Yammmmm! Yam me doooown! That’s right, I don’t spell the word you say when something tastes good, with a U. I prefer the letter A. Take a word like 蚊， (man, meaning mosquito but also dollar). Most of my native English students would spell that ‘mun’. But the next time they read that word, they invariably pronounce it like ‘moon’, presumably because it sounds more Chinese, and also because of the spelling of stuff like Tuen Mun. So I would always spell the ‘AAH’ sound with an A.
So anyway – yesterday. Four guests, four dishes. It was the hottest day of the year so naturally I cooked heavy, starchy and oily food. And after ten years, I think I may have cracked the secret to cooking good Four Seasons Beans （四季豆 sei gwai dau). But I’m not going to share it here. You can read all about it in my next book, Cook It, Sichuan Food Made Easy.
川菜，(chuen choy, Sichuan food), truly is the best in the world, 世界第一 (saigai dai yat, World Number One). I love having guests, it’s the only way I get to taste a lot of dishes.
P.S.
The kitchen is running all summer, but why not take a crash course in Chinese menu reading first?
This is the kind of joke I like. Clean, but not without teeth! Talking about vexed – the word for angry in Cantonese is 嬲 (lao). The character shows one woman between two men, so →
It’s Sunday morning and I just finished doing the dishes from yesterday’s Sichuan food blowout extravaganza wonder party. Chilli oil tastes wonderful but is a bugger to get off plates and worktops. But it’s worth →
Here is my fine hound Lasi, rocking the look with a handmade collar from Ciao Puppy. When I named her Lasi, it was meant as a knowing pun. In Cantonese, La Si (拉士) comes from →
Rain, rain and I’m stuck in my office writing a book. I like books, I like writing, but I don’t like being stuck! In times like these, my thoughts inevitably turn to travelling, especially thundering →
I’m fortunate enough to live in a place with water buffalo all around. This morning when I took my dogs for a walk, I reflected on how the rain makes the water buffalo 水牛 (seoi →
The Transport Department has just made my life a little bit worse. As if ten or more minutes of every ferry trip, twice a day, being taken up by screaming public announcements in three languages →
Last week I received some shocking news: My banjo teacher is leaving. What??? Now that everything was going so well? Not only do we do the old-fashioned and also modern thing of bartering skills; I →
Yesterday I went on a high-speed boat trip ruining my hair, but it was worth it. As soon as we got off the open boat, it started raining like – well, normal Hong Kong style. →
Yammmmm! Yam me doooown! That’s right, I don’t spell the word you say when something tastes good, with a U. I prefer the letter A. Take a word like 蚊， (man, meaning mosquito but also →
I’ve almost given up going to restaurants in Hong Kong. I find the food tasteless, the chefs complacent. But there’s one place right here in throbbing metropolis Mui Wo, the venerable Rome Restaurant, that I →
This morning I had a Canto-lesson on my roof (Lantau people: Come to Pui O to learn Cantonese this summer!) and mentioned the word 雀仔(jeuk tsai) -bird. What? my student cried, aghast. Her daughter went to, oh, I don’t know, pre-university or something (she’s 4) and is learning that ‘bird’ should be “siu liu” (小鳥）。
Sure, that also means bird – in imperialist speech-language Mandarin. Basically schoolchildren learn the local language through another language with local pronunciation. Like learning English through the medium of French but pronouncing each word in the English manner.
This week was the second time I received a panic call from a friend who is studying so-called Cantonese at the Chinese University; he was trying to read something ostensibly Cantonese but which turned out to be pure Mando.
Yes, yes. I know that the written Chinese everywhere is based on Mandarin. But why can’t Chinese University, when they are teaching Cantonese to foreigners, teach actual Cantonese?
How is my friend to know that what he reads as 做好了沒有 (joh hou liu muht yao) should actually be said in Cantonese as 攪掂未 (gau dim mei)? (Meaning: Have [you] done/finished [it] yet?)
If he has a guy fixing his shoes, say, and asks: Joh hou liu muht yao, I think that shoe repair geezer is going to look at my friend and scratch his head.
Ahhrghhh, I get so vexed! Why can’t they let Cantonese be Cantonese, and when teaching it, teach it as Cantonese???
That shi-shi-shi Communist speech-language Mandarin is a big boy and can look after itself. It doesn’t need Hong Kong to prostrate itself before it.
