Buy Stuff!
CANTONESE COURSE ON DVD!!!!
- 97 minutes of easy, day-to-day Cantonese presented as comedy film clips
- Every word and grammar point explained in English
- Learn to read and write Chinese characters without really trying
- A total de-mystification of the whole language. You’ll laugh and laugh when you see how easy it is
- The scripts of each comedy film clip written in phonetic language, English and Chinese characters
- Follow the course and practise 15 minutes a day, and you’ll be having conversations with real Chinese people within a month
Buy Cecilie’s first novel Blonde Lotus and get an insight in
- The depraved psyche of a Norwegian on the loose in China
- China in the 80′s
- How to learn Chinese and get under the skin of Chinese culture
- How to sleep your way to the top
Signed by the author!
EXTRACT FROM BLONDE LOTUS:
Kat is a climatic refugee from Norway who has just arrived in China and has fallen madly in love with the country, especially Beijing, and with the beauty of Chinese men. In this chapter, however, she nips down a side road …
“That night I met my first Japanese. Name: Yamada Akira. He was smaller than me and several kilos lighter, but he interested me for two reasons. One, he had a kind of gritted-teeth resolve, like a terrier or one of those digging animals, rooting I should say. And two, we could communicate only in Putonghua—and I could understand everything he said! He smoked and drank with the same brow-knitted seriousness as he talked and moved. He said he couldn’t drink and pointed to his face.
“Red!”
I couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary—he just looked sallow. In fact, he was an opaque beige with very black stubble which seemed more dense than on the Chinese. He had fabulous eyebrows and eyes like murky ponds, marked with eyeliner it looked like, and perfectly almond shaped. He looked like one of those black-and-white photographs of fascists or revolutionary heroes as young men.
I felt incredibly, incredibly cool. Why was it cooler to speak Putonghua with a Japanese guy than English with, for example, a French guy? It just was. I had never conversed with a foreigner in Chinese. I felt so cool that I sat smiling all night, mentally patting myself on the back.
We were in one of the university’s common rooms, sitting on the periphery of Siri’s group. She had made no suggestion of going out for dinner or drinks.
“What are you smiling at?” Akira said in his Japanese voice, surprisingly deep for such a small man.
“I’m happy.” And getting drunk on beer.
“Why?”
“Oh—this!” I indicated the whole room.
“Oh. Cheers! Cigarette?” he looked into my eyes with those two black-fringed lanterns. Holy shit, was it happening again? This lifestyle really was beyond description. I felt invincible. I decided to go for it. He was Japanese! That was the country farthest away from Norway. Or was Australia farther away? For a millisecond my mind swung over the strapping Australian bodies I had touched. But what were they compared to Akira! As long as we didn’t stand up so we (or was it the others I was worried about?) would not see that I was twice as tall as him and three times as wide, I was fine. A fantastic diet of Chinese food, beer and cigarettes had slimmed me down considerably, but next to Akira Twiggy herself would have felt (and looked) plump.
I noticed Siri looking at me with a funny expression, one I was to be the object of many times in the years to come: contempt for the white woman going native. I had seen it many times in the eyes of Norwegians looking at Norwegian women with Pakistani immigrants. I had seen it in my own eyes (all those Pakistanis have moustaches.)
Well, disapprove all you like, you Nog. Akira was the most handsome man in the room despite his unimposing stature, and I was here to learn Putonghua, not waste my time on sourpuss Norwegian spoilsports.
“For Japanese, learn Putonghua, easy?” It wasn’t only that I was getting sloshed; Putonghua sounded like English spoken by a drunk person, but better.
“Easy! Japanese characters, Chinese characters, same.”
“Write something then. Write your name.”
He wrote Yamada Akira in Japanese.
“Surname two characters? Chinese surnames one character.”
“Japanese names are different from Chinese names.”
“Say your name.”
“Yamada Akira.”
“Your name is beautiful to look at,” I said.
“You mean beautiful to listen to?”
“Yes. Both.”
I was amazed, stunned and flabbergasted. This Putonghua was a total piece of cake! All I had to do was to speak and listen to really short sentences in words I knew, and guess the rest. My linguistic pride walked around the room on its hands.
Now I discovered something interesting: My libido responded to the sight of Chinese characters being written. It was also very interested in the sound of spoken Putonghua, but it did cartwheels at the sight of a strong brown or beige hand writing Chinese characters with intent.
There was only me and Akira in the room. For one who couldn’t drink, he didn’t half pack them in. Me too. I could drink, but— maybe not as well as I thought. The cigarettes were making me dizzy. Here a packet cost about the same as a single cigarette did in Norway. I had to smoke because of that if nothing else. Dope was good too, but this was—this was—“He-he-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-haah.”
Suddenly I was lying down somewhere completely different. Had I fallen asleep? Why was it so dark? I felt I was suffocating. What was this? I seemed to be swaddled in a kind of membrane. Don’t tell me I was being born again? What a bore that would be, to go through all that crapping the nappies and being unable to read or do anything fun, but with the mind of an adult.
I broke away from the suffocating membrane and saw it was a thin woollen blanket. I was on Akira’s bed (I presumed) and he was kneeling on the bed fully dressed. I was somehow without any garments. Wow! Interesting. I tried to touch him, but he motioned to me to lie down…”