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 →
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 →
Last month I went to Hunan province and after a few minutes there was overcome with shark flu (or some other fierce animal) – awful. Just awful. Anyway, so today, instead of advising you on →
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! →
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 →
Am I the only one who thinks there are too many holidays in Hong Kong? I feel I’ve just come back from my Christmas trip – BOOM! Another big holiday immediately heaves into view. I →
My life goal is full global supremacy for Cantonese and I stand by it. However, that doesn’t mean that other languages can’t frolic happily alongside this most fun and happening of all tongues. Also, it →
While having lunch (or was it cocktails? Yes! Cocktails!) with my friend Jo in Tibet northern Yunnan the other day, I suddenly realised that few people in the world has less job satisfaction than me. →
Greetings from Shangri-la, formerly a fictitious “idyllic settlement high in the mountains of Tibet” of James Hilton’s Lost Horizon fame, now a city in China. In this photo, however, we’re a few hours further south, →
Yesterday my sister in Norway skyped me. She said she was sitting in the garden for the first time this summer! On July 12th! The rest of the time it had been raining or too cold! That’s a crappy summer.
Many people don’t understand why I don’t want to live in Norway 挪威 (Lo Wai or La Wai – Shift Strength) – it’s so beautiful and the skies are so blue! Yes, the skies are blue for about a week or two each year. The rest of the time they are non-existent, to put it nicely.
But perhaps it is this pining for the rarely seen blue and green in my homeland that’s made me favour the combination of these two colours above all others? Look at my table settings for example:
Blue 藍色(laam sek – blue colour) and green 綠色 (luk sek – green colour). Unlike English, you can’t just put the colour in front of the noun, you have to say a something-coloured noun, like 綠色杯 (luk sek bui – green-coloured cup). But sometimes you can, when the colour is part of the name of the thing and isn’t a description, like red and white wine 紅酒 (hong jau – red wine) and 白酒 (baak jau – white wine). Beware of ordering baak jau （白酒）in the mainland, though! You’ll get a 48% spirit so vile it will make your arm hairs melt.
Learn more about colours and food right here in Happy Jellyfish Language Bureau’s Quest To Make Cantonese a World Language 2 hour crash course!
Hallo, hallo, everybody everywhere.
My new book is finally being published and you are invited to the launch. As well as beer and books for sale, there is also my new DVD ‘Going Native’ which is a Cantonese learning tool for not total beginners. Most of all, it will be a big party right in the middle of Central – on a school night!!! Wild. Crazy.
Hoi hoi, it’s that time of year again when I look in my diary/calendar and re-remember what Good Friday is in Chinese: 耶穌受難節： Jesus experiences difficulties-festival. (Yeso sau laan jit.) Oh what joy. And really – ‘good’ Friday? From a, Easter-y point of view, that of Jesus in particular, can’t see what’s so good about it?
Easter itself is of course called 復活節 Return to Life Festival (Fuk Wut Jit), also very apt. ‘Easter’ – from ‘east’? Wind direction perhaps? As usual, the Chinese have nailed this very western ‘festival’ linguistically. And they do right to concentrate on eating bunny rabbits rather than harping on about Jesus in my opinion.
Because: If Jesus was born on the same day every year, why did he die on a completely different day every year, eh?
Always look on the bright side of life.
Oh Cassette! Two weeks ago we went up to Guangzhou to see him live in his stand-up glory at a place called… Panda something? No! Paddyfield, an Irish pub right behind the Garden Hotel. Cassette →
I’m not a property owner but even if I were,I think I would still find it difficult to fathom how, when someone looks at the above vista, he thinks: I can dump a lot of →
Just for the record, in the first sentence of this column I wrote “.. black family that has – gasp – managed to become middle class and live in a posh neighbourhood.” I think the →
Above: BEFORE. Halcyon days of yore, etc. A part of the interlinked Pui O wetlands in 2012. A lovely, lush vista scattered with grazing water buffalo, egrets, starlings and other creatures, even fish have seen →
IMPORTANT!!! When you click on the link, scroll down to the alphabetical archive and click on C. Then you’ll see both my programmes. This isn’t strictly about Cantonese and it certainly isn’t about me, but →
All good things come to an end, apparently. Even life! Yes, compared to dying, losing a twice-monthly column in an increasingly obscure Asian newspaper is certainly a small thing. But oh! I loved that column. →
It’s up and running on Radio Lantau – CantoNews 2! The sequel! No, just the second programme in Cecilie and Nick’s Cantonese course, the finest course currently available on cassette. http://radiolantau.com/programme-archive/cantonews/C/7-cecilie-gamst-berg/4-cantonews/60-cantonews-2 This time we discuss →
I must write about Lantau again, because yesterday I interviewed Merrin Pearse, the leader of LIM (Living Islands Movement) whose introduction to the government’s “vision” for Lantau’s and therefore the people of Hong Kong’s future →
Ohhh this has been a long time coming! I didn’t realise how much I’d been missing Naked Cantonese and ah-Sa (mine co-host of yore) before I started to make podcasts – properly – again only →
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 →
