Archive

Ode To The O

Published
by
cecilie
on August 17, 2010
in Beauty, Environment, Home and Hong Kong
. 2 Comments

Don’t know about the rest of the world, but at least in Hong Kong I think there are few places where you can stroll out at about 6.30 in the morning and the first thing you see is water buffalo cavorting in a stream.

But of the few places there are, Pui O is certainly one of them. And when the buffalo need a change from the stream, they amble down to the beach - five minutes’ walk from my gaff. In this picture, admittedly, they are elsewhere, but on a normal weekday, as darkness descends, you can often see up to 40 of them cooling down in the sewer water - a respite from the relentless flies.

I have to live near water and trees, and with a lot of sky above. People often ask me how I can live so “far away” - I presume they mean “from Central.” I think a more natural question would be how anyone can live in a place where they wake up to trucks thundering past, in a 400 square feet shoe box on the murky bottom of a canyon of skyscrapers, with three of the flats above, below and next door reverberating to the sound of the pneumatic drill. But do I? Naw. I just keep waking up to birdsong. Every morning.

Happy Ramadan

Published
by
cecilie
on August 12, 2010
in Injustice, language, politics and religion
. 6 Comments

Here’s an interesting five part video from Germany, the country that feels so bad about what it did to the Jews that it’s letting itself be swamped with people whose views of Jews make the SS look like an embroidery party. A bit into the film, (please watch it if you want to have any inclination about the future) some New Young Germans, born and bred in the country, going to school there and speaking the language perfectly, are asked, when they express that they want to “shoot” people who break their “honour” code - what is honour? (As in “honour”-killing your sister because she somehow makes you look not like a desert warrior by wearing a skirt or whatever.)

Guess what: These people, for whom “honour” is everything and certainly more important than the laws in the country in which they’ve “settled,” are completely stumped! Although apparently really trying, they can’t tell you what honour means.

This film found me in the middle of reading the excellent Wafa Sultan’s book A God Who Hates. Wafa Sultan is known as the bravest woman to ever leave Islam - she appeared on Al-Jeezera shouting down an imam (in her book she mentions how muslims can ever only shout): Be quiet! It’s my turn!

And that became her claim to fame ( a muslim WOMAN telling a MAN to be quiet!!!!), which is a shame, because her book contains so many interesting snippets from islamic life, such as how the sex-starved muslims in her native land, Syria, always rub themselves against any woman they happen to come across in public, hoping to get a quick ejaculation in their pants. So that’s why they wear tents …

A trained doctor, Sultan also shares the following insight into the great Ramadan starve oneself-fest:

“The month of Ramadan, during which muslims neither eat nor drink from sunrise to sunset, was one of the hardest months of the year for me. Many more patients flocked for treatment at the medical center where I worked than the number we usually saw. The number who collapsed from exhaustion and dehydration soared startingly during the day, as did the number of those who suffered from indigestion and vomiting at night, as they stuffed themselves with food in an attempt to compensate for their daytime fast. Both men and women worked in the fields from early morning, performing arduous and exhausting agricultural labor, which, especially when the weather was hot, necessitated large quantities of water that the fast did not allow them to drink. Spurred by my pity for them, I tried to persuade them - the women, especially - not to fast, then withdrew my suggestion when it was met with disdainful glances.”

I wonder if there are any statistics going about how many devout muslims, especially in the rather toasty middle east, die or are damaged from dehydration during ramadan? Probably none. After all, Allah, through his “ideal man” Mohammed, said they should torture themselves in such a way, so that’s okay then. As if living up to his other insane edicts weren’t enough.

I had a muslim student once. Also from Syria. He spent a lot of our time together, instead of learning Cantonese, trying to convince me that not drinking even water the whole day, followed by gorging yourself on everything in sight just because the sun had set, was a good thing. I thought it was a bit rude, because I never tried to make him drink alcohol or eat pork.

No. You know what? I think we westerners have seen enough of this islam thing. We don’t need to be “explained” what it’s “really” about. We know what they do and how they think. We saw what it was really about on September 11th, 2001. We don’t need any other “explanations.”

Now they’re trying to make other people who have nothing to do with islam, to also not eat, drink, be near pork, Jews, miniskirts, female faces and all the other things they find so distasteful, just because some desert warrior puked up some of his awful views on human life and put them in a book, 1400 years ago.

I can’t understand why apparently intelligent western people find the muslims’ world view so attractive, to the point where they want to give up all their freedoms to prove these throwbacks from the middle ages right.

