Chinalbeit

Everywhere you guy in China, you see these red banners with white or yellow characters strewn all over the place.  In neighborhoods, parks, over roads, on walls, in shopping centers…you get the point.  These signs are truly ubiquitous.   They serve many uses.  Some of them are simply advertisements, like the one below advertising a film festival:

Zhengzhou Cinema Club Movie Festival

Of course, the more interesting red signs tend to be the ones that government agencies use to either diseminate information, stir up nationalist sentiment, or warn citizens against engaging in certain types of behavior.  The name for these banners in Chinese is 宣传条幅 (xuānchuán tiáofú), or literally “propaganda banners”.  However, it is important to note that the Chinese word for propaganda would more correctly translate as “dissemination”  The Chinese translation does not necessarily carry the negative connotation of the English word “propaganda.”  Following are some translated propaganda banners.

This was taken in an old Shanghai neighborhood, with some new, modern developments encroaching in the background

Create a civilized community; Build a beautiful homeland

This next one obviously refers to the earthquake that occurred last year near Sichuan.

Join forces to recover production; Work through the crisis to rebuild our homeland

This one is quite wordy, but the style of language is unmistakable

The rational use of land creates a resource saving-society; Protecting the farmland protects our lifeblood

Signs like these can often be often on walls around rural villages.  It is common for signs to use compact blocks of four characters, which often translate into much longer English sentences

True dedication serves agriculture, the countryside, and the farmers

科学发展, or “scientific development”, is one of the key phrases that Hu Jintao often stresses in his speeches regarding development.  It means developing China in a more environmentally friendly and technological way, basically.

Adhering to farmland boundaries and intensively saving the land protects and promotes the establishment of new mechanisms for "scientific development"

Enhance the awareness of environmental responsibility; raise the spirit of social ethics

If you find these interesting, please let me know, and I can try to translate some more again at a later date.  My translations might not be perfect, so feel free to suggest a better translation.