The simplified characters menace is growing. Businesses all over Hong Kong are falling over themselves to accommodate mainlanders only, showing in a not very subtle manner that they’re not interested in local customers: by using only simplified, ‘crippled’ characters.
Only one man can save the city: Mister Public Security Uncle! But will he? Or will he, as usual, enthusiastically carry out the edict from (the recently new) on high?
So this plan of mine to eat my way through all the Chinese restaurants in the USA is kind of almost working out. A little. I think I’ll be able to do about 90%, including →
Last weekend we were in Mui Jau (梅州）which, although it’s in Guangdong province, bears the dubious distinction of being completely Mando speaking. People told me it was because it was a Hakka stronghold, but I →
Learning or even speaking Cantonese is no game for the timid. It is, quite frankly, something of a never-ending fight with frequent setbacks and few triumphs. The other day I was in the Holly in →
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 →
This is how it started. We had dived into an upmarket restaurant because the temperature was dropping fast and it was raining; we just couldn’t bear the thought of another meal with our backs to →
Christmas is ridiculously coming (in about a year) and my students have decided to take several months off. There is a lull and: You can step into it, becoming fluent in Cantonese around February next →
I spent last weekend in Zhongshan, birthplace of Sun Yat-sen and the original bastion of Cantonese. Not sure about the numbers but an incredible amount of immigrants to the various gold and hard-work slave-conditions hellholes →
I’m SO glad I can speak Cantonese! Here is one of a million reasons: I just took the MTR from Central to Tung Chung and as usual there were no taxis although it’s about 200 →
The simplified characters menace is growing. Businesses all over Hong Kong are falling over themselves to accommodate mainlanders only, showing in a not very subtle manner that they’re not interested in local customers: by using →
Working hard on our new film Simply The Worst, a frightening sci-fi look at what happens when the government forces simplified characters on us. So I suddenly remembered the above film about speech-making communist language →
Just because I’m a Cantonese fundamentalist and don’t want Hong Kong to be taken over by Mandohooligans, it doesn’t mean I don’t feel a huge pull from the wild almost daily. Yes, I’m talking about the untamed hinterlands of the foothills of the Himalayas, the endless grasslands with their chomping yaks and the deathly deserts of the Central Asian plains… etc. And I’ll take Guangdong province too. Any time!
So now Christmas is galloping towards us with enormous haste, and I want, no, need! to get away. And bugger me if my good friend J didn’t suggest that we go into the hinterland together! So now we’re doing that. First we’re getting on an overnight train to Kunming
which is the capital of wondrous Yunnan province, and then… who knows. But we’ll be seeking out the less, not to say least, freezing areas of the province, so going south to the tropical bits which are supposed to look like Burma!!! will be the order of the day. SO, so exciting. We’ll be taking off around the 23rd of December and we still have two free seats on the trip. So if you like adventure travel with youth discos, card playing, beer drinking and excellent food, why not join us?
雲南 (Wan lam – Cloud South/Yunnan)
昆明 (Gwan meng – Elder brother bright/Kunming)
聖誕節 (Seng daan jit – Holy birth festival/Christmas)
火車 (Fo che – train)
