Last week, during our Sunday afternoon outing, we experienced a few “firsts” here in Kunming, starting with our first attempt to ride the new subway. I stepped up to the terminal to buy a ticket, but was instantly confused:
Fortunately, there was a button for English instructions, which yielded this:
Hmmm… well, we eventually bought tickets and boarded the northbound train, which was very nice and seemed to operate smoothly:
We arrived at the northern station, which is still under construction – a problem if you wanted to ride the escalator to the entry level:
Fortunately, if you needed it, there was already a functioning “Toflet”:
When we arrived at our destination park, we noticed another first. Recently, a decision was made to issue guns to officers due to the increased risk of terrorism. In an apparent show of force, this guard had his “gun” on the table in front of him. Unfortunately for him, it was only a glue gun:
The park we visited has an old bell tower on top of a mountain:
The bell tower is surrounded by three tiers of stone walls, and the bottom wall happens to have a large crack:
Carefully hidden inside of this crack, we found another “first” – our first geocache in China:
This park also has some beautiful gardens and ponds:
And a little bit of Chinese graffiti:
We made our first visit to the “gtlnh ouse” of cactus and succulents:
It contains a very nice display of desert plants and was unusually uncrowded:
One more first to end this blog: We took some students for their first meal of western food last night. One of the students decided to order the “Chicken Fingers,” but changed his mind when we told him that they weren’t the same as chicken feet.
I squealed quite loudly when reading this. Stephen asked what all the ruckus was about and I delightedly shared the news. He now thinks I’m even crazier than before 😉
Jessica, we thought about you while visiting the park and writing this blog, knowing that you would be glad to see the geocache and succulents!
I just love how no one proofs signs on big places like the cactus house. How in the world does no one notice and correct such bad misspellings?
I love the picture of dad with the geocache. Such a great smile!
Haha….chicken “fingers” indeed! Great pictures in this post (on your blog) which I hope won’t be the last ones. Love the personal things shared here and love reading the comments, too. What an amazing/interesting part of the world you’re in over there.
Although it often surprises us to see such gross mis-translations in public places, they are often quite entertaining (like the classic sign at the old airport: “Welcome Foreign Fiends”). The presence of English letters on a sign seems to add clout, regardless of their arrangement.