I consider myself 70% illiterate in China. I can’t read that many characters and I especially can’t read anything fast. When I move around the city most things just pass my brain as white noise. It creates an illusion of an advertisement free environment and it is quite strange to experience that. In the west where I can read and understand things I’m constantly being bombed with requests to buy this or that. In China I float through space in zen mode. I also don’t watch any TV (I don’t really get Chinese TV shows – not that I would understand so much either) and I have no idea what they advertise there these days.

Sometimes pictures catch my attention. In China it is popular to use western people in ads and those tend to stand out for me. Here are my favorite strange ads. It’s quite impossible to tell what the thought process was behind creating them.

Old man gets excited holding 145 dollars.

Fake Steve Jobs sells electric beds, or bikes, or perhaps both.

Fake Mark Zuckerberg sells phones he is not particularly happy with.

Cartoon Obama sells extremely cheap refrigerators.

The best of all – Shakespeare rents cars while picking his nose.