Cultural Differences

Things that seemed very different or weird to me when I first moved to Hong Kong or traveled in China, no longer seem odd, or as odd as they once did; however, I still notice the differences. I captured a few when recently in China. The first is a very odd translation. I don’t like to point out bad English when my Chinese is so far from fluent. Besides, engrish.com captures far more craziness than I ever could. This picture is an exception:
There were similar trash bins in other parks that were correctly translated as Recyclable/Non Recyclable. The Chinese characters for recycle roughly mean, “can return to collection” and the non-recyclable characters simply add an extra one for “no/not/non”. I have no idea how non-recyclable got translated into “organism”.

Here is an ashtray in a restaurant that is simply bizarre:
Monkeys are pretty common:
I love the industrious nature of this home-made stroller; simply hook a small rattan chair to a base with wheels. In general, babies do ride in strollers. They are carried, even in Hong Kong. I saw several cases of this same rattan chair tied onto a bike for an easy bicycle baby seat.
There are far fewer rules and laws in Hong Kong and China, especially concerning safety. I find this rather liberating, but it is still shocking to see children standing on the floorboards of the front passenger seat or mothers holding infants with no seatbelt. Another common sight in southeast Asia, is the family of 4 riding on a scooter/moped.

Let me know if you like to see these “strange” things, and I’ll try to post more of them.