A Movable Feast (But not very far)

Saturday night! What a brilliant night. Above is the table just before the hordes (12 people) started pouring in. I hosted, cooked Sichuan food for and expressed my life through the medium of dance (optional) →

Love Craft Beer? Love Buffaloes? Come to Pui O!

Interview with Chris Riley, owner of the excellent Water Buffalo restaurant in Pui O. Now you don’t have to travel to Inner Lancashire to experience real English food, and ale, and pale brewish ale and →

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 →

Hainan Highlights and Playing on a Swing

Last night I had a wonderful time in Central with my friend formerly known as J. Yes, I said ‘formerly’! For that was her name in the many South China Morning Post columns she appeared →

CantoNews 8!!! Live from Garden Cafe (With Sandwiches)

What does this photo of an excellent and ridiculously inexpensive haircut have to do with CantoNews? Nothing! I just like it. In this segment, the venerable Cassette and I visit the Garden Cafe in Pui →

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 →

CantoNews: Cecilie and Nick Venture Forth to Graze

… all the way to the throbbing metropolis of Mui Wo – La Pizzeria to be exact!

My heart didn’t stop exactly, but I had to swallow hard a couple of times last night when I read the Sunday Times from June 12 (carried around in my handbag unread for two weeks) →

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 →

New Film: Learn Cantonese and Become a Babe-Magnet

WEI! Everybody everywhere! I’m off to the motherland for a long but not long enough weekend, to make programmes about … oh, I can’t talk about it. OK, Mandarin. Anyway, when I get back next →

Here is the view from my roof on a good day. But even on a not so good day it’s worth visiting, because guess what: My PERSONAL SICHUAN ROOFTOP RESTAURANT has now been enhanced with →

I’ve got a couple of beginners ready to take a three hour crash course in the noble art of “Ordering Stuff in a Restaurant or Bar in Excellent Cantonese.” I know that most people visiting →

This is your last chance to see anything swine flu related for a long time. That sickness is well and truly gone in a big cloud of tiny rocks from inside the Etna something jökull. →

Come with! Come with!

Learn All the Mando You Need in One Day!!!

Are you going into mainland China on a tour (with me for example), travelling for business or going there anyway? Even if you’re driven around by a personal guide, waited on hand and foot by →

New Feature: Guerrilla Cantonese!!!!

Do you want to learn some survival or day-to-day Cantonese but can’t commit to  regular, weekly sessions because you’re just too damn busy or simply can’t be arsed? Guerrilla Cantonese may be the answer for you. Guerrilla means: →

Learn Cantonese the Natural Way –

– from a Norwegian! A glimpse behind the scenes of Happy Jellyfish People’s Democratic Language Bureau:

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Fu$$ball

I never thought I would write about football here. Or anywhere. I’ve just watched England being decimated by Germany in record time and it was not a pretty sight. The commentator kept saying: “Here is Rooney” as if his words would miraculously produce a Rooney-like mirage which could also score. Alas, the Rooney has gone the way  of the … two rooneys. Or two Ronnies, I forget which.

Anyway, what I wanted to write about was that, as well as everything else like golf, football, gunpowder and the lightbulb, the Chinese also invented England!!!! You don’t believe it? How about this: England football supporters singing: “Eng Ger Laan, Eng Ger Laan, Eng Ger Laan,” (etc.) And what’s England in Cantonese?

英格蘭！ （Yeng gat laan.) But I’m starting to think we should exchange the last syllable 蘭 （laan, orchid) with 懶 (laan, lazy.)

Yeah, we were talking about it at lunch today; why don’t Eng gat laan and the others (France, Italy) crank up their game a little. Naw, they’re not hungry. They are flaccid and complacent.  They have everything they could ever want ever.

But oh, how much more fun the Germany of today was to watch than that of yesteryear! They must have put some players there who are still living in council flats, eating cup noodles. Or something. Of course I supported Yeng Gat Laan out of duty and because I happened to be in the last outpost of the British Empire, JK Club in Pui O, when the match was playing, but bloody hell –  those Germans could run fast. AND see and use an opportunity.

In fact they were so good at seeing an opportunity, you’d think the Chinese had invented them. But they only invented Yeng Gat Laan. ..

My Groove! My Groove! Why Are You Forsaking Me?

Last week I received some shocking news: My banjo teacher is leaving. What??? Now that everything was going so well? Not only do we do the old-fashioned and also modern thing of bartering skills; I teach him Cantonese and he teaches me the banjo, but he lives two minutes’ walk from my house.

I took up the banjo 班卓琴 (ban jeuk kam) a year and a half ago to empathise with my victims students. I felt I had to do what I told them to do, practise something daily; something that wasn’t built in a day.

So I met this guy, Adam, working as a banjo-player at Disney who lived two minutes’ walk from my house and who wanted to learn more Cantonese! What were the chances? Only in his twenties, he was a musical genius and could play all instruments. Then he left, but get this: His younger brother Austin also plays the banjo, is a musical genius and wants to study Cantonese! And lives two minutes’ walk away!

So a seamless transition took place.

But now Austin is leaving too and I’ve run out of musically gifted brothers. I’m sure I can teach myself the banjo but actually, it’s not as easy as it looks. 亞天， 唔好走呀！ (Ah-Tin, m hou jau ah! Austin, don’t leave!)

What to do now? Sigh.

Here is my first public performance under Adam’s tutelage, Swiss Toilet Groove:

我要去廁所

Mel: You Are My Sunshine
Written for the banjo by Cecilie Gamst Berg

我要去廁所， 去廁所屙屎

我食咗芝士， 食咗太多

冇廁所鎖匙，咁我去瑞士

試吓紫色瑞士廁所

啲瑞士廁所，有自私獅子

食廁所廁紙，你知唔知

我冇食廁紙，我食咗芝士

會去瑞士廁所屙屎

O yiu heui chiso, heui chiso o si
O sek jo chisi, sek jo tai do
Mou chiso sosi, gam o heui Seuisi
Si ha chisek Seuisi chiso

Di Seuisi chiso, yau jisi sichi
Sek chiso chiji, lei ji m ji?
O mou sek chiji, o sek jo chisi
Wui heui Seuisi chiso o si

I must go toilet, go toilet defecate
I eat-done cheese, eat-done too much
I haven't toilet key, so I go Switzerland
Try purple Swiss toilet

Swiss toilets have selfish lions
Eat toilet paper, you know not know?
I haven't eaten toilet paper
I eat-done cheese
Will go Switzerland toilet defecate