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Category: Blog

Published: 31 July 2022

Woo hooo, I have just found a new Cantonese phrase! 批死， pai sei, 'criticise death'. According to excellent Canto tool Cantodict it means "predict disdainfully".* 

Oh! That was exactly the phrase I needed last week when I found an article from noted Hong Kong English language newspaper the Hong Kong Standard about yet another nail in the coffin of Cantonese. It said that the language of instruction in the Hong Kong school system will switch from the language everybody speaks, Cantonese, to hated imperialist Mandarin. 

What took them so long? I had been "disdainfully predicting" this for a number of years; ever since I started noticing that in Guangdong province, formerly known as Canton, the 'cradle of Cantonese' just across the border from Hong Kong, no children actually spoke Cantonese. After asking I don't know how many parents about this and getting the same quick nervous  exchange of looks, followed by "... er, it's not convenient," I did a little digging, and sure enough. Parents get punished if the children speak Cantonese at school - and at home. 

This column in the South China Morning Post ("Putonghua" means Mandarin, changed by the editor for political reasons) is from 2014, and was possibly the reason why they quickly decided to discontinue my column. Or it could be because of any number of other columns lamenting the killing of Cantonese. What I do know is: The discontinuation of my column coincided exactly with the takeover of the paper by one Jack Ma, owner of "China's Amazon" Alibaba.

Anyway - there is no better way to eradicate a language than to make sure children don't speak it. "Speaking Mandarin is the only way to get ahead" is one way to do it, and when it comes with the added incentive of "...and Daddy will lose his job if we don't comply" - well, it's a done deal. The cradle of Cantonese is now more or less a coffin, Canto-less.

And now it's Hong Kong's turn.

Today the language of instruction, tomorrow severe punishment for speaking Cantonese at home. It's the only way to get a handle on those intransigent Hong Kong people, otherwise who knows what they could be saying among themselves. 

They have already started "training" Hong Kong teachers and students in "patriotism", but it's impossible to be properly patriotic without the correct phrases in the correct language: Mandarin. The next push will be to introduce crippled ("simplified") characters to Hong Kong, so that city can look as cheap and shoddy as those in mainland China. This has been tried before without any luck, in fact to much protest among Hong Kong people, but now is the time.

Now HK people are sufficiently brought to heel, and they will say not a word. 

Will soon only foreigners be speaking Cantonese? 

Make sure you are one of them! 

Learn Cantonese the Natural Way - from a Norwegian. 

* Predict disdainfully - what does that even mean? Hey, Hong Kong people! Please enlighten me! 

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Category: Blog

Published: 29 July 2022

I live in an interesting neighbourhood right on the corner of Carrer de Robert Graves with its Swedish-moneyed gentrification, and Carrer Menendez Pelayo, slightly less elegant, well, with strong elements of hovelage.

In the most hovelistic building, more like a crumbling shack, lives a mysterious okupa.* Some say he is from Romania, others say Poland or Russia. Wherever he’s from, he speaks good Spanish. Good enough to tell the police to bugger off when they came around a few weeks ago. He stood on the balcony shouting angrily at them and eventually went back inside to God knows what squalid horrors, while the old policia scuttled off.

I thought - hoped - the police might have come because some neighbour had complained about the music. Yes, because although he has nothing and doesn’t work, the okupa contends himself with playing incredibly loud music most of the day. He plays Middle Eastern/Central Asian drum n’ bass, something I could actually have grooved to if I was, say, hurtling through the Taklamakan Desert in a broken-down car, but as it is I really hate, because it’s like sitting inside one of his speakers. And then he plays Ed Sheeran.

I detest Ed Sheeran. Ed Sheeran drove me out of Hong Kong. No really! It all started with my losing the venerable Honolulu cha chanteng (greasy spoon) as a Cantonese teaching venue. Oh what halcyon days of shiny tiles, mirrors and students nervously trying out their Cantonese on waiters of various degrees of patience.

I think we spent eight years in Honolulu, teaching, partying and making films. It was a nice little earner for the owner too, raking in the HK$ at the time of day the place was normally half empty, between 4 and 8pm. But one day it was all over, the building was sold and one of Hong Kong’s last iconic cha chanteng gutted. Me too!

