Siu Heng! 肇慶
In the column below I bemoan the fact that my first Inner Guangdong town, (where I coined the phrase ‘hovelage’ – excellent traditional Chinese architecture made to last but a little careworn) has become a →
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. →
I’m a Devil Hag and Proud of it
Are you a woman? Caucasian or Caucasian with benefits? Do you live in Hong Kong? Then you may have referred to yourself at some point as “Gwailou”. Guess what, you’re not. Only men can be →
Fumbling In The Dark
Look at this photo. Dawn, right? Just starting to get light? Wrong. It’s my camera that’s so great, it can take photos even when it’s too dark for the human eye to see anything, and →
Damn Hunan Province!
Last month I went to Hunan province and after a few minutes there was overcome with shark flu (or some other fierce animal) – awful. Just awful. Anyway, so today, instead of advising you on →
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 →
China Toilet Groove (Contains Video)
Everyone who travels in China for more than, say, five minutes, has something to say about her toilets. But I stand by my column (above) – they are nothing! Nothing, compared to only a few →
Congratulations, Get Rich!
It’s Chinese new year and the streets (and Facebook) reverberates to foreigners calling out to each other: “KUNG hei fat choi!” For one thing it should be GUNG hei, but hey. The tradition of spelling →
Enormous Oversight
About those language teaching videos (one Cantonese for beginners, one Cantonese for the more adventurous and, yes! I admit it! Even a survival Mandarin video called Stay Grounded) – all these years they’ve had this →
肇慶 Beautiful Siu Heng – Great As Long As You Don’t Dabble
Oh China. I love you so much. This is Siu Heng, the town where, on top of the many scraggy crags, there are signs (signage) exhorting people not to “parapet”. No Parapeting! the signs say →