One Step Forward, 1.3 Billion Steps Back

Here’s a missive from 2008, just after the sacred Beijing Olympics when I finally could get a visa to China again:

Not that I smoke joints anymore but I do get disillusioned sometimes about my life goal which is to make Cantonese a world language. Here I was all happy about getting more and more students whom I can Canto-groom, thus making my dream of world domination a reality, and then I have to realise that there’s a province right under my nose which is hard at work making my dream come to nought. Zip zero and all that.

The province I’m talking about is Guangdong, home, nay, cradle of the very Cantonese language without which I wouldn’t be here. But as I’m toiling away with the spreading of the sacred Canto-word, it seems that Guangdong is giving up the holy Canto-ghost.

Last weekend I went to Long Tsuen (Dragon River) in the north-ish of the province and: Mandarin has become the new English! It used to be that if you spoke to very Canto-looking people they answered you in English. Now it’s bloody Mandarin! I address people in my Norwegian accented and therefore Canto-sounding Cantonese, and they answer me in Mandarin. Putong bloody hua.

I even met a couple who were obviously Canto natives; they spoke Cantonese to each other. But to their child they only spoke awfully accented Putonghua, not even wanting the child to learn the language in the province in which they live! I asked them why and they said they didn’t want their child to learn Cantonese.

This is going on all over the province. Will boring, communist party meeting, set in stone Mandarin win the day after all? Stand up, ye people of Hong Kong, soon to be the last bastion of Canto! I am thoroughly disillusioned and want to kill myself – linguistically at least. I have said many times that it’s no fun fighting a downhill battle, but this? It’s like two Hong Kong parents talking to their children in awfully accented English, not wanting them to learn the language in which … hang on, that’s already happening.

What is it with Cantonese, the most fun, vibrant, happening language on earth, that makes everyone want to kill it off?

Well it will be over my dead, stinking, putrefying body, that’s for sure. Stand up to be counted all you people out there who don’t want the fascist, dull, we-rule-and-own-the world, nationalistic, anti-fun-and-variety, support-every-awful-regime and kill-all-initiative language Mandarin, to win. Having lots of money, killing the whole world with fumes and being able to host a big sporting event isn’t everything you know.

It’s Beer O’Clock But Where Is The Good Beer?

I’m running a series on Facebook called Beer Is Beautiful, largely featuring this woman and her associates. And other people I know. The other day I tried ‘beer is beautiful’ in Cantonese in Honolulu Coffee →

When Life Gets You Down, Shoot A Film

Sometimes I’m tempted to give up the whole Cantonese thing. I mean, what’s the point? The Mando behemoth is going to roll Hong Kong and the Cantonese-speaking world into the ground and pour concrete on →

Completely Lost In A Strange City Without Knowing A Word Of The Language

This is the very first photo I had taken of myself in China (a Chelfie?) in 1988. It was in the then famous silk market, no doubt demolished now, and the guy was probably some →

SUNDAY: I’m Sorry To Say, Chinese and Western Food Cooking Shall Never Meet

Is it racist to say that Chinese people in China aren’t great at making Western food? That is my experience anyway. And that experience is now almost 28 years. Wow! Not that I have eaten →

New Service For All The Hungry People On Lantau – And The World

I must have mentioned once or twice that I cook Sichuan food which I serve on my, I have to say, beautiful roof terrace overlooking the South China Sea? It’s just that recently I’ve been →

Here’s To Technology Although My Phone Is a Nokia From 2006

Although I may seem like a Luddite with my Nokia and my stubborn insistence of having tangible, physical CDs and DVDs, I actually love technology. The whole internet thing; reaching people all over the world →

Breaking: HK Government Official Stuns World With Harebrained Scheme!

This never happens: A former senior town planner with the Hong Kong government has suggested getting rid of a Hong Kong icon! So novel; where do they get these ideas from? This time it’s the →

Chinese Stuff: Only For Chinese?

Chillies, chopsticks, even cha are they only Chinese things, meant for Chinese people? I’ve had this conversation hundreds of times in the mainland and in Hong Kong, but I somehow didn’t expect to have it →

Beer Then Wine, You’ll Be Fine, Wine Then Beer Makes You Queer

everybody knows that. But how about beer, then wine, (Moet Et Chandon, saved since June 7th, thank you Teng and Lok!) then beer, then more beer and some beer? Queer is not a good →

Nipple Alert! (Guangdong Adventure Trips)

四會 (Sei Wui – Four Congregations, small but excellent town in western Guangdong province) 白酒 (Bak jau – White wine, which in Hong Kong actually means white wine, but in the mainland a lethal liquid →

Bureaucrats Will Be The Death Of Me

This morning, as most mornings, I went to the beach with my trusty dogs Koldbrann and Lasi. It was raining vigorously, a phenomenon not uncommon in Hong Kong and southern China. Rain is water, water is wet, and combined with a very smooth surface, water can make that surface ultra-smooth! I knew that. I’ve known it for years. But that didn’t stop me from almost falling on my nose as I walked on the tiles helpfully put down (by the Leisure department?) to lead people from the beach to the barbecue area and the tents.

The thing is, those tiles down by Pui O Beach are so sneaky. Many of them have a rough surface, as anyone laying tiles on the ground in a place where it rains a lot would think natural. But then there are these tiles in between them that are so smooth they should be on a bathroom wall, high up just in case. If you get even 1/5 of your shoe’s undersurface on one of these, you’re done for.

Why, HK government? Why why why the slippery tiles? Why?

Still, they have nothing on this particular museum, or tomb or whatever, in Guangzhou. I didn’t have the space to mention it in the column, but the areas between the various tombs and shard-holding houses were all tiled, with tiles so slippery it took us 15 minutes to traverse a 30-second staircase in the aftermath of the torrential. If I hadn’t hated that place before (which I did), I certainly did now, when every step brought the promise of certain death or disfigurement. Why do these planners do this? Why? Why? Do they stand in windows and laugh as people go arse over tit?

沙灘 (Sa taan – beach)
滑 (wat – slippery/slide)
好X滑 (hou eksi wat – damn slippery)
跌 (Dit – fall, drop)
跌落嚟 (Dit lok lei – fall down)

西麗湖

There’s a place formerly ‘just outside’ now in Shenzhen called 西麗湖, Sai Lai Wu,West Beautiful Lake. It’s a kind of resort in that there are rooms and some trees around it, as well as a →