Cecilie Gamst Berg

In my early days in Hong Kong I used to call myself a climatic refugee. I was congratulating myself on having escaped from the icy, rocky wastes of Norway in 1988, where I was physically unable to live after a while. When I got on that train (the Trans-Siberian) that September morning my plan was to end up in Australia, but as I got off in Beijing twelve days later I was immediately hooked on the city and everything in it. For believe me, Beijing looked REALLY good in 1988.

Inevitably, the Public Security Bureau kicked me out after five lovely months in the north of China, advising me to go to Hong Kong. And here I still am. Nowadays, however, I call myself a Cantonese Fundamentalist - putting the FUN back in MENTAL by teaching Cantonese through direct hand-to-hand combat, films, radio ... and my two books Blonde Lotus and Don't Joke On The Stairs.

I joined a writer's group, Women In Publishing, in 2005, and soon after (and a little bit incredibly) I had a book deal!

Now I've just published a new book, Don't Joke, which is about the sheer joy and fun that can be found in China. In it, you'll find out:

What 'The Slippery Are Very Crafty' really means

How to hitchhike around China and what the etiquette is for getting lifts with very small cars

How to gatecrash ketamine parties

And: How to win a fistfight with a hotel security guard. (Harder than you think!)

There are also some comments about history and politics; I question for example the idea that Mao was 70% good and 30% bad, but this book is mainly about the surreal, weird, crazy and super funny aspects of today's China. There's a glossary of all the Chinese words used in the book with Cantonese and Mandarin pronunciation, so you can get around China armed only with this book! Wah.

When I'm not writing I mostly make films. You can find 54 of my Cantonese-teaching videos on www.youtube.com/Cantocourse where one of the latest is an excerpt from my brand new two hour Cantonese joy-fest Going Native. This is the second in a series of Cantonese teaching tools (really putting the fun back in fundamental), the first one for total beginners being Cantonese - The Movie (This Time It's Personal).