An interesting fact about Chinese writing is that it can be written in a variety of directions: traditionally it was written exclusively in vertical columns going top-to-bottom and then right-to-left, but in the modern era it is far more common to write in horizontal rows being read left-to-right. However, both directions may be employed for some stylistic reasons or because of genre expectations. For example, in Taiwan it’s common to see non-fiction books printed horizontally (left-to-right), while fiction books are mostly printed vertically (right-to-left), though many instructional books may also use the vertical direction even if they are non-fiction, perhaps because feels more traditional.

That said, a quirk about the vertical system is that you can write a line of Chinese characters as a horizontal row and read it going from right-to-left, with each character essentially being its own column. And not only that, the same item can have text going in both directions to achieve a particular effect of guiding the reader’s eyes, as in the road sign pictured here. On the left hand side, it reads 湖豬山往 / 鐘分 18 約, or “About 18 minutes to Shanjuhu”, and on the right hand side, it reads 往華山 / 約 19 分鐘 “About 19 minutes to Huashan”. Of course, what I find interesting about this is that not only are the arrows on either side pointing to the direction of the destination, but the direction of the text is similarly “pointing” to the destination.

I’ve seen this mix of directions before on some cars, where the beginning of the line is always at the front of the car, and so the text will be left-to-right on the right hand side of the car, but right-to-left on the left hand side. But this was the first time I’d ever seen this on a road sign (that I can recall at least) used for this sort of effect. Pretty neat, I thought.

Also, one other interesting aspect of this is that the numbers are still meant to be read left-to-right in either direction — at least I’m assuming that’s the case, otherwise Shanjuhu is apparently 81 minutes away! But that doesn’t seem like a plausible interpretation, since most road signs don’t tell you about places that are over an hour away unless it’s a really important place. So the most likely reading is that the destination is estimated to be 18 minutes away, meaning that the numbers do not change direction to match the text. It seems that only Chinese characters function this way, and Arabic numerals have to be read/written only as left-to-right.