Good Weather Likely

A lovely day has begun in the lovely city of Guangzhou and after yesterday’s torrential rain people are pouring out in the streets again. Just outside the hotel I saw this guy relaxing with a →

Owner Of A Broken Face

I’ve finally finished the last chapter (or recipe) in my Sichuan cookery book, a book that isn’t really a book, for can it be a book when it’s only online? If not, what should it →

Donner Und Blitzen Kebab

Drowning in weather! I got up at 5 having slept very little due to the absolutely wild weather that shook my house all night. Apparently the lightning had struck Lantau Island 3,000 times out of →

Copy The Little Children

In yesterday’s article I advised people who are trying to learn Cantonese to become like a child again. Those little buggers know how to pick up languages all right! First they say “da da da, →

Communi-Play-Tion

It’s no secret that I love the motherland, China, over all other lands, and not only because of Mons 雪花(Suet Fa – Snow Flower) beer and Sichuan food either. I’ve had more fun there than →

Green Island Beer

Hooray! Almost finished with my Sichuan cookbook called What was it again? Cook, something cook, something Sichuan. Something. Anyway, in it I praise that beer so loved and, amazingly, hated, all over the world: “Tsingtao”. →

Green and Blue

Yesterday my sister in Norway skyped me. She said she was sitting in the garden for the first time this summer! On July 12th! The rest of the time it had been raining or too →

Sunday

And the living is easy, except for managers of the Happy Jellyfish People’s Democratic Language Bureau! We must slog away even on Sundays in the never-ending quest to make Cantonese a world language. Sunday in →

Don’t Prawn Me, I’m Only The Banjo Player

Two days ago I did a Sichuan dinner for 13 people, and finally cracked the secret to chilli prawns after trying for ages. I will now share the secret with you, as well as some →

Smoke Comes Out Your Arse

Smoke! Is it just me or has Central become unbearable after the smoking ban was implemented? I’ve become one of those middle-aged hags who sniffily wave her hand in front of her face while walking, →

How (not) To Learn Cantonese 2

How to learn Cantonese: By doing the above. Carefully sliding down, into the water, then swimming. In my first post about this topic a couple of weeks ago I used the swimming analogy – how some people when learning a language prefer to stay on dry land and reading about swimming from a safe distance, “until they can swim.”

The other day I thought of it again, when a student got quite irate with me. I felt I handled it not well so I said sorry and it was all good in the end, (the next week the same student had made a tremendous effort and the whole session was almost devoid of English) but it was because I was, for once, not as encouraging as I should have been.

It was something about him having talked to the staff in Park’n’Shop in Chinese – saying “幾多錢 呀" （gei do chin ah) and being understood and feeling immensely proud. I said that was great, but was it really so strange that they could understand their own language? And shouldn’t he have started talking to Chinese people ages ago seeing he had been studying for almost two years? This was very insensitive of me and I regretted it at once, seeing I believe in encouragement and try to encourage every effort.

It just came hot on the heels of the students from my last posting saying thank you in English right in front of my face to Chinese waiters, whereas they could discuss for example how to get to the airport and criminal law with me in Chinese. Yes, I was frustrated, and took it out on him.

And that’s the thing. What other tutors, for example swimming tutors, think it’s okay for their students to get in the water trying to swim, only after having studied swimming on land for almost two years?

So I said to this group that if you want to learn something – anything – you have to start practising at once; indeed, that everything in their lives they could now do well, they had learnt by doing it. Repeatedly. Whereupon another student in that group said “Well, that’s just your opinion.” Really?

Are dance teachers, kung fu teachers, piano teachers, hang-gliding instructors ever told by their students that it’s only the teacher’s opinion that they can only learn to dance by dancing, to fight by fighting, to play by playing and to hang by gliding, I wonder?

Then another student said that I was passionate about Cantonese and couldn’t expect everyone else to be as involved as I am. That is very true. But because they are paying me to teach them Cantonese, I thought perhaps it was because they wanted to learn it.

Anyway it all turned out all right and the next lesson was one of the best we had ever had with everyone really making an effort to keep it all in Cantonese – and yes, they can really speak fluently when they try. I just wish they would take their great skills into the world and take those Chinese they come across in their daily lives in a half nelson, using the great vocabulary they have acquired to actively communicate with normal Hong Kong people in the local language in the place where we all live.

I can’t count how many people have said to me: “Well, as long as you make a living, that should be enough for you.” But no, it isn’t. My main goal isn’t to make a living, but to enable all my students to experience the great joy it is to be able to converse with Chinese in their own language. If I just wanted to make a living, I’d be an accountant. I hear it’s one of the best-paid professions in Hong Kong. But it’s true, I am passionate about Cantonese. And that means that the sweetest music I can hear, is one of my victims saying: “Well, I have enough vocabulary now to take it from here. I talk to Chinese people in Cantonese every day, so I don’t need you anymore. But we can still be friends!”

New Website!!!!

I’ve finally got my new website up.

According to my web guy, it will help sell my two Cantonese teaching videos Cantonese – The Movie and Going Native.
I have just watched those two videos for the first time since I made them and you know what? They’re actually quite good and very educational! I recommend them for anyone interested in learning Cantonese and for people who are already learning.

Many people have said they found my course through listening to the RTHK podcasts and many still listen to them. But for a very small sum you can now upload almost four hours of intensive Cantonese with all the words you’ll need effortlessly to get around the Canto-speaking world. You can upload it to your computer, iPad or phone, and you don’t have to watch the shows to learn – you can listen to them while training for your next marathon.

Now you can learn Cantonese without really trying!

I like the look of my new website. Thank you, Michael Egerton at Geckonet!

吓？ – Ha? (Wot?)
我想學廣東話 – O seung hok Gong Dong Wah (I want to learn Cantonese)
聽 – Teng (listen, hear)

Cantonese – The Easiest Language in the World?

When I started learning Cantonese there was no shortage of Chinese people warning me against it. At that time the most common refrain was: “It’s too difficult – for you“. OK, maybe they didn’t emphasise →

Enormous Oversight

About those language teaching videos (one Cantonese for beginners, one Cantonese for the more adventurous and, yes! I admit it! Even a survival Mandarin video called Stay Grounded) – all these years they’ve had this →

肇慶 Beautiful Siu Heng – Great As Long As You Don’t Dabble

Oh China. I love you so much. This is Siu Heng, the town where, on top of the many scraggy crags, there are signs (signage) exhorting people not to “parapet”. No Parapeting! the signs say →

Big Shots in China

威士忌 – Wai si gei (Whisky) 酒店 – jau dim (Hotel) 唔舒服 – m syu fuk (Not well)

The shooting of new, from-scratch Cantonese course CantoNews continues. This time we went to a thrilling location, the luscious OYC Hotel in 肇慶 (Siu Heng) in Guangdong province, a mere four hours’ comfortable train journey →

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 →

Woo-hoooo! Everybody everywhere! Now you can learn Cantonese absolutely free with the help of Lantau people. Although the Lantau podcasts CantoNews are strictly for and by Lantau people – what the hell, anyone can listen! →

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 →

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 →

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 →