Cantonese Forever!

Wah! So exciting! Here is the true story of what went down in old Guangzhou that fateful day in July.

The Latest Gossip

Is being a Luddite with a Mac an oxymoron? But sometimes I think that’s what I am. Here I am, trying to make Cantonese a world language – in Hong Kong! the very stronghold of →

New Recruit Looking for Fellow Revolutionaries!

Cantonese is a war and we’re going to win it. We’ll put the fun AND the mental back into “fundamentalists”! Anyway I have a new and eager recruit here by the name of Ah- … →

World Domination in Our Time

Why this photo? Found it and liked it again, innit. Anyway, the other day one of my students suggested that I set up some kind of counting device; you know, something like the count-down to →

Ten More of Us, Ten Fewer of Them

Last Saturday I started a new thing: Learn everything about Chinese characters in two hours. Ten people turned up, and when they staggered out of the venerable Honolulu Coffee Shop two hours and fifteen minutes →

Today’s Classifier: 0的

Well, it’s not really a classifier as such, because classifiers are used to classify specific things, as we’ve seen before in for example:  我有兩隻狗，(o yau leung jek gau) – I have two dogs. 0的 (di) →

It’s Official! You’re About To Leave Illiteracy Behind!

Okay, it’s official. This Saturday we’re kicking off a character-learning extravaganza like you’ve never seen; the first in a series of two hour workshops where you’ll learn everything you need to set you on the →

Character-building

Hi people. Sorry about the delay. Delay no more! Yesterday the following delightful email clattered down into my inbox: Hi Cecilie, I'd like to start learning to learn Chinese characters. What I need is a →

Quick, before it goes away forever:

This is your last chance to see anything swine flu related for a long time. That sickness is well and truly gone in a big cloud of tiny rocks from inside the Etna something jökull. →

Word Order II: Pre, or rather post-positions

The woman is outside her house (or maybe somebody else’s house, but let’s just presume.) Straight forward, right? You know woman 女人 (leui yan), outside 出邊 (cheut bin) and house 屋企 （uk kei). But as usual, →

A Word on Word Order

It seems to be that one of the biggest problems in Canto, especially for native English speakers, is word order. But that’s what you should pay the most attention to in my opinion. Look at →

Chicken Talking to Duck （雞同鴨講）

Sometimes, almost always, the below kind of conversation is funny, yes surreal. But not when I’ve spent all day on a bus full of people with, shall we say a relaxed relationship with personal hygiene followed by a death-drive through the night with a driver who kept his eyes everywhere but on the road and his hands only occasionally upon the wheel, followed by being turned away from six or seven hotels “for my own safety” only to end up at the most expensive place in town at 4am.

“Yawn yawn.”
“You have to let me stay here!”
“I’m not sure …”
“I’m a HK compatriot! Look!” (produce HK ID card)
“It’s different from ours.”
“Well of course, it’s a HK ID card!”
“Er…”
“OK, OK. Passport.”

Much humming and hawing.

“This is an international hotel!”
“Yes. Do you want one or two beds?” I’m clearly only one person, if that.
“It doesn’t MATT … OK, one.”
“We only have rooms with two beds.”
“So why do you ask?” All right, so it’s 4 in the morning.

“I can only give you back your passport tomorrow.”
“You mean today?”
“No, tomorrow.”
“But I’m leaving later today!”
“Yes, tomorrow.”
“But it’s already tomorrow. It’s 04:10!”
“No, today is the 29th. Tomorrow is the 30th.”
“It’s past midnight so already the 30th?”
“No, we work on a 24 hour basis.”
“So when can I get my passport?”
“9.30.”
“You mean in five hours?”
“Yes.”

Ask the right question, ask the right question … But I shouldn’t be surprised, or surrealed out. This is the province where, when some locals fight with the real locals (Chinese) in July, they close down all means of communcation until October, and where, when you walk into the main post office in the provincial capital to buy a stamp for Hong Kong at 2:45, you’re told to come back at 3:30 because the person in charge of international stamps is having lunch.
60 years of communism has made them thus.

In Praise of Honolulu

No, not the city Honolulu where I’ve never been. The phenomenon Honolulu!

Nestled between a parking house and some building, probably a hole in the ground pounded by pile drivers by now, lies 33 Stanley street’s Honolulu Coffee and Cake Shop 檀島咖啡餅店 (Tan Dou Ga Feh Beng Dim), one of the few real Hong Kong style cafes (茶餐廳 － cha chan tehng) left in Central.

With her infinitely patient/catatonic waiters, reasonably priced beer ($30 for a large bottle) and coffee ($20 and it’s so strong its effect will last the rest of the week) and soothing, zen-like shiny walls and fluorescent lighting, Honolulu is the ideal place to learn Cantonese.

The first lesson kicks off with you ordering something from one of the waiters, for example 亞輝 (Ah-Fai) (above) or the fun and wisecracking 金頭 (Gam Tau – Gold Head), and then we kind of gallop off from there. Practical exercises are the order of the day, but we sometimes do relax with some find-the-right-word theoretical tests. There’s something for everybody in Honolulu! Oh, and we have our own corner, with a comfortable (ish) sofa!

Here are two of my long-time students with beautiful and stylish (but heavy) phone covers I bought for them in Shenzhen. Ah, Shenzhen! That’s another good place to learn Cantonese with me. But more about that later.

Do yourself a favour and start learning Cantonese this year. You’ll thank me for it later! And if you’re already taking lessons, perhaps you could introduce the course to a friend? Everyone deserves a bit of Honolulu in their lives.

學生 (Hok saang – student)
介紹 (Gai siu – introduce)
伙計 (Foh gei – waiter)