This study focuses on the relationship between the language power embodied in the bottom-up signs and the culture power in Shanghai’s language ecosystem. It reports on a linguistic landscaping research of Shanghai urban catering business. Data collection includes photographing linguistic signs displayed in and out of some 100 restaurants and interviewing restaurant owners or workers. The research finds that the top-down signs can accurately reflect language power and social status of the sign makers, while the language power of the bottom-up signs is not directly corresponding to social status of the sign makers. The author argues that the mismatch in the bottom-up sign cases is mainly caused by the impacts of culture power of the investigated languages. The author further argues that sign producer’s original motivation is not the focus of this linguistic landscaping study; rather, this study emphasizes text interpretation and positions the texts in its social context in order to analyze the culture power refl ected in the linguistic signs. The paper concludes that researchers should take extra caution in interpreting culture power embodied in the “Прецедентный феномен(precedential phenomenon)” while analyzing languages of bottom-up signs.