't even care about red lights, |
| then he certainly won't care about this slogan either. |
| ·In public toilets it says: "Please urinate and defecate into the pool." I don't understand: if a person has already paid to enter a public toilet, |
| why would he still relieve himself anywhere inside it? |
| ·But in a university restroom, a slogan written by a foreign student struck me particularly hard: "Chinese classmates, |
| please flush after using the toilet!" |
| ………… |
| |
| ★★When you travel in the future, do keep an eye out on the road. You can collect lots of wonderful slogans. By urban expressways, on guardrails and utility poles in county towns, beside crumbling walls and low dikes in the countryside... Big-character slogans are passed down from generation to generation. At first there was "In agriculture, learn from Dazhai" |
| and "Criticize Lin, criticize Confucius"; later came "Sterilization and IUDs" and "Reform and opening"; now it's "Unification across the Taiwan Strait" and the "Three |
| Represents" ... All the bitterness, sweetness, hardship, and storms our country has gone through over so many years are written into these slogans. I can't help but raise my arm and shout |
| "Long live slogans!" Maybe one day, when historians compile a History of Chinese Slogans, this can at least barely earn |
| a place in it, haha. |
| |
| ·But compared with a village in Chuxiong, Yunnan — "One person has an extra birth, the whole village gets sterilized!" — that's nothing. |
| ·On a national highway in Shandong there was an absolute classic: "One person sterilized, glory to the whole family." It instantly brings up an image: setting off firecrackers |
| riding a horse, wearing a red flower, and proudly announcing to everyone: "I got sterilized! Come to my house for a drink!" |
| ·On a farmhouse by a country road somewhere in Sichuan, painted in white: "Should be sterilized but isn't — catch them on sight." |
| ·Some place was a bit more pro-women than pro-men: "Female sterilization causes illness, male sterilization is still fine!" |
| ·In a small village on the road from Zheyuan to Likeng: "The nation's prosperity is every man's duty; family planning is the husband's duty." This |
| shows that the main resistance there came from the men. |
| ·Seen in Wuyuan, Jiangxi: "Pregnancy with documentation, childbirth with a permit!" |
| ·A family planning slogan in some Shandong village: "If it can be induced out, induce it out; if it can be aborted out, abort it out; under no circumstances can it be born." |
| |
| ·Next to it was another one: "Popularize one child, control the second, eliminate the third." |
| ·Family planning in Heze, Shandong: "Better the family be destroyed than the nation perish." |
| ·In some county in Anhui: "Better add ten graves than add one more person." |
| ·Seen in many parts of rural Jiangsu: "Better a river of blood than one extra birth." |
| ·A birth-planning slogan in some county in Hunan: "Whoever refuses family planning will have his family ruined and his people dead." |
| ·A mountain village in Sichuan: "First child, give birth; second child, sterilize; third and fourth child — scrape! scrape! scrape!" |
| ·On the road to Detian Waterfall in Guangxi there was an even harsher one: "First child, IUD; second child, sterilize; third and fourth child, kill kill kill!" |
| ·There was an even more evil one in Sichuan: "Should be sterilized but isn't, house collapses and roof falls; should be aborted but isn't, tear down the house and seize the ox." This shows |
| how difficult family planning work was there. |
| ·In some place there was apparently strong resistance to family planning, so the relevant department painted a slogan: "If you drink poison we won't snatch the bottle; if you hang yourself we'll give you the rope. |
| " |
| ·A family planning slogan in Yangxin, Hubei was also very vivid and fierce: "Will it go through or not? Three minutes; if it still won't, cyclone wind |
| !" |
| ·Some place in Anhui: "Resolutely crack down on aborted baby girls!" What a slogan with Chinese characteristics. |
| ·Guizhou was more gentle and tactful: "Friend, have you practiced family planning?" |
| ·In a remote suburb of Beijing: "Have fewer children and plant more trees; have fewer children and raise more pigs!" |
| ·The version seen in Shanxi was: "If mountain people want to get rich, have fewer children and plant more trees." |
| ·The most outrageous was the Northeast three provinces version: "If the countryside doesn't want to stay poor, have fewer children and raise bears." |
