Articles from the original happyjelyfish.com website

A Movable Feast (But not very far)

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) in front of a bunch of people who didn’t know each other and some of whom I’d never met! It was the same on Thursday night. I had met only two of the nine people who turned up then. Excellent! There are SO many great people around and I want to meet them all.

Then the people started trickling in and I became rather busy with the precision cooking. Sichuan food: 95% preparation, 5% cooking! (And then about 200% cleaning, but hey).

So it was chew, chew, swallow, swallow, drink drink for a couple of hours. As I stood precision-cooking in the kitchen, I heard peals of laughter coming down from the roof. That always makes me happy. Of course during precision cooking I never have time to take photos, but I did manage to snap Ma Po Dau Fu (Pockmarked Hag Tofu) before:

and after:

Yum! Yum! Yum! and double YUUUUMMMMM

Wonderful people, good fun and they gave me beer! Then it was time to trot off to Tap Tap for some more beer and being drunkenly explained about addresses by the local postman. That’s what I call a brilliant evening in and out. Thank you very much for coming, people!

You can take cooking lessons from me and/or come to the next Meet New People Extravaganza on September 3rd. However on that night it’s vegetarian/vegan food only. Still good! The protein will come from dau fu (tofu), beans and peanuts.

禮拜六夜晚 – Lai bai luk ye maan (Saturday night)
麻婆豆腐 – Ma Po Dau fu (hemp/pockmarked old woman/grandmother bean rotten)
郵差 – Yau chai (postman)

A Movable Feast (But not very far)

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)

Love Craft Beer? Love Buffaloes? Come to Pui O!

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

Bunk Demythed! I Mean Myth Debunked!

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 Province! The Best Province with the Best People. It’s Yuge!

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

Hainan Highlights and Playing on a Swing

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

CantoNews 8!!! Live from Garden Cafe (With Sandwiches)

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

Wild Shenzhen Extravaganza

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

CantoNews: Cecilie and Nick Venture Forth to Graze

… all the way to the throbbing metropolis of Mui Wo – La Pizzeria to be exact!

Farewell, Dave Swarbrick

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)

Different For Chinese

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

Order On The Table, Order In The Head

I have some victims who have been at it (learning Cantonese) for a while, and have dozens if not hundreds of pages of course material. In loose sheets. When I suggest they try to put

Public Security Uncle On The Road

Yes, that Public Security Uncle, he does get around a bit. Unfortunately an unfathomable tragedy happened: He lost his badge in a shrubbery incident just outside Santa Fe. Good thing he had his trusty deputy

Civilised? Ha Ha Haaaaa

Last weekend we were in Mui Jau (梅州)which, although it’s in Guangdong province, bears the dubious distinction of being completely Mando speaking. People told me it was because it was a Hakka stronghold, but I

Jasmine Devils

Ah! Yam bui! Here are some of my students taking a good slurp of 鐵觀音 (tit gun yam, a famous tea) on my roof. Yes, Lantau people, there are still some morning/early afternoon slots left

Make 2013 a Canto Year!

Have you made any New Year resolutions this year? I have. One of them is total world domination by Cantonese – while allowing the other languages to live too. Yes, that’s just the kind of

One For The Team – Yet Another Benefit of Speaking Cantonese

This is how it started. We had dived into an upmarket restaurant because the temperature was dropping fast and it was raining; we just couldn’t bear the thought of another meal with our backs to

The War Against Cantonese – Now They Are Using Children

I spent last weekend in Zhongshan, birthplace of Sun Yat-sen and the original bastion of Cantonese. Not sure about the numbers but an incredible amount of immigrants to the various gold and hard-work slave-conditions hellholes

The Uses of Cantonese

I’m SO glad I can speak Cantonese! Here is one of a million reasons: I just took the MTR from Central to Tung Chung and as usual there were no taxis although it’s about 200

Gagging To Go

Hi people! I’m going to take Adventure Trip off my new website as there wasn’t a big market for going into Guangdong province (weird) but the trips still go on, of course. There are so

China Bound

This year is the first summer for ages I’m not going north and I don’t like it! I want to go to Xinjiang in August. Meanwhile if you’re going anywhere in China this year and

New Book About China and Cantonese

Hoi hoi, students new and old Did you know that I have just published my second book, Don’t Joke on the Stairs, on Blacksmith Book publishing house. It is about how much fun and laughter,

Canto or Mando? No Contest!

Cantonese or Mandarin? That is what a lot of new students (clients, victims) ask me. If you live in Hong Kong and seldom if ever go to the mainland – no contest! Cantonese is the thing for you.

Learning Cantonese in Hong Kong allows you to practise on real Chinese people every day. Also: Cantonese is 93% more fun than Mandarin with 99% more swearwords.

By following Happy Jellyfish People’s Democratic Language Bureau’s instructions, you can become pretty much fluent (yes! Able to say more than your address and “two Tsingtao (which is actually pronounced “Chengdou”)” in Cantonese, within a year.

If you live in Hong Kong you will have 7 million free teachers and won’t need the Language Bureau at all, but if you do join us you will have a much better social life, naturally.

Here is just one of many ways Happy Jellyfish People’s Democratic Language Bureau encourages you to learn Cantonese; by letting you appear on our RTHK radio programme Naked Cantonese.

But we have many other ways to make you talk.