Last but not least: The Chinese number
On the cover of its latest issue, the magazine *MaxPlanckForschung* advertised «young, hot housewives» and «girls for the afternoon.» That wasn’t quite what one would expect from the renowned research institute.
The Max Planck Institute, the world's epitome of seriousness and scientific precision, made a mess of the last issue of its quarterly in-house journal MaxPlanckForschung. It printed Chinese characters on the cover of the China issue, obviously without knowing what they meant. "We went to great expense and found young girls from northern China," it said, according to the German-Chinese website German.china.org.cn. The women would soon be "performing with us" and had a "seductive figure", while the program also included "young, hot housewives" and "girls for the afternoon", as Die Zeit reported.
What at first glance looked like an old Chinese poem could just as easily be an advertisement for a brothel, "or at least for an erotic show", explains Zhang Zhenhuan, a linguist at the University of Mainz. In a circular email to all Chinese employees, the editors of Max Planck Research were rather contrite. According to a report in Die Zeit, the press office had had the content checked. However, the sinologist employed did not understand the subtle linguistic level of the ancient Chinese text. The front page of the China issue has now been changed and the old issues have been thrown away.
What at first glance looked like an old Chinese poem could just as easily be an advertisement for a brothel, "or at least for an erotic show", explains Zhang Zhenhuan, a linguist at the University of Mainz. In a circular email to all Chinese employees, the editors of Max Planck Research were rather contrite. According to a report in Die Zeit, the press office had had the content checked. However, the sinologist employed did not understand the subtle linguistic level of the ancient Chinese text. The front page of the China issue has now been changed and the old issues have been thrown away.