| ·A township government in Hunan: "Sterilize the poor, put IUDs in the rich." |
| ·At the entrance to a crematorium in Hubei: "Boost the economy, bring down the population." |
| |
| |
| We also have to talk about the legal system; quite a few of those are also laughable and absurd: |
| ·In Hebei I saw a slogan: "Armed tax resistance is illegal." It seems to imply that peaceful tax resistance is |
| legal. |
| ·On a wall in Wangkou, in flamboyant red paint, a few bold flowing characters read: "Whoever burns the mountain goes to jail!" |
| ·This was seen in Shibing, Guizhou, also a classic: "Set fire to the mountain, sit in prison till the bottom wears through." |
| ·In Yongcheng, Henan I saw a slogan: "Anyone not afraid of death, come to Shibali Township and commit crimes!" Blunt enough! |
| ·On the highway south of Bozhou, Anhui: "Setting up roadblocks privately is illegal; highway robbery gets you sentenced." |
| ·Seen on the railway: "Lying across the rails — even if you don't die, you'll still bear legal responsibility." Truly classic. |
| ·An even better big red slogan at the gate of a power plant: "Touching electric wires strictly prohibited; 50,000-volt high voltage; touch once and you die; violators will be dealt with by law! |
| " ·On a national highway in Henan I saw an explosively fierce one: "Robbing police cars is illegal!" Similar ones include "No attacking |
| police cars!" |
| ·Ten years ago passing through Hengyang, Hunan, this slogan flashed by outside the window: "Resolutely crack down on tendon-cutting!" It made your hair stand on end |
| and sent a chill down your spine. |
| ·One protecting optical cables said: "Steal and cut optical cable, court death!" |
| ·Some place in Jiangxi seemed less vulgar: "Optical cable contains no copper; stealing is a crime." |
| ·A slogan seen in Shandong: "Optical cable contains no copper; stealing it will get you sentenced!" |
| ·The most passive one was: "Optical fiber has no copper, no use stealing it." If there's no copper, there should at least be some other metal |
| in it that could be sold for money. Absolutely hilarious! |
| ·Outside the wall of a Buddhist nunnery in Zhejiang it said: "Evade taxes, and in your next life you'll be punished by becoming a nun." Leaving aside the insult to monastics, |
| whenever I see nuns now I feel they must all be hiding wealth brought from their previous lives. |
| |
| |
| Let's look at some others. Actually, even some seemingly ordinary slogans can produce comic "effects": |
| ·Anhui, a slogan about repaying agricultural loans: "A man's death doesn't wipe out his debt; the son's to repay the father's debt!" |
| ·In Heilongjiang, apparently local investment promotion was having difficulties, I saw: "Whoever infringes on investors is an enemy of the people |
| ." |
| ·A securities company's slogan: "Educate investors!" |
| ·Somewhere in Hebei: "Don't marry an illiterate wife, don't marry off a girl to an illiterate man!" |
| ·On popularizing compulsory education: "Raising a daughter without schooling is no better than raising a pig! Raising a son without schooling is like raising a donkey!" |
| ·Tongren, Guizhou, on the road to Fanjing Mountain, a slogan at a slaughterhouse: "Use the Three Represents to guide our slaughtering |
| work!" |
| ·Near the tourist pier from Xiamen Gulangyu to Kinmen, drumming up business: "Illegal cross-boundary sightseeing — beware being swept away by bullets." |
| |
| ·Rural credit cooperative: "The rural credit cooperative is the close friend of ordinary people's lives." |
| ·A huge banner in a township by the road from Jining to Wenshang County in Shandong: "Collective petitioning is illegal, petitioning to higher levels is shameful! |
| " Fooling the people has reached a shocking degree. |
| ·At some school: "Warmly welcome people's congress representatives to our school for open and covert inspection!" |
| ·A big slogan in Rizhao, Shandong: "Warmly welcome the leaders of some national system to come to Rizhao!" |
| ·An even better one was at a breeding station in Renhe Town, Chongqing: Renhe Fine Breed Pig Breeding Station. |
| ·A slogan from grassroots cadres in a poor county: "The focus of our work is to manage two mouths well: fill the upper |
| mouth, block the lower mouth." |
| ·A slogan from some local leader was: "You should care little for fame and gain, and strengthen clean government construction." |
| ·At an intersection in Wushan County, Chongqing: "Out-of-town vehicles are generally not punished within Wushan territory." |
