I have this knack for running into people when I travel. Last week I attended a conference in Beijing and when I walked into the bathroom after deplaning I ran into a German guy who lives and works in Shenzhen. He actually works for one of my company’s competitors and at one time, we had frequent meetings as our companies were partnering together on some business but that has since fizzled. The last time I saw him was in Bali a few years ago while we were both on vacation over one of the China “Golden Week” holidays.
Anyway, we were attending the same conference in Beijing and staying at the same hotel, so we shared a taxi into the city. During the two day event we caught up and agreed to get together once we were both back home in Shenzhen. Yesterday, I met him for lunch at one of the newer western style shopping malls in downtown Shenzhen. This place is 6 stories tall, immaculate and much nicer then most shopping malls in the US. The stores are very high end and out of reach for 98% of the population in Shenzhen but the place is always full of window shoppers. It even has an indoor ice skating rink. The rails are full of spectators because it is a nice cool place to get away from the heat and high humidity outside.
Like many places in China, the mall has an English name that has nothing to do with the Chinese translation. If I were to tell a taxi driver I wanted to go to “MixC” he would give me clueless look - which they often do anyway when I speak in Chinese. But they do know where to head when I say the Chinese name, “Wan Xiang Cheng”.
“Wan Xiang Cheng” is translated into ”10,000 Elephants City”. I don’t even know where to begin to ask why? What were they thinking? Do the Chinese find the name funny? Quite possibly the mall is large enough to hold 10,000 elephants but I kind of doubt it…
That was my thought: they were possibly trying to select a phrase, “10,000 Elephant’s City,” that captured the colossal size of the place.