So it’s the private companies that will be driving the communist hieroglyph takeover? Last week it was Hang Seng bank, now it’s HSBC itself. HSBC – isn’t that a British bank?

A few years ago it was that very bank which staged a ‘speak Mandarin campaign’. There she was, an HSBC employee standing in the doorway of little Mui Wo branch of that giant bank, showing the way to the three windows of the 300 square feet room, a big Speak Mandarin Month badge on her lapel, squeaking Ni Hao Ma! to all the locals of Mui Wo including me.

I asked her then as I wonder now: What the hell is HSBC doing trying to force Hong Kong people to speak communist speech-language Mandarin?

Then this afternoon, there it was in the passage between Tsim Sha Tsui East and TST MTR station: A massive sign in those crippled and ugly squiggles.

I still haven’t heard back from Hang Seng Bank about my question as to why they discriminate against Hong Kong people in their advertising, apart from an email two weeks after I wrote to them (Hang Seng Bank promises an answer to emails within 48 hours) saying: We’ve read your email! Thank you for your continuous support!

Now I will have to write to HSBC too. I encourage you to do the same. Rid this ugly pest from our city’s common space.

(Note that the advert is about the world. When did ‘the world’ become ‘Mainland China’?)

Who is supposed to be the mainlander, who the HK guy in this photo, advertising a big fiscal cooperation between the two entities? Who knows. But they will make shitloads of money, with the help of Hang Seng Bank. Oh, and the Hong Kong guy will have to learn simplified characters…

Welcome to Hang Seng Bank, home of my company account. I had to leave HSBC because it was just too, too crap. Little did I know that Hang Seng would be on the simplified bandwagon and emblazon the fact all over their headquarters in Central! So is this advert
1. Only for mainlanders? In which case it’s discriminatory and insulting.

2. For HK people? In which case they must now learn simplified characters which are not the official writing in Hong Kong.

Also, the mainlanders who come here to set up some economic enterprise will know normal characters. I have travelled in the mainland for 23 years but I’ve never come across a single one who couldn’t read normal characters. Never. Simplified characters cheapen the adverts and make them look mainland-y, corrupt and fake. Mainland people come to Hong Kong to get real stuff, not more of the stuff they have at home! Mainland restaurant frequently use normal characters on their wall signs to look more high-class. (This is illegal but they don’t care.)

I have written to Hang Seng Bank and complained. Last month there was a brouhaha about an Agnes B cafe in Tseung Kwan O, the menu of which was only simplified characters, or ‘crippled’ characters as people call them now. (Excellent pun in Chinese.) People wrote to complain and Agnes B immediately promised to change the writing to normal! It works. And for what it’s worth, I think the mainland will eventually return to normal characters. They know they’re more beautiful and make much more sense.

Ah – so beautiful, so civilised. Doesn’t she look like an advert for a particularly expensive brand of tea? But guess what, she’s not. She’s just having her weekly dose of lovely Cantonese, right in her own neighbourhood!

Yes, people who live on Lantau, Happy Jellyfish People’s democratic Language Bureau has started a new service just for you, right in the heart of Pui O, 40 seconds’ walk from the main road.

We do regular courses, crash courses in specific topics as well as how to read and write Chinese characters, and stuff like arrange Sichuan lunches or dinners for up to 20 people.

Pui O is now a HUB of culture, art and joy! Swing around today. Our large roof garden overlooking the South China Sea has four ceiling fans…

I have some victims who have been at it (learning Cantonese) for a while, and have dozens if not hundreds of pages of course material. In loose sheets. When I suggest they try to put these papers in something resembling order for example in a ring-binder, they scoff: “I thrive on creative chaos!” (They are investment bankers.)

But while they are creatively looking through a million sheets of course material and notes, valuable minutes and years tick by. Their more organised study mates have to sit through the endless rustling for hours on end, patiently tapping their fingers. This is not fair.

People – get your papers in order! You could do worse than taking a leaf out of ah-On’s book (ha ha) -see photo above. Put the stuff in categories and have some kind of marker or flap indicating where everything is. Get rid of the clutter and I promise you that your Cantonese will improve no end. You wouldn’t live in a house that messy, would you?

First of all: Please buy my latest book and second: You’ll never guess where I ended up this week! HKTDC!!! Which I have no idea what stands for. Some magazine. The article is quite sympathetic to Cantonese; even calling it a language. Thank you, Melanie Ho.

Hoi hoi, students new and old

Did you know that I have just published my second book, Don’t Joke on the Stairs, on Blacksmith Book publishing house.

It is about how much fun and laughter, surrealism and weirdness you can find in China and Hong Kong, but also to a large degree about how to learn Cantonese and why the locals put up such a fight against foreigners trying to learn it. The latest reviewer said “Move over Paul Theroux” so I must have done something right.

You can get it directly from me (only HK$ 130) or from my website www.happyjellyfish.com (Buy Stuff).

Check out the trailer on my YouTube channel Cantocourse:

The above film is a true picture of what Hong Kong will be like if the Chinese government get its way in forcing all us lowly subjects to speak the holy language Mandarin, or Putonghua （普通話）－ common language. And there’s no denying it, it is common. Common as muck.

