From the Gansu province

In most languages, we can play with the way the words sound, as in a pun. During the trip to the Western, Gansu province, I found out that in Chinese, you can also play with the way the words look. After we landed in Lanzhou, the capital, we were taken on a 4-hour care drive on an impressive, new motorway. While the driving seemed quite safe (as least in comparison with prior experience in other countries…), the Government is still active promoting safer behaviours through numerous billboards on the side of the road (e.g., Don’t drive while being sleepy, do not speed etc.). These messages follow each other serially and are repeated after completion of the whole sequence. Now, one of those, the one warning about the danger of driving under influence, attracted my attention from the second time I saw it. The billboard came with a picture of a car, but that car looked a bit strange. Not the way one would spontaneously draw a car maybe. I waited for the next encounter with the panel, and at that time, I thought: “Wait a minute, it is not a car, it’s ‘Jiu’, the Chinese character for liqueur”. And then immediately, I realized: “Oh! But in fact, it’s both”. And thus, in the most amazing and unexpected kind of way, and following additional explanations, it became clear that some clever communication person decided to use the ambiguity between the design of that car and the relevant Chinese character to merge both in consensus design and cross it out to say: Liqueur and driving should not go together. Hats off!