Philadelphia Offers Freedom From Mando

So this plan of mine to eat my way through all the Chinese restaurants in the USA is kind of almost working out. A little. I think I’ll be able to do about 90%, including

Civilised? Ha Ha Haaaaa

Last weekend we were in Mui Jau (梅州)which, although it’s in Guangdong province, bears the dubious distinction of being completely Mando speaking. People told me it was because it was a Hakka stronghold, but I

Progress and Regress

Learning or even speaking Cantonese is no game for the timid. It is, quite frankly, something of a never-ending fight with frequent setbacks and few triumphs. The other day I was in the Holly in

Jasmine Devils

Ah! Yam bui! Here are some of my students taking a good slurp of 鐵觀音 (tit gun yam, a famous tea) on my roof. Yes, Lantau people, there are still some morning/early afternoon slots left

One For The Team – Yet Another Benefit of Speaking Cantonese

This is how it started. We had dived into an upmarket restaurant because the temperature was dropping fast and it was raining; we just couldn’t bear the thought of another meal with our backs to

This Is Your Big Chance

Christmas is ridiculously coming (in about a year) and my students have decided to take several months off. There is a lull and: You can step into it, becoming fluent in Cantonese around February next

The War Against Cantonese – Now They Are Using Children

I spent last weekend in Zhongshan, birthplace of Sun Yat-sen and the original bastion of Cantonese. Not sure about the numbers but an incredible amount of immigrants to the various gold and hard-work slave-conditions hellholes

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

Cantonese – The Movie Episode 32!!!!

The simplified characters menace is growing. Businesses all over Hong Kong are falling over themselves to accommodate mainlanders only, showing in a not very subtle manner that they’re not interested in local customers: by using

Frightening Mandofication

Working hard on our new film Simply The Worst, a frightening sci-fi look at what happens when the government forces simplified characters on us. So I suddenly remembered the above film about speech-making communist language