Lan Su Who?

So let's say you aren't as popular as you think you should be. Your name isn't on every body's lips. Googling the universe just demonstrates that you're a nobody. In fact, when your name is mentioned, people confuse you with your cousin. What do you do? If you're the Portland Classical Chinese Garden, you just change your name!

If it worked for Muhammad Ali, formerly Cassius Clay, and Altria, formerly known as Philip Morris, and Prince, formerly known as a wacky symbol, formerly Prince, then a name change should catapult the garden into the celebrasphere.

After enjoying the services of a consultant, and much marketing and intercultural mumbo jumbo, management has decided that in order to honor the Chineseness of the garden and to make sure that people who don't speak Chinese still know what the hoopla is about, the place formerly known as the Portland Classical Chinese Garden AKA Portland Chinese Garden AKA Lan Su Yuan AKA Garden of Awakening Orchids, will ring in the new year as. . . Lan Su Chinese Garden! Hooray for multiculturalism!

The initial reception to this linguistic Frankenstein's monster has been somewhat deflating. For those people who love the subtlety, harmony, and pure aesthetic beauty of written and spoken Chinese, having to read and listen to the clash of Chinese and English in "Lan Su Chinese Garden" is akin to seeing a plate of noodles and rice all mixed together and then having to actually eat it. As the French would say, if they were being multicultural : Quelle horrors, mon pardner.

As for those hicks with no knowledge of Chinese, they just scratch their heads and wonder, "Who's Lan Su?" What a missed opportunity! If management is going to name the garden after Lan Su, they could at least have made him pay for it.