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Dali: Where Christmas is not Only Santa
Jesus hovering over the Great Wall? Why not. Jesus is everywhere so why not the Great Wall? It just looked so incongruous to see the cross in the middle of Dali’s old city as we were sauntering through that venerable entity, a bit quickly as it wasn’t exactly warm.
I felt heartened seeing the cross and we went into the church, its entrance festooned with shiny pictures of Santa and lots of tinsel. Christmas can’t be all about Christianity in a church after all.
That was yesterday and this morning I heard on the radio that China has recently removed 1,800 crosses from churches “because drivers might be distracted by them as they drive past.”
I’d say!
Merry Christmas.
耶穌 – Ye Sou (Jesus)
教堂 – gao tong (teaching hall/church)
大理 – Dai Lei (Dali, place in Yunnan)
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American Odyssey
It’s a while ago now but I suddenly remembered I spent a month in the USA this summer, doing the Canto thing of course:
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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 →
Careful What You Wish For
I must write about Lantau again, because yesterday I interviewed Merrin Pearse, the leader of LIM (Living Islands Movement) whose introduction to the government’s “vision” for Lantau’s and therefore the people of Hong Kong’s future →
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 →
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WHAT????
Last Friday I was so happy, because I had a trip to Shenzhen all lined up. Probably only a day trip, but still! Shenzhen is Shenzhen. Sichuan food, having some shirts made and foot massage. →
SUNDAY: “Cold”
Hong Kong is in a frost frenzy! The temperature has crept below 10C – the temperature in my living room, that is – and everyone is busy posting, of all things, screen shots of their →
Microaggression and Macro-Self-Contradiction
Yesterday I wrote about a guide to recognise white-to-coloured racism or “microaggression,[] the everyday verbal, nonverbal, and environmental slights, snubs, or insults, whether intentional or unintentional(my italics), that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative messages to →
Cantonese Fundamentalism: The Book
People: Bugger me down if I haven’t written a new book! Mind you it’s five years since the last one so I can’t see why not …
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Happy New Canto Year!
Greetings from Shangri-la, formerly a fictitious “idyllic settlement high in the mountains of Tibet” of James Hilton’s Lost Horizon fame, now a city in China. In this photo, however, we’re a few hours further south, →
Ingredients: Buy Foodstuffs in Cantonese
Today I wanted to write a well-researched rant about Cantonese NOT being a dialect, a kind of sub-division, an inferior sub-division, of Mandarin. But I have to cook for 13 in a couple of hours, →
Children Outside Society
Last night I shared a taxi from Tung Chung – oh how it pains me to spell it that way when it’s pronounced DUNG Chung – with a boy and his domestic helper. I noticed →
Only Whitey Can Be Racist
I have in my hand (and when I say hand I mean computer screen) an extraordinary document entitled “Tool: Recognizing Microaggressions and the Messages They Send”. Reading through the list, I’m damned glad to be →
Beautiful Serendipity
I spent the weekend in Shenzhen and it was lovely. As I walked around in the sunshine Sunday morning I suddenly realised why I’ve been so unhappy recently. Well, ISIS, WWIII is coming, all that; →
It’s All About Face
Here is one of my students – let’s call him X-tor. Like so many he succumbed to “MOvember,” the terrible annual male uglification-fest where guys deliberately mutilate their faces to get people to give them →
No Good Deed Goes Unpunished
Life is funny eh? You think you know something or at least are fairly familiar with something, and then something happens that sends your whole world view tumbling to the ground. Me, I thought I →
Hound Hoping for Home
Here is a thoroughly kind, cheerful and people-loving dog called Rascal, 3. The name is misleading because he’s not alpha or naughty. He’s also not fearful. I’ve known him ever since his owner adopted him →
SUNDAY: Semi-Dignified Farewell
Yesterday I dragged myself up Lantau Peak to scatter the ashes of a dear friend who died in April. It really made me admire even more those brave souls who participated in the Moontrekker thing →
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, →
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