| ·Chinese people all know "If you want to get rich, build roads fast." But along a railway in Henan someone changed it into something extremely |
| reactionary: "If you want to get rich, steal the railway!" |
| ·At the door of a driver's team in some work unit: "When the motor starts, focus your thoughts; when the wheels move, think of the masses." |
| ·On the flags lining Pudong Avenue in Shanghai's Pudong New Area: "Sort garbage, start with me!" It turned itself into garbage first |
| ! |
| ·At the zoo: "Protecting wild animals means protecting ourselves!" Better to become an animal than become garbage. |
| ·At some breeding farm: "Dear people from all walks of life, please bring your cows in heat here for breeding." |
| ·A roadside small shop: "Meals and tire repair." |
| ·In Yanbu Town, Nanhai, Guangdong, there are many underwear factories and their products sell all over the world. For a while the town government's wall had |
| a slogan painted on it: "Developing the underwear manufacturing industry is our basic national policy!" It really won't stop unless it shocks people! |
| ·On a lawn in Nanning there was a signboard. The first line said: "Carry out creative" The second line said: "sexual activities" |
| ·At a corner there was a slogan painted in white lime: "Turning yourself in is a crime" — a huge shock — then after turning the corner it continued: |
| "criminals' only way out" |
| ·Another classic had on the top: "The masses have diffi" and below: "culty finding the jingcha". I think it probably meant: |
| when the masses are in trouble, it's hard to find the jingcha! |
| |
| |
| ·After the 15th Party Congress a number of slogans were put forward. It is said that after some place hung them on the highway, the effect was like this... "Hold high the great banner of DXP |
| Theory!", and next to it a road sign: "Height limit 5.6 meters"; "Closely unite around the Party Central Committee with Comrade JZM at the hexin |
| !", and next to it a road sign: "Please keep your distance"; "Accelerate the pace of reform and opening!", and next to it: |
| "Speed limit 80 km/h"; "Keep going down the road of socialism with Chinese characteristics", and next to it: "U-turn permitted here |
| ." |
| |
| ★★Besides these strange slogans, even those commonplace slogans we see all the time, if you think about them carefully, often have plenty of problems |
| too: |
| ·At construction sites you often see slogans like: "Work hard for ** days, the project will be completed ahead of schedule!" For a project with strict construction standards, |
| I really don't know whether this "completed" ahead of schedule means "completed" or "finished for good." |
| ·For example, at an intersection it says: "Please stop at a red light." But I think if someone doesn't even care about red lights, |
| then he certainly won't care about this slogan either. |
| ·In public toilets it says: "Please urinate and defecate into the pool." I don't understand: if a person has already paid to enter a public toilet, |
| why would he still relieve himself anywhere inside it? |
| ·But in a university restroom, a slogan written by a foreign student struck me particularly hard: "Chinese classmates, |
| please flush after using the toilet!" |
| ………… |
| |
| ★★When you travel in the future, do keep an eye out on the road. You can collect lots of wonderful slogans. By urban expressways, on guardrails and utility poles in county towns, beside crumbling walls and low dikes in the countryside... Big-character slogans are passed down from generation to generation. At first there was "In agriculture, learn from Dazhai" |
| and "Criticize Lin, criticize Confucius"; later came "Sterilization and IUDs" and "Reform and opening"; now it's "Unification across the Taiwan Strait" and the "Three |
| Represents" ... All the bitterness, sweetness, hardship, and storms our country has gone through over so many years are written into these slogans. I can't help but raise my arm and shout |
| "Long live slogans!" Maybe one day, when historians compile a History of Chinese Slogans, this can at least barely earn |
| a place in it, haha. |
| |
ko20010214
=================================
大功告成，打个Kiss!
ko20010214@MSN.com
神州优雅Q300C
Intel CeleronM 370处理器 | 256MbDDR内存
40G硬盘 | USB2.0 | IEEE 1394
13.3 ' WXGA 宽屏(16:10) | COMBO光驱
10/100M网卡 | 四合一读卡器
=================================
大功告成，打个Kiss!
ko20010214@MSN.com
神州优雅Q300C
Intel CeleronM 370处理器 | 256MbDDR内存
40G硬盘 | USB2.0 | IEEE 1394
13.3 ' WXGA 宽屏(16:10) | COMBO光驱
10/100M网卡 | 四合一读卡器
