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Published: April 1st 2008
Panda at Work
One of China's ambassadors to the world, doing his thing.Or: Lest suddenness happens
On our last day in Beijing, we were supposed to visit the Summer Palace and the Pandas. To our credit, we realize exhaustion when we see it and we decided to indulge ourselves with a few extra hours of rest. So we cancelled the Summer Palace in favor of the pandas, ostensibly for Ian’s benefit but who can resist the furry little guys?
For anyone who has endured the long lines at the Washington zoo in the summer at the panda exhibit, may I suggest the Beijing zoo? Oodles of
pandas, no waiting. It was interesting to be able to see so many pandas up close. And we got great pictures.
As our guide pointed out, pandas are (1) bears and (2) omnivores (with an odd preference for bamboo, which, by the way, makes for interesting scat. Just trust me on this, and I will not get into details.) I always think of pandas as the cute, round, black and white snowman-type furballs that make up the WWF logo. But pandas are real bears with real teeth and claws and are quite powerful, as captured in one of our pictures. Based on our
My Name Is Bear, Panda Bear
Lest we forget, pandas are members of the family Ursus and can rip you to shreds if you do something ursinine, such as waking them up after a nice bamboo meal. brief observation, however, they manage to hide their fierceness pretty well. As far as the casual observer knows, pandas spend the day eating, sleeping, stretching, scratching or shifting from one sleeping position to another, more comfortable sleeping position.
(A note on the next few paragraphs: I speak no Chinese. So if anyone would tell me to translate an English sign into Chinese I could not produce anything except a blank look. Which means that I acknowledge that I am making fun of people whose grasp of my language is lightyears ahead of my grasp of theirs. Also, Ian admonished me not to embarrass Lucas. No such embarrasment is intended. Hey, I needed a printed card stating "I am staying in the Nanjing Grand Hotel" just so I could tell the cabbie where to go. So I fully acknowledge my inferiority when it comes to Chinese. But I did show off my German with the Executive Chef at the Nanjing Paulaner Brauhaus when we decided to treat ourselves to a non-Chinese meal for a change. I am a weak man.)
Which brings us to Chinese signage. There are interesting ones at the morning buffet, such as "Walf" (instead of
A Carnivore Eating His Veggies
Our guide pointed out that pandas like to eat meat, too. What she could not explain was how someone that basically sleeps 24 hours a day can catch meat. Maybe they subsist on tourist that jump railings. waffles), "Ban Cakes" (instead of pancakes) and "French Toast" (instead of Freedom Toast). Of course, those are just restaurant signs. More baffling are permanent, official signs such as the one at the zoo warning people to stay away from the bears. I am sure it makes sense in Chinese, but the yingwen (English) translation reads as follows:
PLEASE DON’ T CROSS ANY RAILINGS
LEST SUDDENNESS HAPPENS!
Though somewhat garbled in someone’s thesaurus, the message from the sign comes across. But how about this one from the WLPT (world’s largest passenger terminal) in Beijing?
Rems and Hems with Limited Quite.
We continue to be baffled by this one. If anyone out there reads Chinese, please let us know what this sign actually says.
Our favorite sign so far, though, comes from the "Bathfoam" in our hotel here in Nanjing. In case you think we are making this up, we have included a picture. This type of stuff should come with a warning label because reading it made us all laugh so hard that we basically dropped everything we were holding.
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