I implore you: Watch the video from a normal German school - which could well be now or very soon, the very school that YOUR children attend - and then see if you think this multi-cultural idea is so great after all. Happy Ramadan!

They Exist For Us

Published
by
cecilie
on August 11, 2010
in Charity, China, Injustice and politics
. 0 Comments

I’ve mentioned earlier that i don’t believe in charity anymore. Cruel and heartless eh? Those little children growing up without eyes - only I can help them but don’t. And why? Two reasons. There are so many people in the world and the human race is doing very well extinguishing itself by being too successful. The human race, like Mandarin, doesn’t need help and promotion. It’s a behemoth. And secondly, we are supposed to evolve by natural selection. We shouldn’t artificially prop up those who are not supposed to make it - it’s not good for the gene pool.

All right, so “supposed” to make it is a little harsh - I do realise that many of them live in abject poverty because of the ridiculous political systems where they’ve had the misfortune to be born. And yes it’s easy for me to write this here on my spacious roof overlooking the South China Sea. Like most westerners, I’ve also been brought up to think that I somehow almost don’t deserve to be alive, and that I should share everything I have with the poor. But I don’t want to!

The charity business has become ridiculous, and a vehicle for Hollywood stars to make them feel they have some kind of function.

But there’s one group of beings that really need help and to which I give freely: Animals. Once they’re in a cage, that’s it; they can’t by sheer willpower, or not accepting to be held in poverty by the entitlement attitude, or organising themselves to overthrow a government, break free.

For years the excellent Jill Robinson of Animals Asia has been fighting for suffering animals in China and other places in Asia, especially for the moon bears kept in cages their whole lives to be milked for bile.

Now she’s taken on the performing animals industry.

(Sorry, this video can’t be embedded.)

This is sickening stuff; don’t watch it on an empty or full stomach. Or if you have a stomach. But watch it. By a stroke of genius Animals Asia have got Terry Waite to narrate it. He knows what it’s like to be locked up, oh yeah.

We can lose millions and millions of people (yes, even me!) without it harming the globe. But once the animals are gone, that’s it. Time to donate to Animals Asia again!

Poo and Literature

Published
by
cecilie
on August 10, 2010
in Cantonese, Environment, Eyesore, Home, Piles, Pollution, Travel, food and language
. 13 Comments

You know I’m not squeamish (because I’ve said so many times) but when the woman in the photo started stirring a cauldron full of intestines, holding them up and letting them drop back down, while the unmistakable smell of POO started wafting through the restaurant - well, I couldn’t bring myself to turn around and take a photo, but sort of quick-snapped it backwards over my shoulder.

I think I’ve only really seen nice, orderly fish intestines up close before, because these (pigs’?) intestines, brown, snarly, irregular and with lots of stuff sticking out, weren’t my idea of good intestine action. I’m glad the only contact I have with food is all broken after I’ve swallowed it.

Talking of poo, this morning there was a bit of a to-doggie-do in sleepy backwater Pui O. In my village there’s a dog rescue centre/vet, and at all times they have about 20 dogs living there, with more coming in every week.

The dog walker is a middle-aged Chinese woman who doesn’t seem to like dogs, but then neither would I if I had to take six or seven of them for walks at a time. She lets the dogs poo everywhere; on the footpath and on the beach, without even sometimes carrying newspapers around for show, unlike many domestic helpers in the village.

The first time I saw her let three dogs shit right in the middle of the beach, I asked her in a nice way and in her own language if she wouldn’t mind picking it up, as children play there. (they do.) All I got was a torrent of “English”: “Where is your plastic bag! Where is your plastic bag!” When I showed her the not inconsiderable amount of plastic bags I carry with me every day for the very purpose of being my dogs’ lavatory assistant, she sniffed and walked away, muttering loudly to “herself” about how dirty I was.

The second time I saw her, the same thing happened. This time it was me asking her where her plastic bag was, knowing well she didn’t have any. Oh yes, I can be cunning and evil! I got some vicious stares and mumbles but not much abuse - and of course she didn’t pick up the rather large and steaming mounds. You can say what you want about the dog shelter in Pui O, but they don’t let their dogs starve.

This morning she had seven dogs, four of which, upon hitting the beach, immediately set about defecating like they had been promised a nice side of beef for producing the largest mound. There are only so many ways to say “pick up your dog poo” in a diplomatic manner, I find. “Pick up your fucking dog poo” is one of them. This time she took action - by shoving a few grains of sand on top of the quivering heaps.

