Signese

A mere six characters here, and you shouldn't even need to look them all up.

First, which service does the sign refer to, and what has the business recently done.

Second, what gets delivered into the blue box?

This is a poster advertising a range of 家政 or 'home management' services - cleaners, cooks, carers and so on. I've attached a couple of extra larger images of it as I think the chunky text and somewhat blurry photo could present problems for anyone needing to look anything up by stroke order.

It's interesting to see which services are offered and how much they cost. Bear in mind that this is not what the actual worker gets paid, the agency will be taking a cut.

Today's questions, in more or less what I think is order of difficulty.

1) Who costs more to look after, the elderly or the ill?

2) You have 1000Y. Can you afford to have your cat looked after for a week and employ a cook for a month?

3) For a non-leap year February you want to have your kids taken to and from school, your chihuahua washed weekly, and someone to come in for two hours a day Monday to Friday to help around the house. How much will it cost?

4) Which, if any, of these services are for pregnant women?

5) How much would you want paid to offer the 挤肛门线 service?

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A couple of uncommon characters for you today, although you never know when you might need them - and if you happen to have the chance to casually show off your knowledge to amazed friends sometime, all the better.

This one could be a little tricky to track down, but can anyone figure out what they might find if they were to lift up this manhole cover from inside the Forbidden City?

And while we're at it, which character in the second photo might your teacher instruct you to correct?

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Lets present this one as a quiz (although if it's too easy for you let someone else have a go first):

1) Which two popular activities are referred to?

2) Which character is wrong, and what should it be? (at least I hope it is. Going to look a bit daft otherwise)

Holder of the Guinness World Record for highest number of times the word chestnut has ever been written on a shop. In case you were in any doubt about what the place actually sells, they also hang out a megaphone (not pictures) to keep you up to date.

Gulou Dongdajie, at the Gulou end.

Proud to add this to my collection of photos of manhole covers. It's quite rare now that I see a new type of cover, but this is the first one I've seen marked excrement. The character is 糞, the full form of 粪 (fèn), although the proportions make it look as much like 米田共, a euphemism based on the componenents of the full form character. I assume it leads to a septic tank rather than a pipe carrying turds around the city.

Manhole-enthusiasts can find this gem at the corner of Wangfujing and Meishuguan Dongjie.