Always connected to the Canto world

Fumbling In The Dark

Look at this photo. Dawn, right? Just starting to get light? Wrong. It’s my camera that’s so great, it can take photos even when it’s too dark for the human eye to see anything, and →

Damn Hunan Province!

Last month I went to Hunan province and after a few minutes there was overcome with shark flu (or some other fierce animal) – awful. Just awful. Anyway, so today, instead of advising you on →

The Eagle has Flapped Away

Do you live in Hong Kong? Have you lived here for a number of years? (Any number higher than, say, one?) Then you must already be starting to get sick of people leaving. Now it’s →

Learn Sichuan Cooking!

Woo-hooo! WE did that! the happy cooks A, K and D are beaming, so pleased with themselves after studying Sichuan cooking for only two hours. (Chuanxing village spicy potato cake) Now you can also learn →

The Only Cantonese Lesson You’ll Ever Need (Crash Course in Light Conversation)

This week my first specialised crash course kicked off, with two excellent and fast learners, working titles ah-Lei and ah-Ga. In only two and a half hours, they learnt enough Cantonese to go into any →

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 →

Chinese Characters

Chinese characters (normal, not simplified) are beautiful, aren’t they? Even ordinary words like ‘toilet’ look somehow elevated to a higher sphere when they’re written with a brush, or printed for that matter. Not that the →

Learn Cantonese Without Really Trying: New Products

People are busy and don’t always have time to commit to one or two hours of studying Cantonese every week. But does that mean you can’t learn Cantonese? NO! With Happy Jellyfish Language Bureau’s many →

China Toilet Groove (Contains Video)

Everyone who travels in China for more than, say, five minutes, has something to say about her toilets. But I stand by my column (above) – they are nothing! Nothing, compared to only a few →

Ordeal of the Year

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. →

I Spake Too Soon About Market

Ha ha! I laughed bitterly yesterday when I had to go to FUSION to buy some toilet paper or whatever. I remember when the melody in the story above irritated me. And not only me, →

Rally! Rally! Rally!

My friend told me she had seen a large banner in Guangzhou saying “Be civilised, speak the civilised language.” (What? You don’t know what the civilised language is? It’s not Cantonese, that’s for sure.) I’m →

CantoNews Live From Oi Kwan Hotel

Oh Cassette! Two weeks ago we went up to Guangzhou to see him live in his stand-up glory at a place called… Panda something? No! Paddyfield, an Irish pub right behind the Garden Hotel. Cassette →

Bit More About Wetlands

I’m not a property owner but even if I were,I think I would still find it difficult to fathom how, when someone looks at the above vista, he thinks: I can dump a lot of →

Enemy at 12! Avoiding Foreigners in China

Just for the record, in the first sentence of this column I wrote “.. black family that has – gasp – managed to become middle class and live in a posh neighbourhood.” I think the →

Wetlands Lament

Above: BEFORE. Halcyon days of yore, etc. A part of the interlinked Pui O wetlands in 2012. A lovely, lush vista scattered with grazing water buffalo, egrets, starlings and other creatures, even fish have seen →

New Programme on Radio Lantau

IMPORTANT!!! When you click on the link, scroll down to the alphabetical archive and click on C. Then you’ll see both my programmes. This isn’t strictly about Cantonese and it certainly isn’t about me, but →

Bye, Bye, Column

All good things come to an end, apparently. Even life! Yes, compared to dying, losing a twice-monthly column in an increasingly obscure Asian newspaper is certainly a small thing. But oh! I loved that column. →

CantoNews2 – now with airplanes!

It’s up and running on Radio Lantau – CantoNews 2! The sequel! No, just the second programme in Cecilie and Nick’s Cantonese course, the finest course currently available on cassette. http://radiolantau.com/programme-archive/cantonews/C/7-cecilie-gamst-berg/4-cantonews/60-cantonews-2 This time we discuss →

FINALLY!!!!

Ohhh this has been a long time coming! I didn’t realise how much I’d been missing Naked Cantonese and ah-Sa (mine co-host of yore) before I started to make podcasts – properly – again only →

Finally Lantau Becomes Modern

Recently we Lantau residents have been bombarded with information about how our lives will be so infinitely better; first with the mega-incinerator with its “no emissions” and now with another 1 million people in the →

Morris Lets Norway off Hook

As a Norwegian, I’m more than used to certain nationalities using “Norway” as “the weirdest, most bizarre thing you can think of”, in books, articles and speech. Whenever I say where I’m from, out comes →