Nice! Now people who might have spotted them out in the open before, wouldn’t know they were there before they lay down in the fragrant knolls. When I pointed this out, not declining to mention that this sort of behaviour carries a $1,500 fine, (yes! I’m truly sick of stepping in crap and will resort to anything!) the true nature of her dog poo picking resistance manifested itself. In Cantonese this time. She let loose a stream of invective which I, not a mean invective-ist, couldn’t have done better myself.

It was all about me fucking off back to Central, it was after 1997 so i should shut up, who did I think I was, go home, dirty whore who not only lets her dogs shit everywhere but probably does it herself and, most importantly: I didn’t know how to teach Cantonese. This went on for about ten minutes, for she made many of the points again and again in case I missed them. There was no mention of the Opium Wars but then she may not have heard about those. And here I was, really only interested in discussing dog poo and the removal thereof!

I’m ashamed to say I couldn’t control myself but had a right giggle and some spurts of heartfelt laughter. This didn’t make things any better but - did I give a shit?

So! Scratch the surface and the whole stinking history of … the British? comes out. Oh those British. So much to answer for. How was she to know I’ve never lived in Central? After all, those fastidious notions of mine about not enjoying wading around in dog shit and about the beach not being a gigantic dustbin - that kind of thing just reeks of stuck-up Central-dom, doesn’t it.

So now you’re probably asking: Where does literature come into this? Mark Twain, innit! East is east and west is west, and you’ll never meet the Twain.

But the intestine photo, taken blind - not bad, eh?

Monastery Madness

Published
by
cecilie
on August 4, 2010
in Beauty, China, Environment, Eyesore, Piles, Pollution, Travel, communism and politics
. 2 Comments

If I could understand my friend P’s fascination with monasteries? I mean, he’s a heterosexual male. The one outside Xining, capital of Qinghai (green sea) province, would be the third one he visited in as many days. The second, tucked away in the mountains outside Xiahe, was mercifully closed to women (another proof that although they’re buddhists and very good looking, Tibetan monks are still religious freaks) but at the third one I thought I’d toddle along.

It was described even on Chinese tourism websites as a tourist hellhole according to P, so we both had relatively low hopes.
It had been such a great trip from Xiahe through a stunning landscape

so it was quite a downer to find Xining, which I had loved for its small town charm and advanced hovelage only two years ago, turned into a screaming construction-filled megapolis where every bloody hotel was full of beardies attending a halal festival. Or was it conference? I forget which. Why do they even need it? “Kill the animal with the ultimate pain and mental torture” - isn’t that pretty much it?

Or was it “halal” as in “things that are allowed according to sharia law”? That would have been a short conference.

Anyway - after all those beards it was visually very relaxing to be surrounded by Tibetan monks after we finally found a hotel and could escape to the countryside where the famous Tan’er monastery was. Tibetan monks … and about 20 000 Chinese tourists in cowboy hats and baseball caps, and the inevitable guides.

Stopping under a tree, I said to P that although I have no respect for any religions, I don’t like taking photos of for example people doing the prayer wheel thing. I would hate it if, every time I took Piles for a walk in the morning, 200 Chinese tourists took photos of me.
“Don’t worry,” P said. “They have no interest in the Tibetan monks. All they photograph is themselves.” I looked again. It was true. But still!

That’s when two Tibetan monks started talking to us and invited us to their gaff. Or humble abode or whatever. We drank tea and chatted. One had been helping out during the earthquake in Qinghai, 800 kilometres from where we were, earlier this year. He pulled out his laptop and showed us some photos that hadn’t quite made it to the front page of the South China Morning Post. It was basically earthquake-corpses in all possible shapes and forms, with a National Geographic-like quality and colour.

We were lucky to catch the monastery while it still had some old buildings, because the bulldozers were hard at work modernising the place by tearing down everything. What was being built in its place was a monastery in the Chinese Tibetan style. Just like … oh, the old city of Kashgar, which is now probably complete - a gigantic shopping mall but with mosaic. And low to zero visibility because of cement dust.

In the year 2000, the Chinese government started an enormous campaign to modernise the western provinces. It’s really working! Now you can go deep into the mountains, grasslands or countryside of any western province and still feel, with every breath, that you’re in the most polluted country on earth. If that’s not progress I don’t know what is.

