Since their first appearance in the 1990s, China’s ubiquitous “little ads“ have evolved alongside the cities they serve
When I was a language student in Nanjing 18 years ago, the first two Chinese characters I learned to write were not picked up in the classroom but on the street: 办证. These two characters—literally “handle credentials”—followed by a phone number, seemed to have been written in paint and ink on every wall, pavement, and toilet stall door in the city. As I began to decipher more characters, I sketched in my notebook the full construction: 刻章办证发票.
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Dylan Levi King is a writer and translator. His most recent translations are Cai Chongda’s “Vessel” (HarperCollins) and Jia Pingwa’s “The Shaanxi Opera” (AmazonCrossing).