After that we became nomads, learning Cantonese wherever we could find a table and chair. After a year I found a 'new old' funky millennial cha chanteng, so hip it had ahhhrghhh paper straws, bamboo cutlery and of course double the price. But we had a room to ourselves.

The problem was, they played non stop a reel of music with about ten songs. Modern pop songs, all with the worst element of modern music: Autotune. One of them was Ed Sheeran’s intolerable something something "in love with your body." The first time I heard it I thought - hm! That’s a catchy tune. But as the days and weeks went by with about 23 X Ed Sheeran's body a day, I started going slightly mad. In the end I couldn’t sleep, because the damn thing was playing in my head.

There was only one thing to do: Leave Hong Kong.

Since then I have been living fairly undisturbed by drum n bass n autotune. So imagine my horror when, a couple of months ago, the damn okupa also started playing this intolerable crap tune, and five times as loudly as in the woke cha chanteng whose name I have forgotten now. There was Ed Sheeran, the gingery wonder himself, now thundering into my ears several times a day again.

One night I came home late, at least 8pm, from beerorama, Okupa was standing next to a police car, in handcuffs. Was it possible he would be gone?

 No, a few days later the music was back, possibly not as loud though.

 Then a few weeks ago, I woke up at 02:30 for some reason. It was quiet. For another some reason I went out to the terrace, only to see my upstairs neighbour and at least four different people across the street hanging out of their windows, riveted by the sight of three police cars and several officers.

Upstairs Neighbour told me Okupa had been at home when the police came, but had escaped via the balcony and across the rooftops.

How exciting! Living vicariously through a criminal. Doing the 02:30 gossip with my neighbours really made me feel I belonged - a little bit more. And only understanding half of what they said made me crank up the Spanish studying action - a little bit. Since that day I haven't seen Okupa - nor heard Es Sheeran's intolerable tune.

Talking of idiots - did you know I’ve written a Spanish textbook for plonkers? You should buy it - it’s fun.

However for real fun you should learn Cantonese the Natural Way - from a Norwegian!

Today’s Cantonese: 茶餐廳  Cha Chan teng - Tea meal parlour. A Hong Kong invention, like a greasy spoon but cleaner.

*Okupa: A squatter who lives without paying rent, often stealing electricity and water from neighbours.

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Category: Blog

Published: 26 July 2022

I don’t really know how it happened, but I have a title now. The title is marketing manager. Yes, that’s right! I manage.

I manage the marketing of leaves and twigs, as well as roots. I am a plant marketing manager!

The plants are yews, hornbeams, thuja, beeches and, and... and more! Whose English names I know not! Oh yes, privet hedge, the type you see in charming English murder mysteries. Totally unsuitable for most of Norway, but they want it anyway. Thank you, Inspector Morse.  

This summer from April has been crazy, just managing, managing, managing from morning till night, or longer. It’s fun, but has really taken a toll on my work to make Cantonese a world language.

A few weeks ago I went to Norway to interview some plants and their owners, making one film about blood beech and one about privet. Yaooo! It was fun. It turned into a road trip with benefits, trawling around country roads with excellent driver and friend Cecilie Maske, and visiting places I’ve only read about in books.

The highlight of the road trip was finally meeting my student ah-Tong (Soup) possibly the only Cantonese enthusiast in his village. Soup is an unusual guy; deeply philosophical, plays in three bands on top of working as a truck driver, has 3 children and loves Cantopop, especially George Lam!

We went to a Chinese restaurant in a nearby town where the owner happened to be from Hong Kong, a good friend of Soup’s and possibly the one to set him on the road to Canto. Whatever it was - welcome to the fold, Soup! One more of us, one fewer of them.

That trip reminded me of another road trip in Norway with the same Cecilie Maske, grooving around the fjords and trying to find Chinese restaurants that weren’t too... Norwegian. I don’t ask for much - only chopsticks.

In Åndalsnes, I finally saw a promising place, astonishingly called ‘China House’. The waiter howled with laughter when I talked to him in Cantonese, asking me where I was from.

“Hong Kong.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“You can’t be.”

Then came the ‘you can use chopsticks’ and ‘you can ask for Tsingtao’ applause, culminating in a thundering crescendo of incredulous howling when I asked if they had anything on the menu containing lotus root.