The Tibetan Plateau

Published
by
cecilie
on August 2, 2010
in Beauty, Environment, Travel, language, politics and religion
. 0 Comments

Tibet!!!!! For make no mistake; the little town of Xiahe in Qinghai province isn’t Xiahe in Qingdai province at all, but Sangchu in Amdo, Tibet. The beauty of the place elicited constant “waaaah”s from us, even while doing mundane things like being overcharged for inedible grapes. This was the view from my window, for example:

This was probably 5.45 in the morning, but the Tibetans were already at it, walking around the Labrang Monastery while turning the prayer wheels. My friend P and I also walked around the whole monastery

and although we did stop to take a couple of photographs, it took us a good two hours to get around the wondrous thing. So imagine the grannies, 80 something years old and walking with sticks, dragging themselves around the monastery, each day, every day. It must take them all day, only to get up the next morning (probably around 4) and start all over again. One must admire their devotion. And no doubt the Chinese must have banned monastery-circling at some stage, losing valuable walking years for the buddhists there.

But guess what: Black pigs wag their tails when they poo! I bet you didn’t know that.

On the bus to Xiahe I sat next to a monk in full maroon get-up and with one arm sticking out. We got talking (in Mandarin, unfortunately, as my abilities in Tibetan are, so far: Hello, goodbye, and thank you.) and he expressed a keen interest in the outside world. Well he would, having gone into the monastery when he was four! What a waste. Young, beautiful man looking really great in red, locked up like that. Unfortunately he couldn’t read and write Chinese, so it was difficult to have a conversation about the riots in Lhasa and stuff, with the Chinese guy in the seat behind obviously listening eagerly.

They didn’t have internet connection in the monastery which I thought was strange; those monks are so teched-up these days. But maybe someone who’s not them, has decided that the monks in the second biggest monastery in “China” aren’t allowed to have too much contact with the outside world. Whatever it was, every monk we met seemed very eager to talk.

Yes, Xiahe was wonderful in every way except one: The main street, think Nathan Road from Tsim Sha Tsui to well past Jordan, had been dug up completely. There was so much dust that we couldn’t be even in the side streets near it and walking along or across it was completely unbearable. Give them two months I say.

To accommodate tourism the whole town had in fact been torn down and rebuilt, in a style probably known as “tourist Tibetan with varying degrees of Chinese characteristics.” But I had to admire the restraint: There were very few tiles, no blue windows and only a small open, shadeless square with the normal green lights shaped like palm trees and a huge granite statue of an elephant. So all in all, when the dust settles, Xiahe may very well turn into one of the most beautiful new old towns in the country. But then, it is really Tibet …

The next day a taxi driver said: I’ll take you to three beautiful places for 200 kuai! This turned out to be an excellent idea. 200 kuai for five hours of more or less constant driving: Oh yeah. And the scenery outside Xiahe is just …

These are yaks, a cousin of whom we had eaten the night before. No it doesn’t taste like chicken and it’s excellent. Half reindeer, half horse?

This is the fourth or fifth year in a row that I spend the summer in the north of China. Why? Because I need a dose of big landscape every so often. It’s so soothing.

Here is a Han dynasty village that people still live in. It seems they have no TV. Is it possible? Yes we saw many villages on this trip without a single tv antenna. Nor satellite dish. They probably used the satellite dishes to boil water by solar power

while watching hard core porn online inside their gaffs…

On a grassy knoll in the distance we saw some motorbikes and some Tibetans. Then we saw a tripod. Oh no, another tour group taking photos of the colourful, dancing and devout locals.

Was it hell? It was four Tibetans having a party with biscuits, soft drinks and some singing and playing of eight string guitar. They called us over

and a good cultural exchange time was had by all. The three guys hardly spoke any Chinese, which was pretty cool I thought, as well as not very practical when it came to communication. But the girl did, altough the mobile seldom left her ear. All that Mando I suppose.

Yes, would you know? It was they who wanted to film and take photos of us! Not the other way around. Well, I snapped a few, but they?

They were veritable Tibetan anthropologists. And thus endeth another day in beautiful Amdo. The next morning we left at 06.10 very much against our will, only to be told that the water supply for the whole town had been shut down for three days just after we left. That dust and no shower? A lucky escape.

