The Uses of Cantonese

I’m SO glad I can speak Cantonese! Here is one of a million reasons: I just took the MTR from Central to Tung Chung and as usual there were no taxis although it’s about 200 times easier to find a taxi in Tung Chung at night, than in deserted Mui Wo. I called the taxi central and Mr Chan turned up within a minute. He told me he’d got a call from the airport but discarded it because he’d rather drive me, 甘小姐. The beauty of Cantonese! When you can speak it, you develop a good relationship with taxi drivers.

He kicked off the conversation by asking me about last weekend’s Guangdong TV adventure: When you can speak Cantonese, taxi drivers remember what you told them in your last conversation. Then I sensed that what he really wanted to talk about was his appearance on TV. And sure enough, he had been interviewed on TV years ago when he had been the first one on Lantau to drive a “green petrol” (liquified gas) taxi.

At that time he had had to drive to Tsing Yi every time he wanted to fill up his tank (every day) as the local petrol stations didn’t have liquified. After four months of this he had felt reasonably pissed off, (in this as in so many seemingly worthy causes, the save the environment people hadn’t quite thought it through) and got a government official to promise him on camera to have a petrol station with liquified gas built within three months. This duly happened.

And then it got even more interesting. He told me that he was born on Lantau and that when he was a boy living in Shui Hau (damned spelling, it should be Seui Hau 水口）there had been no road on Lantau. The South Lantau road, now home to untold SUVs and frenetic cyclists on the weekend, was only built to accommodate the trucks needed to build the Shek Pik (Sek Pek 石壁） reservoir.

Everything they ate came from their own soil and the sea, and if they wanted to buy stuff like shoes, the had to go in own little boat to Cheung Chau. The first car he ever saw in his life was one of the aforementioned trucks.

That’s the kind of thing I would never have found out if I didn’t speak Cantonese.

Learn Cantonese, people! I implore you. Only good will come out of it. A new crash-course is coming up soon!