The waiter spoke fluent-ish Norwegian badly, and when I pretended to be amazed, he scoffed that he had been living there for 20 years.

“Right, so why is it strange that I can speak Cantonese, drink Tsingtao and use chopsticks?”

“That’s different.”

“Why is it different?” I said with an evil smirk, having had exactly the same conversation in mainland China only about 32,000 times. 

“Because... they are Chinese things” he explained, as if I were a 10-month-old infant of unusually limited intelligence.

But anything is better than the ridiculous notion that wearing, eating or enjoying something from a different place in the world than oneself is somehow “cultural appropriation”.

No! It’s cultural admiration. Or - it’s just something interesting, fun, amazing that happens to be started by some people somewhere else. Like Cantonese.

Learning Cantonese is NOT cultural appropriation, it’s the most fun and interesting thing you can undertake in your lifetime.

Perhaps you don’t have time to take lessons from me right away, but why not start with Cantonese 101, Cantonese the Movie, more than one hour of everything you need in basic Cantonese.

Then you can go to Hong Kong and spend your entire holiday in quarantine!

Today's Cantonese: 湯  Tong - soup, boiling water

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Category: Blog

Published: 14 June 2022

The other day I suddenly travelled through Spain by train. Well, it wasn't the other day but at Easter. That was a mistake.

I should have predicted there would be one or two other people travelling in Spain at Easter, but I was so hungry for travel I didn't care. That's how I ended up paying five star prices for minus two star hotels, but let those sleeping flea-ridden death coffins lie. I'm over it now. 

What I wanted to say was I eventually ended up in another country, Portugal, where I actually knew people from Hong Kong, both former students and friends from the old village. I tried to speak Spanish in Portugal but whoa! Big no-no. It turns out Portugal is not a fan of Spain. I wonder why? Must be something about  colonialism, or football, or something. 

Before they became Portugal and Spain, both had been invaded by the Moors, who left behind a legacy of tiles, among other things.

I like tiles. Some tiles. In some places. Those places are: Bathroom walls, kitchen walls, floors - and morgues. 

Places where I think tiles don't belong: Everywhere else. Especially not the outside walls of houses. But there they were all over southern Portugal and Lisbon: Tiled houses. Some of the tiles were beautiful; elaborately painted, and even I thought, not bad.

However, my friends from Hong Kong, now expats, or rather, re-expatted again like me (most people I know who have left Hong Kong have gone back to their country of birth, not to yet another foreign-dom) told me the tiles weren't there because of some cultural quirk, but rather because the houses were so badly made, the tiles served to cover the cracks. 

Did the Moors learn about glazing, tiles and ceramics from the Chinese? The Chinese claim to have invented the method of glazing ten thousand years ago or more, so I'd say definitely! Also, the Chinese invented everything, so there's that. 

I am particularly obsessed with the topic of tiles. I saw mainland China go from beautiful, traditional architecture:

to a shithole place where all the outside walls were covered in tiles

 in only a few years.

I think traditional Chinese architecture is among the most beautiful and functional in the world. I used to know where I was in the country just by looking at the buildings; grey bricks in the north, packed amber-coloured clay in the west and of course the elegant town houses of the south with their dizzyingly high ceilings and tall, stained-glass windows.

 Now the whole country looks exactly, drearily the same, and so grotesquely bad taste one would think they had lost a whole generation to communism. Oh wait, they had. Three so far. 

 I have a term for the handful of beautiful and interesting dignified relics from a time of excellent workmanship that still haven’t been destroyed: Hovelage. Wandering around hovelage used to be my favourite part of any trip to mainland China. 

Chinese tourists apparently love Rome, Paris and London because of the atmosphere that only old buildings can give. Why can’t they keep some of their own?

The only thing that remains of Chinese culture now is the Cantonese language! Preserve world heritage by learning Cantonese the Natural Way - from a Norwegian! 

You could do worse than downloading a couple of teaching videos actually. That way you won't have to be stabbed with a pen through the medium of Skype! 

Today's Cantonese: 磚 Chyen - tile 

P.S. Chinese, Portuguese, everybody everywhere: Tiles are NOT supposed to be on outside walls! NOT!!!!!