April 3rd: The Joys of Chinglish

English is commonly accepted in the world as the lingua franca--the common language that reaches across cultural divides.  I am sometimes surprised that as many things are labeled in English as there are--most of the packages of things that I buy have Chinese on one side and English on the other.  Wal-mart even somewhat helpfully provides English labels above the produce...I say somewhat, becomes sometimes the labels are wrong or vague, and no one knows it.

However, sometimes the use of English fails to bridge the communication gap.  The first picture is of a donut I passed in the bakery section at Wal-mart last Sunday afternoon.  It looked okay until I read the label...I have no idea what is actually in it.  The second picture I took on one of the first days on campus; it's a label next to the closed door of a classroom in the medical department.  Speaking of weird English, the spell check on this blog tells me that 'donut' is not a word, but 'donuts' is.  I guess you can't stop with just one...