See China’s most charming traditional architecture before it disappears!
And lots and lots of other stuff. That’s right people: I’m now doing – wait for it! And click here on: GUIDED TOURS TO GUANGDONG PROVINCE!!!!!!
With or without language practice thrown in, with or without gatecrashing local people’s parties (or being dragged into them, more like) – these tours will show you China like you’ve never seen it before. And you won’t have to worry about a thing. I will walk you through it.
Oh, how I hate simplified characters! It’s bad enough that I have to see them everywhere in my beloved mainland (although shop-and restaurant owners who want their business to look stylish and upmarket increasingly use normal characters on their signs) but now they’re appearing all over Hong Kong too. The photo above is from IFC; the poster aimed at mainlanders only, forget about local people. This is how that character should look:
Mainlanders coming here are perfectly able to read normal characters. They look up to Hong Kong as a place where you can trust the quality of products. Why then drag our products down to their level by branding them with the cheap and shoddy-looking simplified characters, created so even idiots would be able to read propaganda slogans? They are insulting. And ugly! Here’s another one, also from IFC
which actually is written 禮。 It’s time Hong Kong stopped the patronising nonsense of thinking mainlanders can’t read real Chinese and showed some pride in her own language and culture.
Next Sunday I have a feature in the South China Morning Post (Post Magazine) about Cantonese. I probably won’t say much that I haven’t already said here, but please read the thing anyway? The photo →
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 →
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 →
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 →
"A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But →
Here is G with some lovely ha gau and another gau, ordered from the Chinese menu by him. Now you can also learn to navigate a Chinese menu with impunity! This Saturday, November 10th, I’m →
Christmas is ridiculously coming (in about a year) and my students have decided to take several months off. There is a lull and: You can step into it, becoming fluent in Cantonese around February next →
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 →
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 →
I just rediscovered this film when a viewer had a question about the rules. Watching it again, I think it’s actually quite good. And suddenly I’m dying to play cards! Let’s start a cho dai →
