day 384: [昌吉 (Changji)] = 0 km

We took a trip to the mountains south of 昌吉 (Changji) today.

It took us almost three hours to get to where we wanted, which was…

…a little waterfall.

Surprisingly enough, there was a whole tourist infrastructure built around that thing:

The writing of the word “parking lot” on this sign fascinated me:

You see, the Chinese language – just like any other vital coding system – is constantly undergoing changes.

For instance, the government of the PR China carried out a massive script reform in the 1950s.

BEFORE the reform, the writing of the word “parking lot” would have been like this:

停車場 (tingchechang)

AFTER the reform, the number of writing strokes was reduced, and the resulting word was this:

停车场 (tingchechang)

As you can see, the first character was left untouched, possibly because it was already quite simple before. Please also note that the pronounciation didn’t change.

Now in the case of the parking lot on the above picture, we seem to be looking at an unofficial or semi-official writing method that is taking the simplification one step further:

仃车… (dingche…) – and the last character is apparently not even available in unicode!

China:

What a fascinating place!

Soundtrack: Canibus – “I’ll Buss ‘Em, You Punish ‘Em”

—total: 4927,5km