While strolling through a park in Hainan (a tropical island off the south coast of China), I suddenly found myself facing the following sign:

I was, of course, very excited and immediately proceeded to take a picture of it. When I proudly showed the sign to Moon, though, she did not share my enthusiasm. “What’s the big deal”, she asked. “Mind your crotch!!!”, I bounced up and down, “they meant to write head, but they wrote crotch! It’s funny!”. “But crotch means head”, was her reply.

Sometimes it seems as if China’s entire English teaching system is some kind of perverse prank performed by the first foreigner to come to China. It’s not that they are taught completely wrong words (although I can’t understand how “crotch” managed to get this meaning), but rather they are taught words that while are technically correct, have new meanings which totally overshadow the old meanings.

Examples? In primary school the children are taught that “pussy” means cat and that “rubber” is an eraser. All Chinese know that the correct word for a male chicken is, of course “cock”. When speaking English with Chinese, every once in a while you will bump into a word which will surprise you.

I’ve already given up on trying to correct them; often the reply will be a thinly-disguised version of “that’s what I was taught in school, and obviously my English teachers know better English than you do”. They will just have to learn the hard way; I merely hope it won’t be too painful…