"Brand Names In China Have Familiar Ring" (#232, Topic B)

Today's Wall Street Journal has a tongue-in-cheek front-page story (B1), datelined Shanghai, complete with a color photo montage, showing an emblem by Starbuck and another one by a home-grown coffee-house chain. According to the story, the two emblems are "nearly identical." Well, for me, admittedly slow, I would have a hard time noticing their subtle resemblances -- unless one makes a close study (discussed below). At a first glance, the Starbuck emblem is written in English; that for the home-grown chain, in Chinese. Is English "nearly identical" to Chinese? Not in my book. The center in Starbuck's emblem features a young lady with long hair covering a part of her upper body and a crown of some sort (Starbuck is too rich for a retiree like me to frequent, so it is conceivable that I have not interpreted the meaning of this symbol correctly). The center of the home-grown chain's emblem is much more down to earth: it shows, simply, a white cup with wavy air over it to suggest that its content is hot. Is a depiction of a young lady and of a cup "nearly identical"? Anyone who can see (no linguistic dexterity is needed) would probably answer it in the negative. Oh, yes, there are similarities: (1) both emblems have circular designs, and (2) the background in both emblems are green in color. These two features are clearly "nearly identical" -- but no different from saying that all laptops (such as the one, by HP, on which I am preparing this entry) are nearly identical, because all have rectangular boxy design and black color. The WSJ story continues by saying that Wal-Mart and 物美 (a home-grown department-store chain using these two Chinese characters as store names) "have a familiar ring". (The WSJ story only gives the home-grown chain's name in English transliteration; their Chinese original are my deduction.) How did I get this deduction? From the management of that Chinese department store chain quoted in the WSJ story: the name is derived from a popular Chinese saying: 價廉物美 (price reasonble, product attractive). The WSJ story gives one the impression that, because of Wal-Mart's incursion into China, the Chinese people should no longer be allowed to use this common saying? If this sounds far-fetched, it has actually happened. In the 1920s, 麻將 (Mah-Jong) was in vogue; an enterpring American Standard Oil representative in China, one named Babcock, took a liking to it, transliterated the two words into English, as Mah-Jongg -- and proceeded to trade-mark it. He actually took people to court for using the English transliteration until he was reined in. Still, notice the subtle difference in my rendition (with one g, which is beyond the trade-mark's reach), and not one with two g (said to be protected by his trade-mark). How do I know? At one time, I was doing research on the history of this fascinating Chinese invention. In a book on this game I wrote, in English, I had to represent it as Mah-Jong (again, one g). Such is life in a globalized world where whatever the superpower says, the rest of the world follows.