How do China’s streets get named? One student finds out after online maps mistakenly pick up on his prank

Art student Ge Yulu put his name on anonymous street as part of an art project – and the name stuck

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Beijing artist Ge Yulu put his name on an unnamed road a few years later as part of an art project. His name can also be read as Gu Yu Street in Chinese. Photo: Handout

Published: 3:30pm, 12 Jul 2017Updated: 3:50pm, 12 Jul 2017

Several online maps have named a street in Beijing after an art student who, a few years ago, erected his own street signs bearing his own name on them, a national newspaper reports.

Ge Yulu, a masters student at the China Central Academy of Fine Arts, put the street signs on the east and west sections of the street as part of an artwork. But the signs were later recorded by some online maps, according to Beijing Youth Daily.

A Beijing artist put his name, Ge Yulu, on an unnamed road and a few years later, the road appears on most digital maps. Photo: Handout

Ge erected the street signs in 2012 after he found the street was unnamed. The name was accepted by some online maps in 2015, according to a report on Ge at the academy’s website.

The name can still be found on two popular web maps including Baidu Maps and Amap now, the newspaper said.

The street, located in Beijing’s Chaoyang district, is not a long and bustling road and takes about 10 minute’s to walk from one end to the other. A local resident told the newspaper that residents called the street “Ge Yu Lu” (lu is Chinese for “road”) but did not know why it was named that way.