CantoNews 5 Live From Roof!

Hello everybody, welcome to my roof! I normally arrange Sichuan dinners and lunches there, but this time it doubled as a recording studio for the best Cantonese news currently available on cassette! (And telex.) Talking →

Running Interview Live from Garden Café

A couple of weeks ago I interviewed the beautiful and delightful Zein Williams, mother of three and tireless champion for the Nepali people about her life and work – with the earthquake victims especially – →

CantoNews Live From Oi Kwan Hotel

Oh Cassette! Two weeks ago we went up to Guangzhou to see him live in his stand-up glory at a place called… Panda something? No! Paddyfield, an Irish pub right behind the Garden Hotel. Cassette →

Wetlands Lament

Above: BEFORE. Halcyon days of yore, etc. A part of the interlinked Pui O wetlands in 2012. A lovely, lush vista scattered with grazing water buffalo, egrets, starlings and other creatures, even fish have seen →

New Programme on Radio Lantau

IMPORTANT!!! When you click on the link, scroll down to the alphabetical archive and click on C. Then you’ll see both my programmes. This isn’t strictly about Cantonese and it certainly isn’t about me, but →

CantoNews2 – now with airplanes!

It’s up and running on Radio Lantau – CantoNews 2! The sequel! No, just the second programme in Cecilie and Nick’s Cantonese course, the finest course currently available on cassette. http://radiolantau.com/programme-archive/cantonews/C/7-cecilie-gamst-berg/4-cantonews/60-cantonews-2 This time we discuss →

Careful What You Wish For

I must write about Lantau again, because yesterday I interviewed Merrin Pearse, the leader of LIM (Living Islands Movement) whose introduction to the government’s “vision” for Lantau’s and therefore the people of Hong Kong’s future →

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. →

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 →

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 above characters mean ‘toilet’ but more like ‘a mythical bird’ and ‘roll up’ respectively. I must go back there and read the whole column again.

So I realise that some of my students or potential students are shy. I get it although I don’t understand it, being more of the ‘afraid to seriously hurt myself or die’ than the ‘afraid that people will laugh at me’ type. But I do understand that some people aren’t fans of hopping over to some stranger and striking up a conversation, especially not in a foreign language.

For those people I have devised a new way into Cantonese: Through reading and writing Chinese characters.

Chinese characters don’t laugh at you, they don’t answer you back in English or advise you to “learn Mandarin instead” and they never, ever give you a blank stare. They just lie there (and don’t think of England)!

Ostensibly impenetrable, Chinese characters are actually very easy to learn. Each component has a meaning and when you learn to recognise them you can have a fair idea what the word means. After only a few hours of studying, you’ll learn how to look up words in the dictionary, write characters and understand how, well, the whole Chinese system really, works.

And then, after a few weeks and with the knowledge of how the language actually works more deeply ensconced, you’ll feel confident enough to go out and order something in Cantonese – and get it! Or not. Maybe you’ll just be happy knowing you can read every street sign in Hong Kong and know what every place name and every local’s name mean. Why not?

It’s So Close, I can Almost Feel Its Rancid Breath …

Yes, soon you’ll be able to download more than three hours of Canto magic from this very site!I met my computer expert friend yesterday behind the third toilet from the left, and handed over the goods to him.

He is now transforming the films which I’ve worked on for three years, into an easily downloadable format. Canto glory will be but a click away! Watch this space.

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