Mountain, Thrice

Strolling down the streets of Tainan City one day on one of my trips back to my birth country, I noticed this sign, was amused, and quickly snapped a picture. It is of E.Sun Bank, a well-known bank in Taiwan, with over a hundred branches on the island. The first thing that struck me about this signage was how the English was not a translation of the bank’s name whatsoever, but rather a phonetic transcription. It reminded me of a Chinese running gag when a foreigner asks a Chinese person what something meant in Chinese, the person transcribes the name rather than translating its meaning, resulting in more confusion. 

Let’s have a closer look however. “E.Sun” here corresponds to “玉山” as the name of the bank. Because of the period after the “E,” the “E” is abbreviated unnecessarily, but perhaps it intends to be a phonetic guidance to pronouncing it as the letter. “Sun” is a supposed transcription of “山” meaning “mountain.” Hence the English “E.Sun” is a somewhat faithful transcription of “yu shan,” meaning “Jade Mountain,” although relinquishing any of the meaning. 

So does the English version really carry none of the meaning of “Jade Mountain,” the highest peak in Taiwan, the symbol of national pride and pinnacle? Perhaps not in a linguistic sense, but the symbols tell another story. If you allow the “E” to fall on its back, it becomes “山”. Or if you copy and reflect the “E,” so that it creates “王”, and then allow the period to nestle in between the middle and bottom rungs, you end up with the character “玉.” The use of a circular dot on 玉 rather than the usual 丶 seems like a calculated choice to reinforce the symbolic translation. Visually the “E.” becomes a subliminal representation of both the characters for “jade” and “mountain.”

It’s also interesting to note that the signage contains three levels of symbolic representation, from the most realistic (left) to the most abstract (right); from the pictogram of a mountain enclosed in a circle, to the Chinese character for “mountain” derived from an abstraction of the image, then to the “E” as subliminal substitute for “mountain.” This way, “mountain” is repeated thrice, and thrice it has imprinted the idea that E.Sun Bank is a stalwart, preeminent institution as steadfast as the magnificent Yu Shan.

On a subconscious level, this brand serves its purpose of embedding itself into people’s minds symbolically, perhaps not in the traditional “correct” way, but a way that is distinctively Taiwanese.

Text and Photography by Hui OY