Guangzhou has been my favourite big city in China for years, certainly after the government finished the destruction of Beijiing in the name of the sacred olympics. Two weeks ago I was there again, probably →
I’m going back to those scraggy crags today! Now you can come too. Just click on China Tours and you’re there!
Did you know that “Good Friday” is called “Jesus experiences difficulties festival” (耶穌受難節）（ye sou sao laan jit) in Chinese? I bet you didn’t. But now you know, and by going on an Easter trip with →
Come with! Come with!
Dear chaps. In our series “screams and muffled cries from the vault” we bring you another item from our archives. It explains why, when you speak to a HK person in Cantonese, he answers you →
Here’s a missive from 2008, just after the sacred Beijing Olympics when I finally could get a visa to China again: Not that I smoke joints anymore but I do get disillusioned sometimes about my →
(＊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 →
You thought it would be something about fog again, didn’t you? No, it’s about clothes. Not sure what the above item is, so let’s just call it: 一件衫 （yat gin saam) A piece, or item, →
Yesterday, Gweipo agonised over her own and her son’s struggle with pesky Mandarin. She invited her readers to comment on who or what’s to blame for us foreigners not being able to learn Cantonese and/or →
Hello, my name is Cecilie (pronounced “Cecilia”) and I’m a China-holic. And Hongkie-holic. I’ve been living here for more than 20 years and speak, read and write Cantonese and Mandarin fluently. More than 20 years →
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 →
In January, okay, I admit it, I waited until the first week of February, came my annual ordeal: The visit to the vet. Why ordeal? It’s just some injections, and they’re not even on me. →
The simplified characters menace is growing. Businesses all over Hong Kong are falling over themselves to accommodate mainlanders only, showing in a not very subtle manner that they’re not interested in local customers: by using →
Yesterday we finished shooting In A Whorehouse – The Sequel, so soon there will be a brand new Canto extravaganza on YouTube. About time, some would say, as the last one, ‘Romeo and Juliet – →
Damn – I’ve done it! I’ve gone and betrayed my love, the Cantonese language. Well, all I’ve said about it is true and right, and it is my beloved language number 1A. It’s just that →
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 →
Wei wei, it’s finally happening: I’m launching my new book Don’t Joke On The Stairs on Blacksmith Books this week. I actually wrote most of it four years ago and had signed a contract with →
Hallo, hallo, everybody everywhere. My new book is finally being published and you are invited to the launch. As well as beer and books for sale, there is also my new DVD ‘Going Native’ which →
Wei wei, everybody! Summer has descended with quite blue skies and the accompanying 34 degrees, and my students are leaving town in droves. This clears up space and time for you. But you don’t have →
It is with great sadness I must inform our irate but faithful listeners that Poddie Castie number 200 is soon coming up, and that it will herald →
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 enjoy my forays into Guangdong province if there was no real purpose, i.e. to find ever new ways to make people see how much fun and how un-dangerous the mainland is? Then I decided that I’ll just carry on regardless. Fun is fun, even if it doesn’t result in a carefully crafted column. Yes, yes, the rest of the country too. But especially Guangdong province. There’s something about the un-communist Cantonese language that makes its speakers more fun.
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So, last Friday, July 1st, I went to Victoria Park to check out the action and also make a podcast: Happy Jellyfish’s Outcast at 1st of July Extravaganza 2011
Oh, it was great. The carnival-like atmosphere, the attacks on Donald Tsang, the singing, the laughter, the tears!
The great thing about Hong Kong’s annual celebration protest day, is that you can protest against anything. So I had an idea. Throughout my years as a Cantonese learner and teacher, the one thing that never changes for me and everyone else who has ever attempted this language is this: Hong Kong people invariably answer us in English when we speak to them in Cantonese.
That is a fact of life. And amazingly, they do it because they think it’s polite!
So why don’t we, next July 1st, rock up at Victoria Park with some posters saying “We Have The Right To Be Answered In Cantonese!”
“Give Us Face” and
“Stop The Language Discrimination of Whitey!”
Something like that. Just to have our case heard. We can dress up as milk tea … er, maybe not. But bang drums, hit gongs and shout slogans in Cantonese. If you’ve never been to one of these demos, you have no idea how fun they are, and how benevolent!
Can you imagine the media brouhaha? We’d get so much free press, everybody would go out of their way to answer us in Cantonese afterwards.
Combine exercise with fun, integration with locals and an easier future – what could be better? Sign up, sign up. I’ll remind you again closer to the date …
everybody knows that. But how about beer, then wine, (Moet Et Chandon, saved since June 7th, thank you Teng and Lok!) then beer, then more beer and some beer? Queer is not a good →
四會 (Sei Wui – Four Congregations, small but excellent town in western Guangdong province) 白酒 (Bak jau – White wine, which in Hong Kong actually means white wine, but in the mainland a lethal liquid →
Last night I started watching the third season of Orange Is The New Black, an American show about life in a women’s prison. The first two seasons were pretty riveting in a ‘far too many →
I’m cooking for eight people tonight and I’m really looking forward to it. I will make Beer O’Clock Dumplings, Chicken a la Water Buffalo and Kung Fu Cucumbers, – among other things. Five other things, →
This morning I had some people from my village coming over for a dose of Cantonese, and since it was raining dog shit (落狗屎 – lok gau si [raining heavily]) we discussed the weather, well, →
You can’t see it yet but my website is being refurbished. The first thing I want to change is the cover of the Cantonese teaching videos Cantonese – The Movie and Going Native (see above). →
(Of course the phone the geezer in the photo isn’t talking on a Nokia while… resting? but it’s definitely some kind of phone.) But Nokia: Yesterday a guy driving through Pui O gave me a →
In our popular series Unusual Gifts we proudly present Sungflower Fream. What is this sungflower fream, you may ask? Why, it’s of course a notebook! The day my friend Jo gave me this gift, I →
A couple of weekends ago I had the privilege of going to Guangzhou with three fun people: F, J and AW. The following debacle ensued. (See article below) What didn’t make it into the piece →
Last night I went to a party that turned into something of a name-dropping fest. People had met Lady Gaga, various representatives of the Hong kong government, etc. I thought: Lady Gaga has a job →
