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Slogans with Chinese characteristics

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Slogan or poem?
In China, you will see slogans every day and everywhere. Not only is this a tradition with a long history, it is a trend that has remained popular, particularly in the red and crazy 1950s - 1970s.

These days, there is little ideology in these slogans, but more and more ridiculous ones have appeared. For your entertainment, Danwei presents some of the more outrageous ones, although they do lose something in translation.

普及一胎,控制二胎,消灭三胎。
Popularize the first child, control the second child, exterminate the third child.
This is a slogan about family planning policy in China, which advocates one child per family.

谁不实行计划生育,就叫他家破人亡。
Whoever does not follow family planning will have his household ruined and his family perish.

武装抗税是非法行为。
Armed resistance to taxation is illegal.
Is it legal to peacefully resist taxation?

谁烧山,谁坐牢!
He who burns the mountainside will go to prison!
This was seen by a tourist in Guizhou. There's also the classic "Set fires on the mountain, be thrown into the dungeon". (放火烧山,牢底坐穿。)

不怕死的就到十八里乡来作案!
If you don't fear death, commit crimes in Shi Bali village!

横卧铁轨,不死也要负上法律责任。
If you lie across the train tracks, you're legally responsible if you don't die.

抢劫警车是违法的!
Carjacking a police car is illegal!

光纤没铜,偷也没用。
Fiber optic cables contain no copper. Theft is useless.
Phone and power cables are often stolen and stripped for their copper content.

违法越界观光,小心枪弹扫光。
Cross the border illegally to sightsee, beware the bullets that will wipe you out.
This is on Gulangyu Island in Xiamen. This area is also home to dueling slogans, "A unified China under the Three Principles of the People" (三民主义统一中国) on Quemoy, and across the water, "A unified China under 'one country, two systems'"(一国两制统一中国).

集体上访违法、越级上访可耻!
Collective petitioning is illegal, petioning to higher levels is shameful!
This was written on a banner hung along a roadside in Zhiwenshang County, Jining, Shandong, discouraging villagers from exercising their right to petition to the central government.

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There are currently 11 Comments for Slogans with Chinese characteristics.

Comments on Slogans with Chinese characteristics

Impressive

Calls to mind New York's "Don't even THINK of parking here!"

Or from a Sydney guitar shop: "Play Stairway -- get your elbows stapled together."

Be good, too, to separate the funny from the "funny in Chinglish translation". I would translate the fire one as "Light a fire here, and you'll go to jail." Not as funny as your faux-medieval trans, but closer to the Chinese.

I'd love to know the back story to the petitioning one...

Are there many carjackings of police vehicles in China?

I don't think the first slogan is translated correctly (it's mere literal translation, which, though funny, misses the real meaning of the Chinese slogan). What the original slogan means is "popularize the one-child-per-family phenomenon, control the two-children-per-family phenomenon, and exterminate the three-children-per-family phenomenon".

The "armed resistance to taxation" one has some new meaning with the middle and upper class grumbling about what they are getting for their tax dollars.

The picture of police officers getting jacked is pretty funny, I wonder if anyone has been fined/jailed for living after being run over by a train. Knowing China the surviving family gets hauled into court.

Quote:
[What the original slogan means is "popularize the one-child-per-family phenomenon, control the two-children-per-family phenomenon, and exterminate the three-children-per-family phenomenon". ]
AGREE!

adrfe and studentyoung: You're right, of course. The present version was my suggestion to Banyue; I tried to keep it slogan-like, and looking back, maybe 'eliminate' in place of 'exterminate' would have been better on balance.

Read it from somewhere (not sure if it was South China Morning Post) that a police car was ambushed somewhere off Guangxi.

Quote:
[I tried to keep it slogan-like, and looking back, maybe 'eliminate' in place of 'exterminate' would have been better on balance.]

Thank you, thank you so much for the kindness in your words, Joel! :-)

I've seen a car-jacking of a police vehicle. At first I thought it was another policeman driving away with it (the policeman in question was busy with an accident involving a bus and a whole bunch of angry citizens) or maybe just a joke, but the others around me confirmed my suspicions: the car had been jacked.

Has anyone seen「打下來,墮下來,流下來,就是不能生下來!」? It's pretty scary.

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