Owais Mughal
Clicking on the photos in this article will take you to their enlarged images
Over the past few years, Chinese and Japanese characters have increasingly appeared on Pakistani public transport as decorations. On my recent visits to Pakistan, I’ve been constantly amused by these decorations and took some photos. I’ve been fortunate to have a Chinese language expert at home as my wife so we enjoy reading a lot of these decorative instructuction markings, which at times do not even make sense. Few examples are given below:
(1) I took following photo on Jan 10, 2007 in Federal-B-Area, Karachi. It shows a school van and I am very happy to announce that Japanese characters on the front also say the same. Somebody did the research beofore buying this sticker. It roughly means ‘Automobile for School’.
(2) Following photo is from Marston Road, Karachi and was taken in June of 2005. The Chinese characters used as decorations on this van do not make a meaningful sentence. The characters from left to right mean;
Green Color, Certain time of the year or day, Tea, Korea and Come Inside.
Looks like somebody has selected some characters from a Chinese text purely on the basis of what they liked and then mass-marketed all across Pakistan as decorative stickers. Put together the characters do not make sense. Also note the stickers on van’s pillars are the same as the one on the body except in different size and orientation.
(3) Following photo was taken on Lahore-Islamabad motorway in May 2005. Please note that the Chinese characters in this photo are exactly the same as shown on a Karachi van above.
Some of the more hilarious writings that we have observed, and unfortunately couldn’t take photos, included Chinese characters instructing the public to ‘use the back door’ when there was no back door on the vehicle. Another sticker called for ‘contact a lawyer immediately’ written on front door of a van.
I beleive things like such makes life in Pakistan so colorful, entertaining and lively.
Baber Bhai,Asalamualaikum.You are right.The writing on the first photo is Japanese.It is KURAUSHI JIDOUSHA GAKKOU.KURAUSHI maybe a name.Or QUREISHI.Normally Japanese is read from left to right or top to bottom.But sometimes on vehicles,it is from right to left.Then KURAUSHI becomes SHURAKU,which can have many meanings depending on the person who writes that.SHURAKU or KURAUSHI are katakana characters,mostly used for transcription from foreign languages in Japan.They are also used for transcription of company names.Then comes the word Jidousha Gakkou,which means a Driving School and are Kanji characters used in Japanese logographic writing system along with katagana or hiragana.So maybe someone called Mr.Qureishi has a driving school after his name.He should have have written’クレーシ自動à ¨Â»Å Ã¥Â¦æ ¡Qureishi Jidousha Gakkou.Then comes this second 2nd photo.They are all chinese characters.First word ç·‘which means green;庚is seventh calender sign;癸is the tenth of the tenth calender signs;茶means tea;豪can mean strength or for Australia;韓for Korea and è£
[quote comment=”29627″]@Eidee Man: They are giving serious advice; if you get hit by the vehicle then ‘contact a lawyer immediately’:)[/quote]
What I meant was that a lawyer in a communist state like China will do you little good.
Babar, you may be right. I could not get complete translation of the first photo. Only the 6 characters from the right, and they mean ‘automobile for school’.
Owais – I think the writing on the van in first photo displays the name of a driving school in Japan. I’ve noticed these for a long time too (esp when I used to visit Pakistan from my stay in Japan). Many times Japanese autos are exported to Dubai and then to the rest of the world, with these writings as souvenirs perhaps!
In Pakistan the taxi drivers and public transport driver used to use such stickers even foreign number plates for the decoration of their vehicles…I still remember in my childhood i use to see the sticker with big GB on almost all taxi’s…so now such European Stickers probably are changed with Japanese and Chinese characters