What Are The Chances?

Yesterday I got a new student and bugger me if he wasn’t … Mexican! I mean, what are the chances? Before I went to Mexico, I had only ever met three Mexicans: Hector, a guy →

Burglary Warning To Lantau People (and Everybody)

So on Saturday I hosted a Sichuan dinner for twelve people, three of whom called and said they were lost. I had to rush out in mid-stuffing of dumplings to fetch them. (It was the →

Long Live the Entrepreneurial Spirit! And Beer!

I can’t control myself – I must show it: Mister Public Security Uncle photographed by a professional photographer! It was the night before Halloween and I was strolling around Central with my vice-Security officer, Bak →

Finally!!!! CantoNews, Cantonese Podcast For Lantau People, By Lantau People!

Woo-hoo! Finally there’s a podcast dealing only with Lantau issues, made by Lantau people like Carina (ah-Lin) (above) Rudolf (ah-Dak) and Tony (ah-Lei). OK, I admit it. I was planning on podcasts of five minutes →

Sichuan Province, Sichuan Food

Here’s a gaff in my favourite village in all of China, Chuanxing 川興 (Chuen Heng) near famous satellite centre Xichang 西昌 (Sai Cheung) where the moon is rounder and brighter than in the rest of →

SUNDAY: Reasons to Learn Cantonese #11

The other day I made a list of the ten most important reasons, off the top of my head, to learn Cantonese.  Yesterday I found another one. I am a Luddite whose phone, a Nokia →

Devil Festival!

What a night! Friday October 30th in Lan Kwai Fong, squeezed by hordes but in a mostly good way. We went out on a mission to spread the word of Cantonese, by force if necessary, →

Thank You, Norwegian Writer

Today I want to publicly thank a Norwegian writer named Are Kalvø who in the year 2007 had a brilliant idea which inspired me no end. He would travel all around Norway and eat in →

Vexed No More!

This is the kind of joke I like. Clean, but not without teeth! Talking about vexed – the word for angry in Cantonese is 嬲 (lao). The character shows one woman between two men, so →

川菜 Sichuan Food, Best On Earth

It’s Sunday morning and I just finished doing the dishes from yesterday’s Sichuan food blowout extravaganza wonder party. Chilli oil tastes wonderful but is a bugger to get off plates and worktops. But it’s worth →

When You Gotta Go, You Gotta Go

So! Yesterday was the last day in the studio followed by three pre-recorded programmes in the series Naked Cantonese on RTHK. And the last episode ever was, very appropriately, recorded in the same public toilet →

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 →

CantoNews: Cecilie and Nick Venture Forth to Graze

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

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 →

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 →

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 →

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 →

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 →

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 →

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 →

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 →