Golden Palace
(View towards the south banks of Jinji lake, Suzhou)
I have always found names translated from Chinese alluring, but somewhat fanciful in a way we don’t experience here in the West. Many Chinese restaurants might bear names such as ‘Lucky House’, ‘Golden Palace’, ‘Dragon Garden’, ‘Jade Delight’, and so on, but aside from the occasional ‘Black Lion’ or ‘George and Dragon’ pub, there are far fewer mythically magical names in Britain.
However, having seen this building shimmering from across the lake, it does in fact resemble a ‘Golden Palace’ in every way. Admittedly, it is more florescent than actually golden, but I have also found gardens with plants in a hue of Jade, so perhaps ‘Jade Garden’ wouldn’t be too hard to imagine either. I can fathom how these names come about, and the fact that Chinese cannot be effectively translated directly into English must further affect the character of the words. Sometimes a translation is completely wrong and my favourite examples are found on menus. The pinnacle of all menu disasters I’ve spotted so far is the seafood speciality with slight spelling issues; “Fried crap with boiled rise”. It is delightfully offensive and brings a fairly potent image to my imagination.
