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Promotional Video For My Adventure Trips:
Come with! Come with!
One Step Forward, 1.3 Billion Steps Back
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 →
Today’s* Weather Condition: 太陽
(＊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 →
Today’s Classifier: 件
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, →
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Frightening Mandofication
Working hard on our new film Simply The Worst, a frightening sci-fi look at what happens when the government forces simplified characters on us. So I suddenly remembered the above film about speech-making communist language Mandarin.
There’s been a worrisome development in Hong Kong where locals now are tying themselves in knots trying to answer me in Mandarin when I talk to them in Cantonese. They’ll do anything, it seems, except speak their own language.
Oh yes, the “liberation” of Hong Kong into the linguistic straitjacket of the mainland is coming. We must stand guard around Cantonese! Never shy away from the discussion with locals when they say Mandarin is “more convenient” and “easier” or whatever. Make them see that Cantonese is their culture and that Mando has nothing to do with Hong Kong.
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復活節快樂！(Back to life festival happiness!)
Hoi hoi, it’s that time of year again when I look in my diary/calendar and re-remember what Good Friday is in Chinese: 耶穌受難節： Jesus experiences difficulties-festival. (Yeso sau laan jit.) Oh what joy. And really – ‘good’ Friday? From a, Easter-y point of view, that of Jesus in particular, can’t see what’s so good about it?
Easter itself is of course called 復活節 Return to Life Festival (Fuk Wut Jit), also very apt. ‘Easter’ – from ‘east’? Wind direction perhaps? As usual, the Chinese have nailed this very western ‘festival’ linguistically. And they do right to concentrate on eating bunny rabbits rather than harping on about Jesus in my opinion.
Because: If Jesus was born on the same day every year, why did he die on a completely different day every year, eh?
Always look on the bright side of life.
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