old-style brush calligraphy (Chinese)

[Joel Pomerantz]

Know anyone who does Chinese old-style brush calligraphy? I’m hoping that someone can help me read these storefront signs from 1854—at least some clues.

Joel

[Heidi Q]

Dear Joel,

Are these from SF chinatown?

A couple of years ago I did a walkabout through Chinatown with a friend whose ancestors lived in SF Chinatown.  We were identifying buildings, their meanings, hidden water wells you can find on old maps etc..

xo

Heidi Q

On Thu, Feb 5, 2026 at 12:10 AM 'Joel Pomerantz' via Friends of Awesome (SF) <SF-awesom...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Know anyone who does Chinese old-style brush calligraphy? I’m hoping that someone can help me read these storefront signs from 1854—at least some clues.

Joel

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[sterling sam]

Joel

The top character, above the horizontal "restaurant" sign, is a very stylized "beautiful." That vertical sign, with the Chinese characters, appears to be behind the restaurant sign. The fourth character down is "charcoal." Without knowing the other characters written there, it would be impossible to make out what the sign means, as in both English and Chinese, you have to know the context of all the words.

I've done a little shodo, which is traditional Japanese calligraphy, a very challenging art form. It's no wonder that learning it takes years!

Hope that info helps.

Best,

Sterling S.

https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/SF-awesome-friends/CAAJt3KZX_HpiYEV4ChDymjyH65PixJWhU%2BxxePKC_9TJBoSK0g%40mail.gmail.com

.

[Joel Pomerantz]

The artist was sketching from the corner of Spring Street and Sacramento Street looking west in 1854 (currently the edge of San Francisco’s Chinatown).

So far, nothing conclusive for translations.

Some people have told me it’s not normal script but might be calligraphy. I don’t know if they mean it could be cursive or running script or stylized or what.

One person who does Chinese calligraphy has just reported via one of you that the characters shown are gibberish.

A friend tried ChatGPT but on the basis of the reply, ChatGPT is fired.
It said that above “RESTAURANT” it says 装卸 (zhuāng xiè) — loading / unloading
and below “RESTAURANT” 厨房 (chú fáng) — kitchen
But the characters don’t even slightly match and the number of characters is off.
On the right, ChatGPT insists the sign has these six characters (there are seven): 男男女女衣室
If those six, it would say: male male female female changing room, I guess. The top character is vaguely like ‘male’ but not.
ChatGPT, you're fired.
I’m be curious if it says the same thing if ChatGPT is asked again! The idea that one side is a kitchen deliveries sign and the other a changing room is enticing but it doesn’t hold up.

I’m not sure what to make of this and will hold off with full conclusions.

Thank you for looking at it!

Joel

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[Matt Dove]

After some closer inspection, I feel like this is something like this cool project, where an artist turned people's drawings of bicycles from memory into realistic 3d renderings. I think Nahl got some of the overall shape of some of the characters, but filtered through the dyslexia of unfamiliarity we're left with something that only resembles actual Chinese. The sign on the left adds a further complication, in that it seems that the source text was written in Seal Script, which is often used decoratively and in signs/advertising, but is a couple millenia away from being the common form of any of these characters. In attempting to translate, we're then left to make assumptions about the context, compare to the slightly-off versions of the characters, and what we end up with is something like the literary version of Gianluca Gimini's fantastical bikes...

I like this one:

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[David Langhals]

Hi Joel, 

I have a coworker who is fluent in Chinese and asked her if there was any translation - she said that it's not actually any written language that she's familiar with. Probably just the artist trying to depict it as Chinese. 

Have a great day! 

David 

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