The Iron Pagoda Park was kissed with sunshine and held static by clear blue sky. A short bus journey out of the fortified walls takes you to this wide, green expanse of trees and grass. A mellow atmosphere and warm weather re-charged our motors and burned our faces. The Iron Pagoda isn't really iron, but stone. It gets its name because, from a distance on a sunny day, you can see it glow a deep burnished russet iron-red. Its decorative carved edges end in a sharp point which points to the heavens. It dominates the landscape as you walk through the park appearing in different forms, from different perspectives, towering angularly every which way you look.
What struck me most about the park, however, were the signs, translated into such amusingly bad English that sometimes you had no idea what they meant. The signs, be they rules, advice, instructions or warnings, were obviously transliterated directly from the Chinese into English by a person with a flowery imagination and terrible spelling and grammar. For example: Gutteral Relics; Meet and Guid Temp; Off Ice; Girth Aid; Tourist Complaining; and, my personal favourite, Big Sod. Here are the park rules, verbatim:
Sight Seeing Notice
- Tourists should obide the order Consciously while you are visiting the Iron Tower park.
- Peace buy tickets to go in park by line. Peace don't block the way.
- Peace keep the sanitation of the park. Peace don't spit, relive the bowels or throw rubbish as is your way in the park.
- Peace take care of cultura relic and pubic property. Don't doodle on the trees place of interest or pubic properties in the park.
- Peace take care of the flowers and grass. Peace keep off lawn and don't break flower or fruit.
- Peace take care of the order in the park. Don't senc out throwaway your dog shoot birds or catch them in the park. Don't lie on chair on bothsides of the park.
- Don't fight or bust up in the park. Don't gamble, do anything superstitious or anything that transgresses the law either.
- Peace don't throw anything that is easy to burn or explode in the park.
- Peace leave the park consciously on time. Don't cemo lish the walls of the park or be bivouacked in the park.
