In a country where the government is so hysterically set on everybody doing everything the government way, for example by banning beautiful, normal Chinese characters on buildings (it must be ‘crippled’, i.e. simplified characters or nothing) it’s heartwarming to see people defying the edicts with such panache.
The above photo was taken in Jek Haam (赤坎), a beautiful town in Guangdong province. Not only was the town not razed to the ground and replaced with white-tiled, Alcatraz-metal windows buildings, it was also fully inhabited and bursting with normal characters.
I hate simplified characters more and more. They are ugly, cheapening, have no meaning, and most of all they are a symbol of communist cultural imperialism and destruction.
This is a business in Hong Kong. Here is the same business in the mainland:
Enough said!
… all the way to the throbbing metropolis of Mui Wo – La Pizzeria to be exact!
Repeat after me: YAT JEK GAU 一隻狗 ONE DOG That’s right! “Jek” (隻) is the classifier for mammals, things of which there are two (一隻眼睛）yat jek an jeng (one eye), round things, so an eye →
Every Wednesday I meet these two delightful women, Ah Bek and Ah Wai, plus three others, in a Jau Lau （酒樓，Chinese restaurant) for tea, dim sam and Canto. All the waiters and waitresses love us! →
This is ah-Fa, one of my long-term Cantonese students. You see that piece of paper she’s reading? I wrote that the same morning and emailed it to her. Out of all those Chinese characters, there →
Perhaps you’ve made some new year resolutions this year, and broken them already. Here is one that won’t hurt, but on the contrary will enrich you no end for the decades to come: Decide that →
… when their children take their first steps etc. Intense pride! And laughing their heads off. At least I did. This is Kelly, aka Ah-Gei, who has been learning Cantonese for a few weeks. Bloody →
I’ve made a film about my experiences during 20 years of learning Cantonese. Cantonese is a really easy language to learn (contrary to people’s deep-held, sacred beliefs) – it’s just that it’s so damned difficult →
Wei, students and others: I work day and night to make Cantonese a world language. You are my tools for accomplishing this. I would like to hear about your experiences using Cantonese in your daily →
A terrible happening from ah-Mok’s past comes back to haunt him. See episode 22 first!
Wei hey all you groovy Canto-learners out there. Check out “Return Of The Cantonese Fundamentalists.” We put the fun back in mental!
I’ve just come back from a very pleasurable quiz night with some friends- and incredibly knowledgeable they were too. I knew nothing about tennis and Hot Chocolate, and stood helpless before a picture of chickens →
I can’t control myself – I must show it: Mister Public Security Uncle photographed by a professional photographer!
It was the night before Halloween and I was strolling around Central with my vice-Security officer, Bak Siu Jeh, making arrests and ruining lives wherever we went.
Spurring ourselves and others on with the old battle cry: 香港人講廣東話，聽唔明就返鄉下！(Heung Gong yan gong Gongdong Wah, teng m meng jau fan heung ha – Hong Kong people speak Cantonese, if you don’t understand it, go back to your ancestral village) we swept through Central like two avenging, moustachioed angels.
My plan was to hand out as many business cards as usual to ‘increase awareness’ (so popular these days) about Cantonese, but instead I fell into the competent claws of an entrepreneur, the professional photographer Gary Tyson from F8photography.
As soon as I saw the camera I forgot all about flogging my course, and not long after we were in D26 drinking beer through a straw. Excellent Halloween! Loving the photos! They make the Uncle look like some kind of brooding anti-hero straight out of Raymond Chandler (who grew up in Croydon, did you know?) I think. A very fitting look.
白小姐 (Bak Siu Jeh – White little big sister/Miss White)
中環 (Jung Waan – Central)
影相 (Yeng seung – shadow image/take a photo)
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 year!
Lantau or Central, your office in a pinch, this is your chance to learn Cantonese and make it a world language.
