Be The Gwai!
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The other day one of my students created a brilliant slogan. I was telling her about how local Chinese people think all Caucasians are complete idiots who can’t read numbers, don’t know what milk is (according to the podcast below, ElleX stood in front of the dairy section at her local supermarket wondering what to buy, when a helpful employee popped up at her elbow saying: This. Is. M-I-L-K.) and generally need help and advice to walk across a floor to reach an exit.
They are amazed and falling over themselves if you can utter 早晨，(jo san, morning) let alone string a whole sentence like 廁所喺邊度 (chi soh hai bin dou, where is the toilet) together.
So why do you have to be your normal age and native language abilities or nothing, when you speak Cantonese? Can’t you just BE THE GWAI? A total idiot from whom no one expects any brain activity at all? That way, even if you know three sentences or 52 random words in Cantonese, you’ll be treated like a mega-star and the most intelligent specimen in the world.
Be the 鬼！ It’s extremely liberating. Just ask any inmate in a loony bin.
So learn Cantonese this year! If you don’t have time to take lessons you can buy the entire language in two handy DVDs right here at this site: