A Way To Benefit From Not Joking On Stairs:

Yesterday I had a lesson at home with one of my Lantau contingent, a shy girl called ah-Kei. A big part of my language teaching is trying to get people to understand that no matter how much they study and how many theoretical exercises they do, nothing beats the real thing: Talking Cantonese with Chinese people.

Ah-Kei was reluctant to try this approach as she had tried once or twice but as usual, been answered in (rebuffed by) the inevitable English.

Then she read my book which spells out in black and of course white how to deal with this problem in four easy steps. She got into a taxi and when the driver answered her perfectly spoken Cantonese with his take on English, she first said that she couldn’t speak English, and then answered all his subsequent attempts with “Ha? Ha? Ha?” Lo and behold, he broke down and answered her in his own language, which she had been speaking the whole time!

A big break-through for ah-Kei and a huge step forward for Cantonese Fundamentalism!

When I tell my students how to do stuff, they normally don’t listen. But when they read it in a book – well, it must be true. You can also learn to converse easily and effortlessly in the local language of Hong Kong. Learn Cantonese the natural way – from a Norwegian.

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 →

Chatting with Author

Listen to the interview with famous Lantau author Jane Huong who isn’t Vietnamese or Malaysian, but married to a Hong Kong guy who wanted to spell his surname (Hung) differently from the herd. And talking →

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 →

“Don’t Look at my Spleen!”

Here is an interview I did for Radio Lantau a couple of weeks ago, with Edward Bunker from Mui Wo. Every single person I told this to said the same: “Oh, he’s lovely!” Not a →

Books Books Books

Can you learn Cantonese from a book? I would say no, not least because of the crazy spelling that bear little or no resemblance to the sound of the words. Can you indeed learn any →

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 →

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 →

Guerrilla Cantonese This Saturday !!!!!

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 →

Gone With The Steve

Here is an article I wrote about one of my favourite books: Gone With the Wind. What does it have to do with Cantonese? Hmmm… not much. Nothing really. Except we’re the Southerners being overrun by brash Yankees and their crude language.

美國 – Mei Gok (USA)
內戰 – Loi jin (Civil war)
亂世佳人 – Lyun Sai Gai Yan (Troubled Times Fine People/Gone with the Wind)