After an anti-spitting campaign and a toilet modernisation drive, the Olympic clean-up of Beijing is spreading to the city's badly translated English signs and menus.
A crackdown on poor English could mark the end for "pubic toilets", "racist parks" and entreaties for people to "show mercy to the slender grass". Orders to "Beware Safety" and "No Shit" face a similar fate, as does a notorious caution about wet floors: "The slippery are very crafty."
Some of the translations in China aren't clear or even polite," said Liu Yang, director-general of the Beijing Speaks Foreign Languages programme. "The government realised that if they weren't changed, the city would lose face."
In some areas, significant progress has already been made.
More than 6,500 signs have already been edited or replaced. Beijing's "Hospital for Anus and Intestine Disease," for example, has now been renamed the "Hospital for Proctology" and the focus is now turning to food.
According to its website, Mr Liu's group had hoped to provide official names for "all dishes and drinks served in the city's restaurants" by the end of January, but it has yet to achieve this.
Standardising translations will drain some of the colour from the dining experience. In many restaurants, deciphering translated menus offering delights such as "Acid Food" and "Fried Crap" is half the fun.
For the uninitiated, Pockmarked Grandma Chen's Tofu is a spicy pork dish, while "Regal Paw Conquering Everything Under Heaven" can inspire poetic musing as well as gastric palpitations.
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