Chinese Immigration @ Hong Kong – Shenzhen Border

Once I crossed into China at the Hong Kong-Shenzhen border, I spotted these signs everywhere – ‘No U-Turns’ and ‘No Refluence’! I’m fascinated by just how the Chinese authorities chose these words. Definitely not a gwailo working there and most probably translated from a Mandarin-English dictionary. Mandarin is so poetic, seems reasonable that they chose this ‘flowy’ word instead of its straightforward English substitute – ‘NO ENTRY’! When will dictionaries have more cultural pointers like – ‘BTW, if you do NOT want to make a fool of yourself, absolutely DO NOT use this word when giving people directions!’.