…if you please

In Hong Kong, there is a government department whose sole function is to get rid of all the water that falls on the territory, especially during the summer: the Drainage Services Department (DSD). To this end, over the past couple of decades, it has canalized all the major rivers of the New Territories, and smaller watercourses have been lined with wire baskets (gabions) filled with rip-rap (large angular pieces of rock), so major flooding events rarely happen nowadays.

Some time ago, I started to notice signs put up by the DSD prohibiting fishing in any of its rivers, like this next to a bridge over the Ng Tung River close to the village where we live:

I was struck immediately by how polite all these signs were. I hardly need to emphasize how the same injunction would be worded in the UK (and probably, with appropriate changes in language, in other Western countries):

NO FISHING

This prohibition is widely ignored, not only by the local population but also by the local egrets and herons, which perch on the edge of the winter channel of the river looking for a quick meal.

Over the past few months, I’ve started to notice other signs that include the unexpected word ‘please’ in their message, and the remainder of this post provides more examples.

The next photo is of temporary construction barriers alongside our local river:

The request to cyclists to ‘Please dismount and push’ is repeated every couple of metres across the temporary bridge, but I’m not sure why people are also asked to ‘Please Cross Bridge’, given that there is nowhere else to go at this point.

I spotted the signs in the next photo on one of the entrances to Green Code Plaza, a shopping mall on the eastern edge of Fanling. I think that the owners were in the process of repairing the affected doors:

I’ve needed to attend Fanling Clinic on several occasions recently, and on one occasion, while waiting to see the doctor, I spotted two signs where ‘please’ was unexpected:

I would have expected signs like these, in a government-run medical facility, to be more peremptory (in fact, three of the signs here include the word ‘please’)!

The next photo shows a sign on the fence surrounding the Kam Tin Tree House, which I wrote about in A Grand Day Out:

I don’t know whether the warning is against climbing the tree or just the fence, but in terms of conveying a message, ‘please’ is redundant here.

The next photo shows an informal sign alongside San Tin Tsuen Road, a quiet road that we cycle along on our way ‘out west’:

I can’t imagine that the water here is particularly deep—it’s just a large lotus pond—and in any case you would have to climb the barrier, but I have seen wildlife photographers here who might fall in the water. Although it is quite common to see the reason for a prohibition on a sign in the UK, it is more likely to read:

KEEP OUT

I’ve kept the most bemusing sign till last. I didn’t spot it when taking photos for Hidden History #6, only when I was preparing the photos for that post:

While ‘beware of traffic’ is a reasonable exhortation, to see it preceded by ‘please’ seems unnecessary. The additional length of the warning may even be counterproductive, and there is no equivalent pleasantry in the Chinese translation.

Incidentally, there is a warning, only in Chinese, on the red construction barrier that reads ‘beware of pedestrians’. I can’t imagine that many drivers turning left here will even see it, let alone read it.

postscript
I compiled this post two days ago, and yesterday Paula and I were cycling ‘out west’, which meant passing the location of the last photo above on our way through town. To my surprise, not only the construction barriers but also the signs had been removed, which struck me as odd.