The Fastest Route To Linguistic Proficiency EVER

I’ve just come back from a weekend in inner Guangdong province, cradle of Cantonese language and culture, with the above delightful couple, Ah Laan and Ah Gei. I knew they would like the funky and surreal aspects of Guangdong and the mainland as a whole, and they did. Here they are on the bus going to mystical Gongleng Jok Hoi (Guang Ling Zhu Hai) – an incredible bamboo forest now sadly ruined by over-development to attract more tourists.
Here they are coming out of a bamboo toilet, the directions to which they have just asked for and been given – in flawless Cantonese:

If you want to learn Cantonese fast, nothing beats going to a small town in Guangdong province and navigate it by yourself, with your kind instructor (me) hovering at a respectful distance or simply not being there. There’s no better teacher than having no choice but try to get your point across to people who don’t speak English at all. Here we see Ah Gei later that evening, playing Chinese poker and cavorting with locals in their own language.

Guangdong people seem to be crazy about foreigners, and countless times we were stopped by locals who wanted to have their photo taken with us. That was just another option for Ah Laan and Ah Gei to practise their Cantonese, so naturally they embraced every opportunity.

Apart from the fun and the great food and beer, being dragged into karaoke bars and other bars by locals and not allowed to pay for anything, being given boxes of oranges and local delicacies and in general treated like kings, Ah Gei and Ah Laan learnt more Cantonese during this weekend in the mainland than in a whole month in Hong Kong.

You can do it too!

I’ve started guided tours to destinations in a radius of three to four hours’ travel from Hong Kong – by bus or train. If you’re disenchanted with the slick “shopping-at-Harvey Nichols-drinking- latte- in the- gym” world of Hong Kong; if you’re bored with Boracay and Phuket and shrieking tour guides bossing you around the Forbidden City;  if you want to see some of the real China, I can take you there.

If you want to learn Cantonese or just have a really excellent time visiting places you had no idea existed, communicating with locals you would otherwise never have met, seeing a world hidden from the normal Hong Kong city dweller, then join my weekend tours to Guangdong province. In fact, why not start this Chinese New Year?

There’s a bus waiting just across the border …