When thinking of places around Eugene that incorperate Asian language into their businesses, I thought of this Asian market.  This photo was taken at the Eugene Asian Market on East 11th Avenue, located very close to where I live on campus.  The characters that are printed on the sign read “Eugene Asian Market,” or a phonetic translation, “Yàzhōu lóng.”  I have not seen these characters together ever in this order, but I have seen the first and third characters before while living in Taiwan.

I have seen the first character (亞, yà) at a popular Asian breakfast chain in Taiwan called Laya Burger.  The third character (龍, lóng) is the second character to the compound word for dinosaur and can individually mean dragon.  In this context, I believe these characters each represent that the store is Asian and located in Eugene.  Because Chinese uses radicals and other visual clues to indicate meaning, unknown characters can sometimes be inferred using a method like this.