Chinese Writing

So I'm trying to figure out a little bit about how you actually write Chinese characters. In general - on signs, in most books- you read left to right. (However, bus listings are different; the stops for a particular bus route are read from top to bottom).

This left-to-right direction is just a general guide, however. I guess it is more correct to say that you read from "front" to "back". For instance, the Chinese characters for "China Southern" - the big airline in Guangzhou - start at the front door of the plane. If you are looking at a plane, and the nose is on the left and the tail on the right, the China Southern name (in Chinese) would start on the left and be read from left to right.

However, on the other side of the plane - where the nose-to-tail direction is right to left - the characters are reversed. The first character is the right-most character, since it is near the "front",and the characters are read from right to left.

Got all that? It's the same way for buses, too. The name of the company is read in the door - to - back direction, whether it is left to right or right to left.

The next question, of couse, is how the English translation of the company name is written? Here is an actual picture of the bus used to transport us from the plant to the hotel up near Shanghai. Obviously, the door is on the right, so the Chinese characters are read right to left....why wouldn't the English characters be read in the same way?

This would make a good sobriety test in the states... "please read this text"......on second thought, maybe you have to be drunk to read this clearly......