Becoming Addicted

Published
by
cecilie
on August 1, 2010
in Beauty, China, Travel and food
. 0 Comments

Ahhrghh, three days without internet access! Well, there was an internet cafe in the little town of Xiahe (summer river) but I just didn’t have time to go there. The day after we left I was told that the water supply had been cut off, also for three days as it happened, so I’m glad we could escape to this, what used to be quiet backwater of Xining (western peace) in Qinghai province. The room has internet BUT no air conditioning. That’s probably why it was the only hotel in town with vacancies; the place is crawling with skull caps and beards because of a halal conference.

So I don’t want to talk about that. Instead let me show you some pictures from wonderful Lanzhou, the first stop on this journey to the west after taking the overnight train from Xian (which also, incredibly, means western peace!)

Lanzhou is the relaxation capital of the north, possibly the earth. Although it’s a normal Wednesday afternoon, people do nothing but sitting around, shooting the breeze. Of course, that it’s almost 40 degrees may have something to do with it. All along the Yellow River (for it is he!) little pleasure barges full of people drinking tea and beer, are trying to tear themselves off their moorings. Yes that river is swift.

The best time to see, probably any city, is just after dawn. Here is a market before even all the marketeers have got up:

I love the morning. Get up before 6 and stroll like mad; that’s my definition of a good morning. Everything’s more beautiful then.


By the way, if you are planning on going to Lanzhou and you like good hovelage and quirky little back streets, excellent markets and everything happening on street level, I should go now. NOW. What even last year was all of the above, is now being obliterated to make way for soulless high-rises and sixty thousand lane highways.

The area just behind the train station is best:

Lanzhou also has excellent doggage. What’s not to love?

But it’s time to go, and the next day we’re on a bus hurtling through this kind of landscape:

So yeah, life is pretty damned great.

Caving

Published
by
cecilie
on July 29, 2010
in Eyesore, Travel, Uncategorized and communism
. 6 Comments

Although I am a tourist, I, like all other tourists, hate other tourists. That’s why I’ve managed to visit Xian probably six times, without having been to see the Terracotta Army. Why should I? I’ve seen it a million times in pictures and on film, and, most importantly; like all other famous tourist spots in China, it’s bound to be a screaming hell hole of guides and what not.

But this time, seeing I went with somebody who actually wanted to go there, I thought: Well, there have been a couple of times in my life when I have gone somewhere against my will or instinct, only to find that I didn’t regret going. Maybe this would be one of those times. Maybe I would stand in awe in front of the warriors, being transported back to the year 240BC.

Yes that could have happened if it hadn’t been for the “hell is other people” people. Or actually, the whole set-up. When we finally got there and managed through some trying and failing to get a ticket (90 yuan), we found that the terracotta warriors were just an excuse to build the largest, most pompous and grandiose tourist trap ever.

It took so long to walk from the bus to the actual warrior pit that we had nearly fainted when we got to the building. It was mile after mile of trinket stalls spread over a huge, gently escalating staircase; all without a shadow of shade. Then there was a gigantic open space with the inevitable fascisticly trimmed flower beds and grass that was forbidden to even look at - again miles on a shiny white granite surface without even a willow tree for shade, all to better set off the building where the soldiers are.

Finally I would see what “everybody” had been talking about. I expected a kind of hush, maybe some oohs and aaaahs and possibly “waaaaah…” But nothing. People were talking loudly, laughing and acting like they were taking photos outside 7 eleven or something. This is supposed to be a grave chamber really, isn’t it? But the guides led the visitors in a cacophony of screams and shrieks.

And although it said “no flash” on the poster, there were more flashes continuously going off than at a pop concert. It seemed some of the poor terracotta geezers hadn’t been able to stand all the voices, camera flashes and laughter, for they had collapsed in heaps of dust with only the heads left, staring emptily into times gone by.

In another building, a huge replica was hanging from the ceiling, inexplicably holding a girl’s hand:

For some reason this depressed me more than all the Germans and Koreans acting as if they were at some school party in a hangar with some rocks.

When I came out after having looked at this odd display, I glanced at some books in English and Chinese, about the T. Army, the Silk Road and of course about Mao (who identified so closely with Qin Shi huang, the first emperor who had commissioned the stone army for his protection.) After three seconds of glancing, the shop woman came up to me: “These are books.”

So yeah, I get a bit depressed at these tourism places. And if the actual pit of soldiers, officers, horses and chariots is the size of a matchbox, then the stuff around; tourist trinket stalls, coffee shops and emptinesses of lawn is bigger than Tiananmen Square. Such a build-up, such a come-down.

