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 →

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 →

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 →

CantoNews Live from the Throbbing Metropolis of Mui Wo

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 →

Last Column

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 →

Happy Hong Kong Celebration of the Glorious Return to the Motherland Day Extravaganza!

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 →

Beautiful Day On “Dark” Side

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 →

How Now, Guangdong Prov?

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 →

CantoNews 5 Live From Roof!

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 →

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Sunday

And the living is easy, except for managers of the Happy Jellyfish People’s Democratic Language Bureau! We must slog away even on Sundays in the never-ending quest to make Cantonese a world language. Sunday in →

Don’t Prawn Me, I’m Only The Banjo Player

Two days ago I did a Sichuan dinner for 13 people, and finally cracked the secret to chilli prawns after trying for ages. I will now share the secret with you, as well as some →

Smoke Comes Out Your Arse

Smoke! Is it just me or has Central become unbearable after the smoking ban was implemented? I’ve become one of those middle-aged hags who sniffily wave her hand in front of her face while walking, →

打風 Typhoon!!!!!

What do cows do when a typhoon signal 8 is raging, I wonder? T8: 八號風球(baat hou fung kao – 8 number wind ball) The scourge of Lantau. Not! As usual, the weather bureau says we’re →

咩呀？ Wot?

This is one of the reasons why I love Cantonese: 咩! (Meeh, wot? or what kind of…) My theory: It started out as 乜嘢 (mat yeh, what thing. As in: 你飲乜嘢呀？Lei yam mat yeh ah? →

Another Petrashune Down

A sad day in the country club today! My banjo teacher, Austin, （亞天，Ah-Tin) came for his last Cantonese lesson/to provide banjo lesson. We recorded the instrumental to our next Cantonese Bluegrass music video (don’t know →

More about NOT to be

Summer has come to Pui O beach and with it a slew of … I think they call them ‘pseudo-models’? and their entourages of dozens of photographers and light-reflector-holders, all men, for some reason. Referring →

To 係 or 唔係 – is that the question?

Cantonese 101: There is no yes and no! This can create confusion. Of course, many people want there to be a yes (at least) and so they have created a thing where 係 (hai) means →

Priorities

I remember when I first came to hong Kong in 1989. The 垃圾蟲 (lap sap chung, litter bug) campaign had just started. Now people would be made to feel bad about littering. Woo-hoo! Nothing seemed →

The Day After

It’s difficult for me when holidays suddenly pop up in the middle of the week. Yesterday I felt it was Sunday （禮拜日，lai bai yat) all day although it was Wednesday (禮拜三 lai bai saam), and →

Banjo and Buffalo

I took up the banjo partly to understand what it’s like to learn something new, better to sympathise with my students. Now more than ever I see the importance of practise. I have been practising almost every day but not for hours and hours. If I had, the results wouldn’t be as meagre as above. BUT ten minutes a day is better than one hour every six days!

I can’t stress it often enough: If you want to speak passable Cantonese, you have to speak it every day. Every single day.

Last month I had lots of American visitors and here (in the film) are three of them. “We want to make films, we want to make films” they cried. All right, I thought, let’s start at the airport and jolly well continue throughout their stay.

Unfortunately it rained almost solidly for the two days they were here, and the wetlands scenes were shot in a few seconds. Cheers, the Beck Shoup gang! You did the best you could under the circumstances.