Minneapolis restaurant Chino Latino (612-824-7878) uses pseudo-Chinese characters as profanity alternatives in billboard ad. (Photo by Beijing Sounds)
If the restaurant wanted to advertise and not get fined by the FCC, why not put some effort into it & do it correctly:
"A 2-hour vacation from the 他媽的 weather"?
What is written on the billboard are repetition of "新仿宋文[体]", which means "new imitated Song typeface".
A better question would be:
"Why did Chino Latino chose its location to be at a 鬼不生蛋的地方?"
* Speaking of bad weather, I was in Quebec City last week & right before my return flight was scheduled to take off from Québec Jean Lesage International Airport (YQB), a Canadian medical plane crash landed after its front landing gear collapsed & slipped off from the runway.
Due to this fiasco, my flight was delayed for two hours, consequentially I missed my connection at Detroit & had to stay there over night. Detroit is a very depressing city. It looks like a nuclear bomb has gone off there.
Hmmm, I wonder if that ad is the handiwork of an old high school classmate of mine from the Minneapolis suburbs who helped launch Chino Latino. (Dude, I am so hoping the 王八蛋 behind this lackluster display wasn't you.)
ReplyDeleteThere were over 700 people in my graduating class, and I think I was the only person of Asian descent who was a native speaker of English, so this would not be a completely surprising turn of events. Disappointing, yes, but not surprising.
There's no point in bashing Minnesota, though. MN's a very progressive place, this is just a botched attempt at being too cool for school without bothering to do the necessary homework.
Besides, if Northworst were your major airline carrier (Mpls/St. Paul, Detroit), you'd be depressed, too.
"鬼不生蛋"
ReplyDeleteEr, ghost laying eggs? Sorry, my Chinese is really bad...what does that actually mean?
Xenobiologista,
ReplyDeleteThe literal translation of 鬼不生蛋 is "not even the devil would lay its egg", & it is the equivalent of "hell hole" in American English.
This advertisement is stupid, but that doesn't make Minneapolis a hell hole. You should come visit sometime. It's a nice city.
ReplyDeleteThis is so funny my stomach hurts.
ReplyDeleteSeriously, what's with all those people who put random Asian characters all over their clothes, all over their homes and all over their bodies? Without even considering how silly the actual meaning is?
I mostly find it ironic that Chino Latino has been allegedly discriminating against its Latino employees:
ReplyDeletehttp://blogs.citypages.com/blotter/2006/03/confined_to_the_kitchen.php
The "two-hour vacation" from the weather is probably just the time it takes to get a table there, anyway.
As for Detroit Metro, the airport is actually in Romulus (outer suburb of Detroit). But yes, it's pretty grim. Having relocated to Mpls from SE Michigan, I have to say Mpls is much better (and you can find better, less pretentious places to eat than Chino Latino).
I, too, am stuck in detroit city but wishing I was home in Minneapolis rather than this black hole of a town. Depression reigns supreme here...
ReplyDelete