SUNDAY: Lay Down My Weary, Oily Load

Last night I cooked for eight people, Sichuan food naturally. Now I’ve got the mother of all washings-up to grapple with. Cooking for eight people is three days’ work altogether and the dish-washing is pretty grim, especially with the oily chilli sauce, but it’s worth it when I hear the groans and sighs of pleasure as my guests chew down on dish after succulent dish.

Last night I debuted a dish I’ve invented myself: Fritters Without Frills, 炸肉茄子 (ja yok keh tsi – deep-fried meat aubergine). It came about by having some leftover aubergines and some leftover pork from dumplings and a bag of tempura powder.

It worked! Which is just as well because I put the recipe in my new book CHILLies! Sichuan Food Made Easy, available soon at the touch of a button.

You’ll laugh when you see how easy it is to cook Sichuan food. It’s almost as easy as learning Cantonese with Happy Jellyfish People’s Democratic Language Bureau!

煮飯 (jyu faan – cook)
琴晚 (kam maan – last night)
洗碗 (sai wuun – wash dishes)

AT LAST! Mac has joined the normal world

Joy to the world, my life is complete. For ages I’ve been writing Chinese characters in the worst way invented by man; by typing the words in pinyin, in other words Mandarin, imperialist communist speech-language.
Oh, the pain! Not only did I have to remember the pronunciation of all those Mando-words, but it was so fiddly to look up the ones I didn’t remember how to spell (and when has Chinese ever been about spelling?) and I had to use zeros to write normal Cantonese characters like 0野， 0的 and
0係！
The pain!

But now, wonderful Penpower Handwriter has issued a writing pad suitable for Mac. Now I’ll be able to use handwritten Chinese characters and get them right every time. It’s a new era. A new dawn.

Oh, and where can you get it? Why, the Mac shops! And probably all computer shops worth their salt in gold.

Miyakojima! 宮古島

The mainland is all well and good, in fact better than well and certainly better than good, but there other countries around here. Japan for example. Not that this tiny island that’s much closer to →

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 →

China Everything – The Movie. Yes, Mandarin!!!!

Three months of work are finally over and the result is a 114 minute travel, language, transport and accommodation guide to the Silk Road including Kazakhstan, and, well, anything in China really. The premiere was →