Marketeer's paradise - new apartment

"Well combination: COLOR OF LIFE DEPCTION OF LEISURE THISSAMETIME YOU AND WALKING IN GREENKEPP FEEL ON TOP OF THE WORLDBY REASON OF WHACKO"

Product description of my "Daishu" (kangaroo) brand fashion-pants (plain old cheap suit-style pants - sic, down to the letter.)

APRIL 15, 2007: This is just the first of many nonsensical English slogans i've seen here. What could be going on? More photos of wacky Chinese products and their even wackier slogans here.

Originally, when i saw these kinds of slogans i thought perhaps a group of non-English-speaking university-dropouts might be canvassing product manufacturers, preying on fellow non-English-speaking company executives by claiming to speak English and offering to write them 'cool' English slogans in English for their products.

But then it twigged - the English slogans not even intended to be understood...They're intended for a non-English speaking Chinese mass audience, who the companies' market research has likely shown to know on average 5-10 English words, including "Hello!" and "Bye-bye".

Evidence seems to suggest what another of those words might be: "Taste fashion"; "Cool fashion needs cool enjoying!"; "Yishion"; "Fashion glasses"; "Conveying the latest fashion of urbanity. with Humanity" (sic.).

A trip to my local product outlet could provide, without a doubt, a minimum of 20-30 - maybe 50 or 100 - nonsensical names or slogans involving "fashion". Maybe in Beijing or Shanghai a fair few people know English. But here, no-one around here knows English.

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70% of men smoke in China. Smokers smoke in their apartments in China. Many smoke in bed in China. There are no smoke alarms in China. Everyone who lives in a city in China lives in an apartment. There are no fire escapes in China.

We used to live in a sixth-floor apartment. Consequently, i spent long minutes planning elaborate, daring, high-wire fire escapes. I figured i would need to climb out the window, edge my way across to the air conditioner, lower myself down off the ledge it sits on so as to swing by my arms like a manki, swing out and back with a pendular motion and then let go and fall one floor down to the next air conditioner. Times five. Or jump.

I'm happy to have moved to the third floor now, where one can just jump and break a leg.

This new place, though, was in a state when we got here. Caked-on grease throughout, long-term unwashed pots sinks etc. etc...and the previous tenant was not Chinese. Oh no. It was a Swiss teacher and an American teacher. Who, before he left, saw fit to warn us about summer: "I'm not saying you're dirty, but you're gonna have to be REAL clean," he said. "I mean, here's the thing: your neighbours are Chinese - they are DIRTY". Some photos of the Juicebox in their environment