Chat chat chat – now you can learn Cantonese without going through the nasty and potentially violent experience of being in the same room as me! Namely through the wonderful medium of SKYPE. Hook up →
What do you do in Bangkok? Look for Chinese food, obviously!
羊年， yeung nin. Year of the sheep, goat, ram, lamb, ewe, sow What? Why not keep it simple? Cantonese is simple and easy. YEUNG! Start taking Cantonese lessons with Happy Jellyfish People’s Democratic Language Bureau →
Saturday February 14: You’ve had chocolate and romantic meals so many times in your life. Why not spend this Valentine’s Day morning on something useful? Like learning Cantonese through the excellent medium of dim sum? →
Had a terrible shock in Shenzhen earlier this year when the food hall in Lo Wu Shopping Centre closed down with little or no warning. Then I remembered a comment from wise shopper Andrew and →
I love you, kung fu! As the famous bluegrass composer Hank Scraggsville always said. What, didn’t I post this only a few days ago? Yes, but this time I have included the sound or transliteration →
Photo: 四個靚女 (sei go leeng loy, 4 beautiful girls) Classifiers, measure words, counting words, whatever you want to call them, they are a vital feature of Cantonese. Here you can learn some of them through →
Four years ago thousands of people demonstrated for Cantonese in Guangzhou. Meanwhile the mainland government (aided and abetted by the HK one and Hong Kong and mainland people are hard at work trying to eradicate →
Today: Switzerland 瑞士 Soi si
Oh, Australia! Even yam cha is great there. Normally no one can quite get it right outside China (my experience consists only of Norway, the USA and Australia though) but in Australia they’ve got it →
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 →
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 →
Life is funny eh? You think you know something or at least are fairly familiar with something, and then something happens that sends your whole world view tumbling to the ground. Me, I thought I →
(＊Not “the weather today” as it’s again: FOGGY AS HELL! 有好大霧呀！Yao hou dai mou ah!) In fact this morning it looked like this: No, I was thinking of the weather, some weather, a weather （天氣）(Tin →
Ah, young love. It is splendid. ‘taller than’ is 高過 (gou go) whereas just ‘taller’ is 高啲 (gou di)。Could it be any easier?
Come with, come with on a Cantonese language seminar to Guangdong province! Before it disappears.
Four years ago thousands of people demonstrated for Cantonese in Guangzhou. Meanwhile the mainland government (aided and abetted by the HK one and Hong Kong and mainland people are hard at work trying to eradicate →
New company! Everything you’ll ever need to do/know/eat in the world of Sichuan food. I can cook at your house, teach you how to do it, you can come to my house OR buy the →
The Uncle is currently in Australia, shooting a new film about the rubbish incinerator Hong Kong’s government is planning to build right outside my kitchen window. As usual, he does the bidding of his dear →
Cantonese and bluegrass go together like beer and Sichuan food. It all started in Hainan last Christmas when I met some 86 year-old-geezers playing the saxophone near the beach. One of them had started only →
Finally! Here is the trailer of a film that premiered six months ago!
Whether you’re a hair-cutter in a hole in the wall in Guizhou province or run a several million-employee business from the top floor of IFC Two, you need a film showing what your company does. →
Last Saturday Mister Public Security Uncle took a trip to Wan Chai to join in the rugby revelling and cavorting, as well as spreading the word of Canto. Fun much? I have always laughed (in →
I’m not kidding! After my book launch on the 6th of October where about 60 or 70 people descended, drinking hundreds of bottles of beer in the quiet time of the restaurant, the owner of Honolulu has begged me twice to have another “gwailo party”.
Hm… okay! If he promises to dim the light somewhat. But actually yes, we will have a party there soon, when I finish my new project about how to navigate the Silk Road. I will show a short extract from this extremely useful, funny and, guess what, Mandarin-filled opus … and we’ll drink heaps of beer.
But what I wanted to mention was the crash course in Chinese writing we’re doing this Saturday (November 12) in said Hono. 3pm to 5.30pm, bring your own pen and notebook. When you sign up I will send you the course material and tell you the price (low of course) as this depends on how many people are coming. If more people we’ll throw in an extra half an hour.
When you know how to look up Chinese characters in the dictionary, everything will be so much easier and you’ll have no more existential angst, basically.
Honolulu Coffee and Cake Shop, 33 Stanley street, Central
I must have mentioned once or twice that I cook Sichuan food which I serve on my, I have to say, beautiful roof terrace overlooking the South China Sea? It’s just that recently I’ve been so busy writing a Sichuan cookbook
that I, ironically, haven’t had time to cook. But now that book is being published, online to begin with, and I have time again. Also, when people discover how easy Sichuan cooking is, I suspect they won’t come to my restaurant anymore but will just cook for themselves.
But in the tiny window between handing in the manuscript and the book spreading across the world selling up to four copies a month, I had the idea of starting a Sichuan Dinner Club. The first meeting is Saturday August 29 at 7.30 pm.
Many have wanted to book a dinner to try the various dishes such as Beer O’Clock Dumplings, Kung Fu Cucumber and Chicken a la Water Buffalo, but they can never get eight (or more) people to be in the same place at the same time. And my minimum number of people is eight, otherwise the three days’ work just isn’t worth it.
But if it’s a dinner club, you can just turn up by yourself or with a spouse/friend, and meet new people! Beer is included of course, as is iced water, but other, weirder drinks you’ll have to bring yourself.
If it works well, I’ll arrange at least one dinner each month.
P.S. If there are ten or more people, I will cook chilli prawns!
辣椒 (lat chiu – chilli)
蝦 (ha – prawn)