In one of its crazier moments (getting everyone in China to be known by a number instead of their names is another one, which illustrates rather clearly the way of thinking at a time when China was just one huge concentration camp), the Communist Party (i.e. Mao)suggested that one should get rid of Chinese characters altogether and start spelling out the words in Roman letters instead. With Roman letters all the illiterates would be able to learn to read the propaganda posters, and the worker bees would fall more easily into line.

But one clever and rather brave scholar, I forget his name, showed Mao the following poem written by Yuen Ren Chao (1892–1982). (This should of course be ‘Zhao Yuan Ren’- I got it from wikipedia)
《施氏食獅史》
石室詩士施氏，嗜獅，誓食十獅。
氏時時適市視獅。 十時，適十獅適市。
是時，適施氏適市。
氏視是十獅，恃矢勢，使是十獅逝世。
氏拾是十獅屍，適石室。
石室濕，氏使侍拭石室。
石室拭，氏始試食是十獅。
食時，始識是十獅屍，實十石獅屍。
試釋是事。

Like in my futuristic nightmare-film above, every single one of the 92 words in the poem is pronounced ‘shi’. (In Beijing dialect this sounds something like SHRR, other places in China it would be pronounced more like SZEE. (According to my latest book Don’t Joke On The Stairs, this is “the sound of two cockroaches fighting in an arse.”)

Needless to say, the harebrained scheme was promptly scrapped. Oh, how Mao must have smoldered with anger, but that was one of the few times he actually listened to someone. And this, that most words are pronounced ‘shi’, makes Mandarin so poor, vexing and difficult to understand.

In Cantonese, however, it would go like this:

《Si ji sek ji si》
Sek sat si si si ji，si ji，sai sek sap ji。
Ji si si sek si si ji。
Sap si，sek sap ji sek si。 si si，sek si ji sek si。
Sek si si sap ji，chi chi sai，si si sap ji sai sai。
Ji sap si sap ji si，sek sek sat。
Sek sat sap，ji si si si sek sat。
Sek sat sek，ji chi si sek si sap ji。
Sek si，chi sek si sap ji si，sat sap sek ji si。
Si sek si si。

Well! Quod erat rather jolly well demonstrandum, wouldn’t you say? One sound in Mando, seven different sounds in Canto, and throw in the superior amount of tones compared to the lowly four in putong bloody hua; yes, people will understand this poem just fine.

So people. don’t let this inferior, one-word language take over in our town! Let’s keep the vibrant, fun and happening Cantonese just the way it is, i.e. changing every five minutes.

(Oh, and if you want to know what the poem means, here it is:

« Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den »
In a stone den was a poet called Shi, who was a lion addict, and had resolved to eat ten lions.
He often went to the market to look for lions.
At ten o’clock, ten lions had just arrived at the market.
At that time, Shi had just arrived at the market.
He saw those ten lions, and using his trusty arrows, caused the ten lions to die.
He brought the corpses of the ten lions to the stone den.
The stone den was damp. He asked his servants to wipe it.
After the stone den was wiped, he tried to eat those ten lions.
When he ate, he realized that these ten lions were in fact ten stone lion corpses.
Try to explain this matter.)

The other day one of my students created a brilliant slogan. I was telling her about how local Chinese people think all Caucasians are complete idiots who can’t read numbers, don’t know what milk is (according to the podcast below, ElleX stood in front of the dairy section at her local supermarket wondering what to buy, when a helpful employee popped up at her elbow saying: This. Is. M-I-L-K.) and generally need help and advice to walk across a floor to reach an exit.

They are amazed and falling over themselves if you can utter 早晨，(jo san, morning) let alone string a whole sentence like 廁所喺邊度 (chi soh hai bin dou, where is the toilet) together.

So why do you have to be your normal age and native language abilities or nothing, when you speak Cantonese? Can’t you just BE THE GWAI? A total idiot from whom no one expects any brain activity at all? That way, even if you know three sentences or 52 random words in Cantonese, you’ll be treated like a mega-star and the most intelligent specimen in the world.

Be the 鬼！ It’s extremely liberating. Just ask any inmate in a loony bin.

So learn Cantonese this year! If you don’t have time to take lessons you can buy the entire language in two handy DVDs right here at this site:

Mando-Mess Massage

So it’s a new year again, this time rather more important than just old 2012 – it’s the year of the DRAGON. Full of upheavals and excitement, it is also the luckiest year in the Chinese zodiac.

With only a basic understanding of Cantonese, you will be so much better equipped to take on this year. Why not take a course in Cantonese, learning it the Natural Way – From a Norwegian? I have free slots throughout the week for groups and individuals, especially in the late afternoons and on Saturdays. You’ll laugh when you see how easy it is!

If you don’t have time to commit to weekly sessions, why not get your own personal pocket Norwegian right into your home? My two DVDs Cantonese – The Movie (for total beginners) and its successor Going Native (scroll down) are yours for less than the price of one hour of one-to-one teaching.

Learn Cantonese this year! Your future will thank you for it.