This article approaches advertisements not just as a tool for the promotion of goods but also, and largely, as an agent of cultural translation that crosses the boundaries between ‘Self' and the (linguistic and cultural) ‘Other'. That is, advertising is seen as a means of transporting the ways of life, customs, attitudes, mindsets and values of one culture across time and space to another culture. Within the radically changed context of globalization and localization, the author analyzes contemporary advertising in China to show how it reveals the various discursive contradictions existing at the core of the dominant ideology of ‘Socialist Market Economy with Chinese Characteristics' and explores how the relationship between ‘Self' and the ‘Other' is negotiated through cultural translation. In the process of this exploration, the author conducts a cultural critique of the new Orientalism in real estate advertisements from the Guangdong region (bordering on Hong Kong and Macao) of the Pearl River Delta, one of the most developed areas in China.