Listen to the interview with famous Lantau author Jane Huong who isn’t Vietnamese or Malaysian, but married to a Hong Kong guy who wanted to spell his surname (Hung) differently from the herd. And talking →
Nick (a.k.a. Cassette) and I go to an Italian restaurant in the throbbing metropolis of Mui Wo, centre of the universe and make a programme about lots of interesting things – specifically the idiotic spelling →
Yesterday I had an email from a … person, who said: “I sobbed vehemently when I saw your last Sunday Morning Post entry had come and gone.” Me too, mate, me too. Except I didn’t →
July 1st! July 1st! That day in year zero for Hong Kong, 1997, it was rather wet. OK, it torrentially bucketed down for about three weeks before and after that momentous day. Coincidence? I think →
Here is an interview I did for Radio Lantau a couple of weeks ago, with Edward Bunker from Mui Wo. Every single person I told this to said the same: “Oh, he’s lovely!” Not a →
Can you learn Cantonese from a book? I would say no, not least because of the crazy spelling that bear little or no resemblance to the sound of the words. Can you indeed learn any →
It’s so much fun to have friends visiting Hong Kong, especially when the day they arrive kicks off a week of unprecedented beautiful weather! I shouldn’t say unprecedented; the weather was probably like this every →
I’m just about to write my last column ever for South China Morning Post; ever! When I was told the page would be discontinued, I was so sad. How now would I be able to →
Hello everybody, welcome to my roof! I normally arrange Sichuan dinners and lunches there, but this time it doubled as a recording studio for the best Cantonese news currently available on cassette! (And telex.) Talking →
A couple of weeks ago I interviewed the beautiful and delightful Zein Williams, mother of three and tireless champion for the Nepali people about her life and work – with the earthquake victims especially – →
Wei wei, Friday night it’s full forge ahead again with Happy Jellyfish People’s Democratic Language Bureau’s Cantonese FUNdaMENTAList Crash Course!!!! You’ll learn everything you need to know about drinking in bars, paying for drinks and →
The Mandofication continues at breakneck speed. I’m sure the “great” idea of making Hong Kong simplified character-ised to “adapt” and accommodate the 700,000 mainlanders currently living here so they’ll feel more at home, has already →
Behold the new cover to my Cantonese teaching video Cantonese – The Movie! I’m just waiting for my web guy to change the covers that are there now (for you can click on them and →
No one can call me a Luddite anymore! Only 7,000 years after the invention of the computer I’m doing screen grabbing! I’m looking through my two Cantonese teaching videos Cantonese – The Movie and Going →
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 →
Woo-hooo. My last message was pretty depressed. I talked about how I have the least job satisfaction in the entire world, yea, even less than people whose job is warning people about the dangers of →
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. →
No… that can’t be three years ago? But the calendar says it is. It’s just that it feels like a few weeks since we stood outside the railway station in Guiyang, capital of Guizhou province, →
The new year celebrations were hard for everyone this year, even man-sized teddies. This sad corpse was lying outside my hotel in Kunming, I’m guessing thrown angrily away by some girl who had expected diamonds →
If there’s one thing I missed during this Christmas and New Year’s Yunnan Extravaganza, it was the chance to do some serious Opulent Chair (or Sofa)- Sitting. How strange; Guangdong province is replete with ultra-opulent →
It’s well and truly next year! First I thought, I can’t wait for 2015 to be over, but then I stopped myself. The faster next year comes, the sooner I’ll be in the grave. So →
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 a story from another long Guangdong trip (by “long, I mean two nights; yes, it has come to that) in whose footsteps we’ll kind of stagger:
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 – and Discovery Bay! streamed into the Club, hungry, armed with sharp knives and a willingness to tackle this difficult-looking but actually very easy skill.
Success! Ellie has just cooked her first Sichuan meal and is now ready to scoff it down.
Beautiful – Gong Bao Chicken wins again.
Cooking Sichuan food – is it really that serious?
No! It’s an extravaganza of joy, laughter and enjoyment.
One group wanted only vegetarian food, so imagine my pride when I could teach them vegetarian dumplings, the recipe to which I had invented only a few weeks earlier. Yum! In my opinion, better than pork and beef dumplings. Succulent and lightly crunchy with soybeans, vegetarian dumplings win my vote. But the pork dumplings are succulent too, and many people’s favourite.
Even people who have never cooked before in their lives can easily learn the basics of Sichuan cooking. And once you know how to cook one dish, you can start experimenting with other ingredients.
Folding dumplings together is a fun and social experience.
Success! Martin displays his first spicy potato cake with spice. And potato. It’s a cake, like a rösti but much better.
So come and spend a day on beautiful Lantau; go for a walk or hike first perhaps and then spend the afternoon learning Sichuan cooking on the lovely rooftop terrace or the charming kitchen of the Country Club and spend the evening eating and drinking beer.
Included: A goodie bag of spices, beer and my CHILLies!cookbook, a pdf file of 20 recipes full of beautiful photos.
煮飯 – jyu faan (cooking)
川菜 – Chuen choi (Sichuan food)
四川 – Sei chuen (Sichuan province)
Bonus: Recipe for vegetarian dumplings.