The Terracotta Warriors are clearly among the things that I don’t need to physically see to know what they look like. But that night I had a great stroll around the city walls of Xian and a perfectly divine meal of Fish fragrant Aubergines and Dry-fried Potato Sticks. For up here in the north, the Sichuan restaurants get better the farther west you get! And now I’m in Lanzhou and life is great.

No, give me living people and history I can see all around me! No need to go to museums. I hate shards. No matter how old they are.

Hinterland, Ahoy!

Published
by
cecilie
on July 27, 2010
in Beauty, China and Travel
. 0 Comments

Xian, former capital of China and one of the most pleasant, relaxed cities in the mainland.

I saw the people in the photo above inside a courtyard as we staggered back to the hotel after an excellent Sichuan meal, and it was such a beautiful tableau: - like something by a Dutch … if not master, so at least apprentice. When they saw me taking the photo, they started shouting something. Oh no, privacy laws. I went up to them, and what they were saying was: Don’t take the picture from so far away! Come closer!

Then I saw they were playing cards for money. Gambling, as it’s called. What’s going on? First the demonstration that wasn’t bashed down by police, now open gambling with photographers present - things are changing in China.

We had been planning to go to Lanzhou by train of course, but due to floods, the south-north trainline was down. Again. Flying wasn’t too bad but it’s just too fast! When I go to the north, I want to savour every moment, and eat good food. The plane food was a bred roll (stale) and a piece of cake. So modern.

But here we are in Xian, and it’s as lovely as I remembered it although the quite young geezers sitting around the pavements on little stools seem to have gained a lot of weight.

Xian is one of the few if not the only city in China with its entire city wall intact. That gives the place such a lovely, semi paranoid feeling, I think. Especially at night.

Walking along the north wall, we heard a strange, cracking sound, like shots. It was three geezers practising a new (?) sport: Whip cracking. No, I know whip cracking has been around for quite some time. But as a night sport?
The whips are heavy and really long, like three meters. I had never seen this sport exercised on the mainland before, until this morning when I found a lot of it going on in a nearby park

You know, all I need to be happy in China is just to walk around. Just inside this tiny park and between 7.30 and 9 in the morning, I saw more stuff than in a year in Hong Kong.

People are so active; doing tai chi, disco, ballroom dancing and all sorts of balancing balls on rackets, balancing balls on threads between sticks and playing ping-pong, badminton, hackey-sack and all sorts of ball games, as well as singing and playing all sorts of traditional instruments. I especially like the fan dancing:

One woman had parked her mother under a tree while exercising. But don’t you think the wily old bird sneaked some arm exercises too?

Another wonderful day in the wonderful motherland - and it’s not even noon! This is my seventh time here. I wonder if this is the time I’ll see the terracotta warriors …

Chanting For Canto

Published
by
cecilie
on July 25, 2010
in Beauty, Cantonese, Cantonese, China, Government, Hong Kong, Injustice, Media, Newspaper, Travel, language and politics
. 7 Comments

If I told you I’d been to a demonstration in the mainland with thousands of people but all the police did was put up some barriers and stand around holding hands, would you believe me?

No? I wouldn’t have believed it either. but that’s what happened today in Guangzhou, in a joyous, raucous salute to Cantonese language and culture, screamed out by thousands and thousands of young, (I’d say average age 23, and would have been 20 if I and my two friends hadn’t been there) iPhone waving groovers sick and tired of being dictated to by Beijing.

If I’d been two or three meters tall, I would have been able to capture this scene, unheard of since June 4th, 1989, of young people in peaceful protest against, or rather peaceful fight for, that wondrous entity that is Cantonese. As it was, and despite standing on tiptoe and holding the camera high over my head, I only got other people doing the same. But downtown Guangzhou outside Gong Lam Sai metro station, was just a sea of people. And more and more came pouring in every minute.

The police just didn’t know what to do, but in the end resorted to just saying “This way, please” and stuff. Some of them smiled and laughed. Is this the beginning of something new? But as I said to the journalist: Cantonese makes people more lively. It’s its nature.

Being Canto speakers, we of course joined in the chorus of: Support Cantonese! and: Guangzhou people should speak Guangzhou language! Being the only foreigners there, we were immediately mobbed

swamped, photographed and filmed. And interviewed.

A historic moment and a triumph. I’m telling you now: You haven’t heard the last from the youthful Cantonese movement! It will spread to Hong Kong. Fast.