Saturday night! What a brilliant night. Above is the table just before the hordes (12 people) started pouring in. I hosted, cooked Sichuan food for and expressed my life through the medium of dance (optional) →
Interview with Chris Riley, owner of the excellent Water Buffalo restaurant in Pui O. Now you don’t have to travel to Inner Lancashire to experience real English food, and ale, and pale brewish ale and →
Last weekend a group of three ecstatic revellers hopped on the ferry to Jung Saan (Zhongshan) and got straight in a taxi at the ferry pier and darted into the hinterland. In the lovely, slightly →
Guangdong is the best province in China, and not because of Cantonese! It’s got the friendliest people and the best hovelage. And today I’m off to savour her charms again! I just thought I’d share →
Last night I had a wonderful time in Central with my friend formerly known as J. Yes, I said ‘formerly’! For that was her name in the many South China Morning Post columns she appeared →
What does this photo of an excellent and ridiculously inexpensive haircut have to do with CantoNews? Nothing! I just like it. In this segment, the venerable Cassette and I visit the Garden Cafe in Pui →
I always have a good time in Shenzhen’s famed Lo Wu Shopping Centre, even after several hours of “missy missy looking, you buy sunglass okay.” Still, I could really do with less nagging. My student →
… all the way to the throbbing metropolis of Mui Wo – La Pizzeria to be exact!
My heart didn’t stop exactly, but I had to swallow hard a couple of times last night when I read the Sunday Times from June 12 (carried around in my handbag unread for two weeks) →
As I was looking through my old columns from South China Morning Post trying to get some other newspaper gigs (do newspapers even exist anymore?) I found the above story from Norway. Allowed only 450 →
Last weekend a group of three ecstatic revellers hopped on the ferry to Jung Saan (Zhongshan) and got straight in a taxi at the ferry pier and darted into the hinterland. In the lovely, slightly →
Yep, here it is. The entire protest against Mandarin taking over and squeezing out the regional languages. Well, actually, there were more people. Two more. One was me and the other one an organiser. So, →
Most of my live Cantonese sessions are done in the venerable Honolulu Coffee and Cake Shop, one of the last proper cha chanteng in Central. The last venue (see film above), whose name I can’t →
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 →
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! →
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 – →
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 →
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 →
If you’re unfortunate enough to live outside Hong Kong and can’t take Cantonese lessons from, er, moi, there’s no need to despair! Now you can have a mini-Cantonese fundamentalist right in your living room. Fun, →
So people are going in search of ice on which to seriously hurt themselves and icicles to photograph in astonishment. Yes it was 3C this morning. Not boiling, I’ll admit. But imagine going out this →
Hong Kong is in a frost frenzy! The temperature has crept below 10C – the temperature in my living room, that is – and everyone is busy posting, of all things, screen shots of their →
Is Happy Jellyfish People’s Democratic Language Bureau’s Cantonese course the only course currently in existence where the teacups provided by the course venue match your outfit? It’s hard to say, but I’ll wager it will be difficult to find such a matching teacup/outfit course anywhere in the world, let alone Hong Kong.
