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 top anyway. Nobody cares and a cat looking at a toddler for three and a half seconds gets 6 million more views on YouTube than a film I’ve spent three months working on. Metaphor? Yes. If you want results, don’t make any effort.
But then I think, is the result I want 6 million views on YouTube? No. The result I want is full supremacy for Cantonese, damn it! So I’ve decided to start doing more, not less. Since 95% of all the work I do is free anyway, why not make it 98%? So I’ve finally started editing the film I made in Hainan at Christmas almost two years ago. And them I’ll start making weekly podcasts. I’ll need guest stars for the podcasts. Who’s in?
But first: Hainan Island:
Hainan used to be part of Guangdong province and a Cantonese stronghold. Now it’s been almost completely Mandofied. That’s what keeps me going on. I don’t want Hong Kong to be mandofied. I don’t.
海南島 (Hoi Lam Dou – Hainan Island)
國語 (Gok Yu – Mandarin)
聖誕節 (Seng daan jit – Christmas)
There are as many types of Chinese food as there are people in China; approximately 1.3 billion different dishes at last count. That's more dishes than you and I go through in an average month! →
(None of the people in the photos were quoted – or hurt – during this blog entry) Perhaps it’s inevitable when people are starting to learn Cantonese that they will feel themselves transported back to →
In January, okay, I admit it, I waited until the first week of February, came my annual ordeal: The visit to the vet. Why ordeal? It’s just some injections, and they’re not even on me. →
Chinese New Year saw the Lo Uk Tsuen Country Club full of people coming to learn the basics of Sichuan cooking. Mature and younger, Lantau people and people from as far away as Britain – →
It’s Chinese new year and the streets (and Facebook) reverberates to foreigners calling out to each other: “KUNG hei fat choi!” For one thing it should be GUNG hei, but hey. The tradition of spelling →
About those language teaching videos (one Cantonese for beginners, one Cantonese for the more adventurous and, yes! I admit it! Even a survival Mandarin video called Stay Grounded) – all these years they’ve had this →
Oh China. I love you so much. This is Siu Heng, the town where, on top of the many scraggy crags, there are signs (signage) exhorting people not to “parapet”. No Parapeting! the signs say →
威士忌 – Wai si gei (Whisky) 酒店 – jau dim (Hotel) 唔舒服 – m syu fuk (Not well)
The shooting of new, from-scratch Cantonese course CantoNews continues. This time we went to a thrilling location, the luscious OYC Hotel in 肇慶 (Siu Heng) in Guangdong province, a mere four hours’ comfortable train journey →
Here is an excellent way to practise and learn more Cantonese: Going to the market with your very own Happy Jellyfish People’s Democratic Language Bureau. This is how it works: First we sit down with →
Woo-hooo! WE did that! the happy cooks A, K and D are beaming, so pleased with themselves after studying Sichuan cooking for only two hours. (Chuanxing village spicy potato cake) Now you can also learn →
Ahhrghhhh … When I set out to make Cantonese a world language, I was mostly concerned with Hong Kong and its people – the way they look down on Cantonese (their own language!!!) calling it →
