CantoNews For Everybody

My life goal is full global supremacy for Cantonese and I stand by it. However, that doesn’t mean that other languages can’t frolic happily alongside this most fun and happening of all tongues. Also, it doesn’t mean that everyone in the world must become 100% fluent in Cantonese. No, being able to speak just a couple of hundred words and string a few sentences together (like ordering a beer and some light bar snacks) will do!

So I’ve started shooting a new film series: CantoNews. It’s Cantonese from absolute scratch, starting with 係唔係 (hai m hai – is/not is)

Watch this space

Oh, and who wants to be in the next one? No skills needed, only a love of Cantonese, extreme physical beauty and a willingness to learn.

世界 (Sai gai – the world)
新聞 (San man – news)
流利 (lau lei – fluent)

Chicken Talking to Duck （雞同鴨講）

Sometimes, almost always, the below kind of conversation is funny, yes surreal. But not when I’ve spent all day on a bus full of people with, shall we say a relaxed relationship with personal hygiene →

Suddenly Can’t Connect

After a quick stopover at my (visually) favourite spot in all of China, Jiayuguan Fort in Gansu province, I speeded into Xinjiang province where the language was: Nothing. The whole province has been completely shut →

Communication

This could never happen in Hong Kong. No, not some geezer talking on his mobile you berk, but sticking up in the middle of a four-lane highway with only a single traffic cone for protection. →

Hurtling Towards the Wild-ish West

At last! I’m almost on the train which will bring me to Lanzhou, transport hub of the northern provinces of China, and thence to the innermost reaches of inner inner everything, as far from the →

Dumbing Down of Chinese Culture

When the communists, soon after they came to power in 1949, introduced simplified Chinese characters, it was ostensibly to reduce illiteracy on the mainland. However, their real objective was to enable peasants and other illiterates →

Dragon Year – How Can You Get Through It Without Cantonese???

So it’s a new year again, this time rather more important than just old 2012 – it’s the year of the DRAGON. Full of upheavals and excitement, it is also the luckiest year in the Chinese zodiac.

With only a basic understanding of Cantonese, you will be so much better equipped to take on this year. Why not take a course in Cantonese, learning it the Natural Way – From a Norwegian? I have free slots throughout the week for groups and individuals, especially in the late afternoons and on Saturdays. You’ll laugh when you see how easy it is!

If you don’t have time to commit to weekly sessions, why not get your own personal pocket Norwegian right into your home? My two DVDs Cantonese – The Movie (for total beginners) and its successor Going Native (scroll down) are yours for less than the price of one hour of one-to-one teaching.

Learn Cantonese this year! Your future will thank you for it.

Longing For Desert

People in Hong Kong have short memories. Last week it rained a bit. I think it started Monday. By Tuesday it was all “oh, I’m so SICK of this RAIN! Will it EVER stop?”

Interestingly, it seems to be people who were born in freezing, cloudy, rainy and snowy countries that complain the loudest, and soonest, about rain, heat, pretty much any weather. One would think they (like me) loved heat but no; as soon as the temperature goes above 25 degrees, it's moan moan, whinge whinge again.

"It's so hot, I can't stand it!" adding, as if they were the first people ever to notice this: "Actually, it's not the heat you see, it's the humidity".

Me, I'm happy as long as it doesn't snow.

Still, when it’s raining torrentially and dog walking isn’t as much of a joy as it normally is, my thoughts go to Xinjiang.

Talk about "it's the humidity" - in Xinjiang the humidity must be MINUS 20%. Temperatures up to 40 degrees are as nothing as the desert winds cool your skin, sucking every milli-droplet of moisture out of it. The people there look 20 years older than they really are, not unlike the desiccated, red-haired mummy in Urumqi's Museum of Natural History bearing the proud inscription: "This is a corpse from 3,000 years from now".

Huge, menacing black clouds build up at night and you think there will be some relief from the heat, but all that happens is a dust storm.

Evening meals at outside restaurants are like sitting inside a hair dryer going at full blast and in Tulufan (Turpan) only mad dogs and I go out in the midday sun. But even I must carry an umbrella for protection against the brutal rays.

Xinjiang is of course in Central Asia and I used to criticise China for invading it, I mean "taking it back" in 1949, but now I'm glad it's part of the motherland so that I can go there with impunity and still have Chinese standards (proper Sichuan food).

Only four or five days away by train, it never rains and you never sweat so you only have to shower once a day. If that. You can wear your shirt two days in a row. Paradise! And the melons and grapes are out of this world wonderful. August is the fruit season in Xinjiang. I must go there.

落雨 (lok yu – fall rain)
雲 (wan – cloud)
好濕 （hou sap – well humid[wet])
新疆 (San Geung – New Frontier [Xinjiang])
哈密瓜 (Ha Mat Gwa – Hami melon)