- Details
Siu Heng! 肇慶
In the column below I bemoan the fact that my first Inner Guangdong town, (where I coined the phrase ‘hovelage’ – excellent traditional Chinese architecture made to last but a little careworn) has become a →
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. →
I’m a Devil Hag and Proud of it
Are you a woman? Caucasian or Caucasian with benefits? Do you live in Hong Kong? Then you may have referred to yourself at some point as “Gwailou”. Guess what, you’re not. Only men can be →
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 →
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 →
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 →
Congratulations, Get Rich!
It’s Chinese new year and the streets (and Facebook) reverberates to foreigners calling out to each other: “KUNG hei fat choi!” For one thing it should be GUNG hei, but hey. The tradition of spelling →
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 →
- Details
My Groove! My Groove! Why Are You Forsaking Me?
Last week I received some shocking news: My banjo teacher is leaving. What??? Now that everything was going so well? Not only do we do the old-fashioned and also modern thing of bartering skills; I →
哎呀，落雨呀！Bucketing Down
Yesterday I went on a high-speed boat trip ruining my hair, but it was worth it. As soon as we got off the open boat, it started raining like – well, normal Hong Kong style. →
川菜！Sichuan food! The best in the world!
Yammmmm! Yam me doooown! That’s right, I don’t spell the word you say when something tastes good, with a U. I prefer the letter A. Take a word like 蚊， (man, meaning mosquito but also →
Consistent Service
I’ve almost given up going to restaurants in Hong Kong. I find the food tasteless, the chefs complacent. But there’s one place right here in throbbing metropolis Mui Wo, the venerable Rome Restaurant, that I →
Cantonese and English: The Twain Shall Never Meet so Just Accept It
“Oh sorry, I’m so sorry” this woman is probably not saying. Naw, she’s just serving me some excellent Sichuan food, probably. Anyway, I can’t begin to think how weird it must be for the people →
Neighbour In The Middle of Nowhere
It was cold, foggy and not without drizzle, yet we were glad to be up so early and by ourselves at this Trollveggen that I had heard so much about but never visited. It looked →
Long Live Cantonese
There’s a big hullabaloo in the South China Morning Post this week. Historian Jason Wordie wrote about the so-called Third Culture Kids (born in one country, moved to Hong Kong, sent to boarding school in →
Taxing, Vexing Taxis
As any newcomer to Hong Kong trying to get a handle on the local language can attest to, taxi drivers are excellent language teachers. At the same time, they can also get very angry if →
Local Uncle Writes Own Language Wrong!!!!!
I have just (“just” meaning three weeks ago) come back from Norway, and while I was there I sent various postcards, among them to an uncle in my village. What, your uncle lives in your →
Change
I needed an excuse to publish this photo. It was taken in Shenzhen (naturally) in what used to be an excellent little forest just across the square from the train station but which is now →
- Details
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 →
Nostalgia Time
I want to post some old Cantonese The Movie movies here again as I think they’re being criminally overlooked by the public. Criminally. I want this one to go viral with more than 50 viewers! →
New Episode of Cantonese – The Movie!!!!!!!!!
It’s Christmas Extravaganza number 3! Please forward it your friends so we can get some viewing figures here. And Merry Christmas, hoi hoi hoi, 聖誕快樂！
Cantonese Forever Part II: Big Brother Knows Best
Some people say – well, so what if Mandarin became the official language (or as the South China Morning Post in its endless contortions to please everybody twists it into, the “official dialect”) of Hong →
At Last – New Video
Warning: Contains Mandarin!
Contact us today
Email info@learncantonese.com.hk
to find out how you can start learning Cantonese.