I recently discovered that there's a diner across the road from Newcastle railway station called psb.
Who knows why? Perhaps these are the initials of the owner(s).
They are probably unaware that in China this acronym designates the Public Security Bureau - an especially feared, reviled, and derided institution even by the generally sorry standards of police forces around the world. Not the kind of associations you'd really want to invoke in marketing your small business.
In the last few days, I seem to have been finding these odd little China references everywhere I look. I fear I am starting to become homesick.
2 comments:
I couldn't resist. (This happens far too often, by the way, if I find something by you in my Google Reader inbox first thing in the morning. The work-in-progress might otherwise already be done. (Just kidding.))
There's something about the naming of many Chinese institutions in such blandly euphemistic say-one-thing-but-mean-another ways... (The Cultural Revolution sounds almost poetic, especially next to the reality.)
The closest thing I know to it here would be finding out that the Public Service Commission oversees the denial of public utilities (water, electricity, and such) instead of ensuring their availability.
Gosh, Peter's Snack Bar? Really? I don't think that's apparent on the main sign. I confess I never went in, just clocked the place from the far side of the road.
For a moment, I thought perhaps you'd gone away and researched the entire history of the Chinese police service.
I think the use of euphemistically bland nomenclature for the bureaucratic apparatus of state oppression goes back to the French Revolution (maybe a lot further). Robespierre wielded power and unleashed 'The Terror' through the Committee of Public Safety.
I remember the supervisory body for the US atomic energy industry (what is it called? I forget!) regularly used to get into trouble with 'plain English' campaigners for the obfuscatory periphrases it used to use to describe types of possible nuclear accident (this is maybe 30 years or more ago, when I was a kid; hopefully, they're a bit more straightforward about things today...). One of my favourites was rapid oxidation - meaning fire. Hard not to love energetic disassembly (explosion) too.
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