The Mandofication continues at breakneck speed. I’m sure the “great” idea of making Hong Kong simplified character-ised to “adapt” and accommodate the 700,000 mainlanders currently living here so they’ll feel more at home, has already been suggested in the corridors of power more than once.
The above is some poor primary school sucker’s test (homework?) where all the words he or she thought were Chinese have been brutally red-pencilled out. Yes! It’s anti-Beijing to write the Cantonese 生果 (saang goh – fruit). It should be 水果 (seoui goh – fruit) and make no mistake! 魚蛋 (yu dan – fish balls) isn’t allowed and neither is 橙 (chan – orange) Anything that can be perceived as “vernacular” (although all the words are in the dictionary) are rooted out, seemingly with sadistic glee.
Although not exactly the same because Cantonese and Mandarin are two different languages , it would be like English schoolchildren being punished for writing “car” instead of “automobile”, “plane” instead of “flying machine” and “bike” instead of “penny-farthing”.
The Cantonese words are better! Shorter! More descriptive! And they are what people actually say.
I hope Hong Kong people will take note and start writing everything in the vernacular. What are they going to do – shoot us?
帝制 – dai jai (imperialism)
繼續 – gai juk (continue)
Here’s one of my students, let’s call him X, taking the gun off some local on one of our outings to southern China. He’s been studying for a while now and has always done very →
I’m running a series on Facebook called Beer Is Beautiful, largely featuring this woman and her associates. And other people I know. The other day I tried ‘beer is beautiful’ in Cantonese in Honolulu Coffee →
Sometimes I’m tempted to give up the whole Cantonese thing. I mean, what’s the point? The Mando behemoth is going to roll Hong Kong and the Cantonese-speaking world into the ground and pour concrete on →
This is the very first photo I had taken of myself in China (a Chelfie?) in 1988. It was in the then famous silk market, no doubt demolished now, and the guy was probably some →
It used to be that Shenzhen was a wild party town. For me, that is – I’m sure it still is for the young people of today. Now that former frontier, now settled and comfortably →
Is it racist to say that Chinese people in China aren’t great at making Western food? That is my experience anyway. And that experience is now almost 28 years. Wow! Not that I have eaten →
I must have mentioned once or twice that I cook Sichuan food which I serve on my, I have to say, beautiful roof terrace overlooking the South China Sea? It’s just that recently I’ve been →
Although I may seem like a Luddite with my Nokia and my stubborn insistence of having tangible, physical CDs and DVDs, I actually love technology. The whole internet thing; reaching people all over the world →
This never happens: A former senior town planner with the Hong Kong government has suggested getting rid of a Hong Kong icon! So novel; where do they get these ideas from? This time it’s the →
Chillies, chopsticks, even cha are they only Chinese things, meant for Chinese people? I’ve had this conversation hundreds of times in the mainland and in Hong Kong, but I somehow didn’t expect to have it →
Recently we Lantau residents have been bombarded with information about how our lives will be so infinitely better; first with the mega-incinerator with its “no emissions” and now with another 1 million people in the →
Have you had it? Who hasn’t? Shitty province. But I kind of love it!
Most of my live Cantonese sessions are done in the venerable Honolulu Coffee and Cake Shop, one of the last proper cha chanteng in Central. The last venue (see film above), whose name I can’t →
In the column below I bemoan the fact that my first Inner Guangdong town, (where I coined the phrase ‘hovelage’ – excellent traditional Chinese architecture made to last but a little careworn) has become a →
Ever since my friend suggested I should teach Mandarin (NEVER!!! Down with simplified characters and cultural imperialism!) new Cantonese students have been pouring in. There was something about making a decision, having a goal in →
Are you a woman? Caucasian or Caucasian with benefits? Do you live in Hong Kong? Then you may have referred to yourself at some point as “Gwailou”. Guess what, you’re not. Only men can be →
Last month I was feeling a little down in the dumps; I felt that life was a cruel joke and nothing was going my way. For a while I didn’t even have that old chestnut, →
The mainland is all well and good, in fact better than well and certainly better than good, but there other countries around here. Japan for example. Not that this tiny island that’s much closer to →
This week my first specialised crash course kicked off, with two excellent and fast learners, working titles ah-Lei and ah-Ga. In only two and a half hours, they learnt enough Cantonese to go into any →
Chinese characters (normal, not simplified) are beautiful, aren’t they? Even ordinary words like ‘toilet’ look somehow elevated to a higher sphere when they’re written with a brush, or printed for that matter. Not that the →
The last few days I’ve been trying to catalogue my films. When I say “trying to catalogue” I mean “watching Breaking Bad to get ideas for angles, film techniques etc”. Breaking Bad – it’s really one of the best series ever made.
Today I made the playlist ‘Documentaries’ and came across this one from 2011 about the water buffalo of Pui O. In 2011 I said they were under threat and they still are. But also – they’re still here! Bless them.
二零一一年 (Yi leng yat yat lin – 2011 year/the year 2011)
制毒師 (Tsai duk si – Manufacture/control/switch/system Drug Master [drug manufacturer master])
記錄片 (gei luk pin – documentary film)
