Chinese bus mystery answers!

Awesome comments today! The Chinese bus, pictured again below, is explained.

Iain gives the following two links:

Joanna Scarratt UA Brands: Chinese Happy Backpacker

"With a bit of digging, I discovered that Ogilvy’s Beijing arm created a campaign earlier this year for Yili, the leading Chinese dairy brand and official sponsor of the Olympic Chinese Sports Delegation. It’s called “Let’s Olympic Together,” and aims to uncover ordinary Chinese people’s extraordinary stories. There are outdoor print ads, short films, TV commercials and digital engagement initiatives inspiring viewers to realise their own “Olympic” dreams by embracing a healthy lifestyle"

At ChinaSMACK, Yili lauches new campaign to coincide with Olympic hysteria includes a video of the runner shown on the bus, which is also here. He is apparently Li, a 62 year old marathon runner.

Louis independently gives the pinyin and a rough translation which agrees with the above:

"ping(2) fan(2) zhong(1) guo(2) ren(2), bu(4) ping(2) fan(2) de gu(4) shi(4). A bit rusty with my pinyin so I wasn't sure of the correct way of indicating the tone. A rough translation is: An ordinary (or common?) Chinese, an extradordinary story."

Thanks guys! It doesn't entirely explain why the ad is on a London bus outside the umbrella shop. My best guess is that it's directed mainly at a TV audience back home, via a carefully-planned campaign to get the ads on TV and talked about, partly by that very oddity. Worked on me!