Ah! Yam bui! Here are some of my students taking a good slurp of 鐵觀音 (tit gun yam, a famous tea) on my roof. Yes, Lantau people, there are still some morning/early afternoon slots left in the Cantonese course at Lo Uk Tsuen Country Club! Sign up, sign up.
Talking about tea, last weekend E and I went to Shenzhen for a quick foot massage/fake DVD/yam cha raid. As always we stayed in the excellent Railway Station Hotel
on whose 4th floor is one of the best Yam Cha restaurants in Southern China. AND the menu is in normal characters to cater to hong Kong people. (Take that, Hang Seng “Suck Up To Mainlanders” Bank.) We ordered 水仙 (seui sin)， a green tea not unlike tit gun yam. The waitress came up to our table carrying a pot of tea and I heard her mumbling “Oh! Seui Sin!” in Mandarin and shuttle off. I said to E: “I bet you that was her realising that she had brought proper Chinese tea to foreigners while everybody knows we can only ever drink jasmine.” We both shouted: Wei! Come back! We ordered Seui Sin! but she wouldn’t listen. Another option was of course that she had mistakenly brought jasmine, then remembered it should have been Seui Sin, but somehow I didn’t think so.
Then a trouser suit-clad floor manager hurried forth: “You wanted jasmine, right?” Ha! I knew it. The other waitress had indeed brought seui sin and thought better of it when she saw our faces.
So even if you order the tea you want, you’ll still get bloody jasmine. Because it’s written in stone since the beginning of time: Foreigners can’t drink Chinese tea and if they can, only jasmine.
In my Cantonese course I have lots of course material that deals with this and similar problems. Roll in! (收皮！）
I just thought I’d get in some product placement before lunchtime! To which you’d probably respond: 你有冇攪錯呀！(Lei yau mou gaau cho ah – you must be joking!) That’s right, there is no ‘have’ or ‘not →
My daylight hours are starting to fill up with Cant-studs (Cantonese students) coming to my house, and of course I have to offer them something for struggling up all those stairs and paying me. As →
Finally, after almost a year of writing and researching (the research consisted mostly of doing the dishes) I have finished my new book CHILLies! Sichuan Food Made Easy. It looked so alluring with the iBook →
The New China Bookshop in Guangzhou, or actually, the New China Bookshop in general, is a real treasure trove. Look what I found there last weekend, a map of Mexico with all the towns and →
嗰個人係四川人 (go go yan hai Sei Chyun yan – that piece person is Four River person, that person is from Sichuan) 嗰個人 (go go yan – that piece person). That should be pretty plain sailing →
Here’s a word, short, unassuming, that often creates trouble for my clients (“victims”). It’s 嗰 (go – that.) Now, the word this is never a problem for any of my clients. It’s all 呢個(li go →
I’ve just travelled 25 minutes there and 25 back just to eat. What, didn’t I have perfectly good ingredients for Sichuan food in my fridge? you ask. Yes, of course. But no matter how good →
Guangzhou used to be my favourite city with its leafy streets, car-less alleys and languidly flowing river whose name, Pearl, also gave itself to an excellent beer, 珠江啤酒 (jyu gong beh jau – Pearl River →
Drowning in weather! I got up at 5 having slept very little due to the absolutely wild weather that shook my house all night. Apparently the lightning had struck Lantau Island 3,000 times out of →
It’s no secret that I love the motherland, China, over all other lands, and not only because of Mons 雪花(Suet Fa – Snow Flower) beer and Sichuan food either. I’ve had more fun there than →
Woo-hooo. My last message was pretty depressed. I talked about how I have the least job satisfaction in the entire world, yea, even less than people whose job is warning people about the dangers of world jihad.
I stand by the sentiment but of course there are some good days too. Some of my students really want to learn Cantonese and use every opportunity to practise. Yes, on real Chinese people! Yes, even if they risk the Chinese people not understanding them or they not understanding the Chinese people! Yes, even if they risk saying something “wrong”! That’s what language learning is all about.
Two of these intrepid students are 飛鷹 (can be seen in all his splendour in the film above) and 五天, both British. And they’re coming here today to shoot a film! I’m looking forward to it with enormous force, for my camera has been out of commission for too, too long.
It died in Mexico during a wedding
to which these two kind people, also students who really try to communicate in Cantonese, invited me.
But now it’s all repaired, the battery is charged and we’re ready to start shooting a new series called CantoNews, teaching basic Cantonese from the beginning. Watch this space!
錯 – cho (wrong, incorrect, mistake)
啱 – aahm (right, correct, just)
墨西哥 – Mak Sai Go （Mexico)
飛鷹 – Fei Yeng (Flying Eagle)
五天 – M Tin (Five Heavens)
A lovely day has begun in the lovely city of Guangzhou and after yesterday’s torrential rain people are pouring out in the streets again. Just outside the hotel I saw this guy relaxing with a →
I’ve finally finished the last chapter (or recipe) in my Sichuan cookery book, a book that isn’t really a book, for can it be a book when it’s only online? If not, what should it →
Drowning in weather! I got up at 5 having slept very little due to the absolutely wild weather that shook my house all night. Apparently the lightning had struck Lantau Island 3,000 times out of →
In yesterday’s article I advised people who are trying to learn Cantonese to become like a child again. Those little buggers know how to pick up languages all right! First they say “da da da, →
It’s no secret that I love the motherland, China, over all other lands, and not only because of Mons 雪花(Suet Fa – Snow Flower) beer and Sichuan food either. I’ve had more fun there than →
Hooray! Almost finished with my Sichuan cookbook called What was it again? Cook, something cook, something Sichuan. Something. Anyway, in it I praise that beer so loved and, amazingly, hated, all over the world: “Tsingtao”. →
Yesterday my sister in Norway skyped me. She said she was sitting in the garden for the first time this summer! On July 12th! The rest of the time it had been raining or too →
And the living is easy, except for managers of the Happy Jellyfish People’s Democratic Language Bureau! We must slog away even on Sundays in the never-ending quest to make Cantonese a world language. Sunday in →
Two days ago I did a Sichuan dinner for 13 people, and finally cracked the secret to chilli prawns after trying for ages. I will now share the secret with you, as well as some →
Smoke! Is it just me or has Central become unbearable after the smoking ban was implemented? I’ve become one of those middle-aged hags who sniffily wave her hand in front of her face while walking, →
