When you noticed the phrase garlic dishwashing soap, did you immediately think of China? Worse yet, did you zoom to one of the auction sites to buy a travel-sized one just in time for trick-or-treaters? Wait, although I haven’t yet, have you been to Romania?…

A leisurely stroll through one of the dark, dank local supermarkets in Shenzhen (China) provided us with this glimpse into the never-should-have-been. On second thought, if your job was to be a dishwasher (outside of China, that is), and you smuggled this stuff into the kitchen, you might get away with only ever washing one dish. Your boss would yell at you saying the bowl reeks of 大蒜 (dasuan), and when your shift ended, you’d get very anxious in front of Italian and Korean restaurants. Why Korean ones too? The ROK (South Korea) is the world’s largest consumer of garlic per capita.

China is great for letting your imagination run free (and tangible)– Buildings that look like someone overdid a round of SimCity 2000, lavish pedestrian bridges, florists becoming vegetarian restaurants (…not yet), and need I mention the picture above? (pedestrian bridge image thanks to arch2o) All you need is a pair of words not normally associated, and it probably exists in 中国 (zhongguo). Example, huh? How about, UFO Catcher + Pack of Cigarettes?

For some reason, this word-association concept reminds me of the old social network Friendster, which is now an online gaming site. I joked with my friend in 2005 that typing in just about any English noun (apple, lamb, credenza) would probably result in finding a Filipina woman with that name. Sticking with the tangentially Korean theme, the name Eunice roughly covers half of the people in Seoul/LA.

Do you think you’d buy garlic dishwashing liquid? What if that was the only way to get your children to help clean?