How My Love Story With Hong Kong & Cantonese Started

Contents

• Arriving in Hong Kong

• Best hotel experience of my life

• A sudden deep fire was lit

• Ordering street food - in Cantonese!

• Beautiful hike to Victoria Peak

• Coming full circle

Arriving in Hong Kong

It was November 2017 and I arrived in Hong Kong for the first time in my life.

I had jumped on an opportunity to go on a missions trip led by a friend from the US to go to Hong Kong and the Philippines.

Hong Kong was the first stop on the trip. I had never been there before and it was such a dream destination to go to for me. So I decided to travel there a couple of days earlier before everybody else arrived.

I had even booked a 5-star hotel for those days to really go all out and make the experience as fun and exciting as possible. I had just had an intense work season in Norway so I was due for some serious relaxing and enjoyment.

Best hotel experience of my life

I stayed at the famous Hotel ICON - which instantly became my favorite hotel in the whole world.

Fun fact: Exactly 2 years later me and my wife (who I didn’t know at this point in time) spent our honeymoon there.

Traveling from the airport I looked out through the window of the hotel’s chartered bus at the beautiful ocean, the majestic mountains and luscious surroundings that surrounded the most beautiful city skyline I had ever seen.

It felt surreal and I was just bubbling with excitement. It had been a dream of mine for so long to go and now I was finally there.

As I arrived at Hotel ICON they upgraded me to the harbour view since it was my first time in Hong Kong. Nice!!

The hotel had the friendliest staff and the best hotel breakfast I have ever had. Some of the hotel staff even helped me learn a few Cantonese words as I asked about the local food and how to order it.

I might still have a note with “laai5 caa4” (奶茶) (Hong Kong-style milk tea) written lying around somewhere that one very friendly young lady who worked at Hotel ICON wrote for me.

The view from my hotel room was nothing short of magical. I enjoyed a lot of coffee and beverages from the complementary mini bar watching the breathtaking view of Kowloon bay.

It sure was an amazing view to enjoy from my hotel room at Hotel ICON.

My first day was an unforgettable day.

I was roaming the streets of Hong Kong and I just loved everything about it - the culture, the people and the food - my gosh the food!

There was so much to explore, to see and experience.

Definitely take the 10 min boat trip if you’re going between the main Island and Kowloon. It’s an experience.

And the magical skyline of Hong Kong by night is mesmerising.

But the weirdest things was that I had the strangest sense of being home when being there. Something inside of me felt like it just clicked with the culture.

There was something very deep down in my heart that felt this way. Like I had this heart-connection with Hong Kong.

A sudden deep fire was lit

And then it happened.

I don’t know the exact moment, but suddenly a deep fire was lit inside of my heart. I just knew. I had to learn Cantonese.

And as a Christian I felt strongly that the Lord put this on my heart. Without even fully knowing why. I just felt it was significant.

I had such a strong feeling and passion to do it that I just knew I had to do it. No matter what. But how?

I had always had the impression that Chinese would be such a difficult language to learn. That it would take forever to learn it. It was definitely beyond the English and Norwegian I had learned up to that point.

I had picked up a couple of Cantonese phrases through the app Memrise before I left to go to Hong Kong. Just some greetings, “good morning”, “thank you” & simple things like that.

I like to at least know a few phrases of the local language whenever I travel somewhere. Just to be polite and show respect and honor to their culture.

Plus - I’ve always just found it fun and been curious about languages in general. I’ve always loved to be able to connect with the locals in a more personal way.

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Ordering Street Food - in Cantonese!

Before my trip, I had watched a youtube clip where where this guy from Hong Kong and a British guy was ordering street food and telling how the things they ordered were pronounced.

I was exploring Hong Kong Island by foot and lo and behold there was that same fast food stand as in the youtube video!! (on Time Square - 時代廣場)

A perfect opportunity to try out some of the fast food I had seen in the youtube video!

I had memorized how to say: “one skewer of curry fish balls, please” (一串咖喱魚蛋唔該 - jat1 cyun3 gaa3 lei1 jyun4 daan2 m4 goi1) so I thought I’d go with that.

I really didn’t know much about the language but I just learned it like it was a musical phrase from a song (which also makes sense considering Cantonese is a tonal language with 6 tones). I had just repeated it until I had it memorized.

This came in handy because the menu at the fast food stand was in Chinese and had no English. And the people working there didn’t speak English at all (even though English is an official language in Hong Kong, not everybody speaks it).

As I was standing there this lovely young lady asked me:
”Do you need help ordering?”

While I appreciated the offerI declined politely: “no it’s ok thanks”.

On the inside I was honestly just cocky and thought to myself “I’ve totally got this!”

I said the sentence in Cantonese as best as I could and they brought me a skewer with curry fish balls.

Success! It felt so good that I had managed to order something in Cantonese.

Me enjoying curry fish balls that I had just ordered in Cantonese. Spicy and delicious!

The lady at the fast food stand then said something that I had no idea what it meant (like I said, the menu was in Chinese hah).

After a moment of confusion I understood what she meant by her pointing at the money in her hand. I guess I had paid too littles so I gave her the extra money I owed.

Talk about being lost in translation.

Beautiful hike to Victoria Peak

The next day I felt adventurous so I actually hiked up the famous Victoria Peak (the tram line queue was way to long so in typical-me-fashion I just decided on a whim to just walk instead).

This gave me a different view of Hong Kong and I got to see more of it’s beautiful nature.

I think it’s pretty wild that you can literally walk from the city up into these wonderfully luscious and green mountains in less than an hour.

And the views were nothing but spectacular.

Starting my hiking journey to the top of Victoria Peak

Such lush surroundings with the tall buildings hiding behind the trees.

Getting closer to the top…

Sweaty & physically tired, but so happy and with a sense of accomplishment.
I had made it to the top. And I got to enjoy the fantastic view. I stayed until dark.

Coming full circle

The following days were filled with awesome Christian meetings with the locals, helping women caught in prostitution and people in need, exploring Hong Kong, having dim sum, making friends and just having so much fun.

I was constantly asking the locals I met about how to say things in Cantonese. It was just a few words and phrases but I was just so excited to start learning the language.

It was a pretty strange feeling because I had never thought about learning Cantonese before. I had had a desire to learn other languages in the past like Spanish and Japanese (both of which I failed to learn).

But Cantonese just felt like it came out of the blue. Then one of my best friend since childhood pointed out: “dude, you’ve been talking about Hong Kong since we were teenagers!”.

I had?

I had no memory of that. But I was really into Bruce Lee as a teenager and my favorite movie growing up was “Big Trouble in Little China”. An action, all-around fun movie with Kurt Russell where there were a lot of Hong Kong actors speaking Cantonese throughout the film.

So I guess you could say I had come full circle.

Even though I only spent 5-6 days in total in Hong Kong it was a life-altering trip. A time I will always remember and treasure in my heart. It put me on the course that I’m still on to this day that I feel nothing but thankfulness for.

And the funny thing is that I almost didn’t jump on the chance to go. And to think how different my life would have been if I wouldn’t have!

So whenever you have a dream. A desire. You feel a pull towards something. And the opportunity arises. Don’t wait. Jump on it and do it now. It could change your life like it did mine. I promise you won’t regret it.

It wasn’t until I got back home to Sweden that my learning journey really started. And those first few weeks were absolute key. It’s when many lightbulbs turned on about how to really learn a language in an effective way.

Succeeding on what I had failed to do in the past.

Story to be continued….

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Have you ever been to Hong Kong? What is your favorite memory from there?

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