How two gwailos learned to speak perfect Cantonese

It might be spoken by more than 90 per cent of the population, but learning Cantonese in Hong Kong isn't easy. Thanks to 150 years of colonial British rule, it's possible to get by entirely in English, which is exactly what most expats from Western countries end up doing. But the expats that do make an effort to learn Cantonese find it can completely change their experience of the city. We spoke to two native English speakers -- or gwailos as the Cantonese call them -- who did just that. 

Gregory Rivers

Former TVB actor Gregory Rivers

Gregory Rivers is better known to most Hong Kongers by his Chinese name, Ho Kwok-wing, and perhaps better still as "that gwailo on TVB." For 21 years, Rivers was one of the few non-Chinese faces on Cantonese-language TV, where he acted in more than 200 dramas and comedies. So how did a white guy from Australia end up as one of the most recognizable actors in Hong Kong? 

It all goes back to the mid-80s, when Rivers was introduced to Cantopop while studying medicine at the University of New South Wales. He liked it so much that he began teaching himself Cantonese so that he could sing along.

"I just really wanted to become a Cantopop singer," he says. He landed some gigs in local Cantopop singing contests and a job as a chauffeur to visiting stars, including Leslie Cheung Kwok-wing and Alan Tam Wing-lun. After he bought himself a one-way ticket to Hong Kong in 1987, Rivers stumbled into some members of Tam's crew hanging outside the Hung Hom Coliseum. They invited him inside for a chat and Rivers ended up performing with Tam as a guest singer in a month-long series of concerts.

Rivers didn't stay in touch with Tam or Cheung after the concerts ended -- "I didn't feel I had the right to impose," he says rather modestly -- and he ended up taking a job at a private ESL school, where a coworker referred him to an opening at TVB.

It was hardly lucrative. In the beginning, Rivers was paid just HK$300 per day, and though his television career earned him a certain fame (once, he was stopped on the street and photographed by Chow Yun-fat) it also left him feeling trapped in a rut.

"I was always the police inspector, the supervisory, the missionary," he says. "The parts were never major parts. I was only there because the story required a Caucasian. I wasn't there because the producers or the writers thought I would be great for the part."

Rivers began to feel that he was little more than a token who was used only when a script called for a white character. He likens the experience of white actors in Hong Kong to Asian-Americans in Hollywood, many of whom still struggle to land roles more substantial than Chinese deliverymen and fresh-off-the-boat immigrants. 

Even if his TV career was weighed down by stereotypes, however, speaking Cantonese has given Rivers a Hong Kong experience far removed from that of most expats. He speaks it with his wife at home and often writes in Chinese on his popular blog, An Aussie in Hong Kong.

"I only speak English when I have to," he says. "I'll be out for yum cha with Caucasian friends who also speak Cantonese, and people will find it strange when they walk into the restaurant and see us all speaking Chinese to each other."

Daisann McLane

Writer and journalist Daisann McLane

Daisann McLane fell in love with Cantonese at the movies. Ten years ago, she was a travel writer based in New York when she fell in with a crowd of people obsessed with Hong Kong films. She wandered the streets of New York's Chinatown looking for a place to learn the language of Chow Yun-fat and John Woo, which led her to Mr Wen, a 70-something teacher who had a copy of a World War II-era textbook designed to teach Cantonese to American soldiers fighting in South China. 

"I was learning Cantonese from someone who had never lived in Hong Kong," says McLane. "He came from Guangzhou and I didn’t realize that his Cantonese was already quite archaic, and that a distinct Hong Kong accent had developed." 

When she returned to Hong Kong in 2003, McLane enrolled in the Chinese University of Hong Kong's Yale in Asia Cantonese program, where she finally tackled the language in all of its nuances and complexities. But it wasn't until she met left-wing rabble-rouser Leung Kwok-hung that her language skills were really put to the test. McLane had just returned from New York in 2004 when she came across Leung, better known as Long Hair, who was campaigning for a seat in the Legislative Council. She ended up covering the campaign for Slate magazine and became good friends with him. She was especially impressed by his oratorial style, which she has compared to Al Sharpton for his sharp, witty and folksy manner of speaking.

"Cantonese is a very satisfying language to speak because it has its own rhythm, its own swing," she says. "It’s an urban, cosmopolitan language. Every great city has its own great language. The measure of Hong Kong as a global city is that it has a very site-specific, very improvisatory, very vernacular language."

It's also a useful language, she says. Speaking Cantonese has given McLane the chance to explore facets of Hong Kong life that are normally closed to anyone who doesn't speak the local language. She chronicles her experiences on her blog, Learning Cantonese, and recently started offering guided tours of Hong Kong's cultural life. It has even proven useful for her work as a travel writer -- McLane has stumbled upon Cantonese speakers in places as far-flung as Greenland. 

People always say that it's more practical to learn Mandarin, she says. "But for a traveler, [Cantonese] is useful. I went to Calcutta and I found a Cantonese-speaking community that lives there. It was one of the most fascinating experiences I’ve had, walking to these old family societies and learning the stories of these people who have been in Calcutta for generations. Cantonese is a global language that gives you a lot of access to things you wouldn’t otherwise find out." 

Three ways to learn Cantonese

1. Take an intensive course at the Chinese University's Chinese Language Centre, which offers a variety of programs for non-Chinese students.
2. Listen to RTHK's Naked Cantonese podcast, a fun series of lessons by Norwegian expat Cecilie Gamst-Berg.
3. Bookmark CantoDict, an open-source English-Cantonese-Mandarin dictionary that is also home to a lively discussion forum about learning Cantonese.