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Mabel Lui

It all began with free ribs.
Earlier this year, one January evening, Daniel Peacock stopped by a Chinese takeaway in County Down, Northern Ireland, to pick up dinner. Overhearing some Cantonese in the kitchen, he asked the owner if she was from Hong Kong.
She said yes, and he – “a big white fella”, as Daniel describes himself – responded by speaking her native tongue.
The owner was stunned. “She didn’t talk for like 10 seconds. She was just like, ‘What is going on? Is he actually speaking Cantonese to me?’”

The two began conversing about Hong Kong and her children, all in Cantonese. When Daniel got home, he realised that she had given him free ribs on top of his original order; his native Cantonese speaking wife, Ellen, was so amused that she pulled out her phone to take a video, and later posted it on TikTok with the caption: “A good reason to practice his Cantonese”.
That video soon racked up an unexpected number of views on both TikTok and Instagram, even though their Instagram account @itsthepeacocks only had about 10 followers.
People began asking Daniel to prove his language skills, and in response, the couple began posting fun Cantonese videos on social media.
Among them was a Cantonese tongue twister challenge between the couple – Daniel was born and raised in Northern Ireland, and Ellen is a New Zealander who grew up in Hong Kong until she was seven.
That video, posted barely two weeks after their first, went viral, and over the weekend the couple’s Instagram account went from 300 to 10,000 followers.
“I thought it was fake,” recalls Daniel, who has dabbled in content creation in the past. “I thought, did someone buy us followers? Because I know we certainly haven’t … I’d never seen anything like this before.”












View this post on Instagram























A post shared by Daniel & Ellen (@itsthepeacocks)



Today, the Peacocks have over 120,000 followers on Instagram and 64,000 followers on TikTok, and have become known for their lighthearted videos centred around Cantonese language and culture.
“We try to do a little bit of education, a little bit of something funny, a little bit of music, a bit of culture, but everything is Cantonese-related,” Daniel says.
How did he learn Cantonese in the first place? It began when Daniel was 18 and made the decision to put his then-budding golf career on hold and serve as a missionary.
“The funny thing is, I sucked at languages,” he says during the couple’s recent visit to Hong Kong. “There’s a box where you can check and say, eager to learn or [don’t] really want to learn. And I went, no, I don’t really want to learn.”
Lo and behold, he was sent to Macau – he would spend six months there – and to Hong Kong, where he lived for a year and a half.

“I’ll be honest – initially, I really hated it,” he says. “I lived with five other guys, so six of us in a flat, and the five other guys were all native Hong Kong. I found out later that a couple of them did speak pretty good English, but they refused to speak it … it was a constant headache every single night.”
However, after a few months of adjustment, he began appreciating the cities and their Cantonese culture. “It just kind of grew on me, where I was like, there’s something about these people, this culture, that just resonates in my heart. So I started to fall in love with it.”
Daniel made himself speak exclusively Cantonese, studying for hours each day to expand his vocabulary. Wherever he went, he would carry manuals and a notebook, writing down pronunciations of unknown words and looking them up afterwards.
By the end of his time in Hong Kong, he knew how to speak and write 3,000 Chinese characters.
It was in the city that he first met Ellen, who was also serving as a missionary. Though the pair’s religious beliefs have since changed, they are still “grateful for the opportunities that came [with being missionaries]”, Daniel says.

While they did not date at the time, after both returned home to their respective families and countries, she sent him an email and the two began their courtship online.
Soon after this, Daniel flew out to New Zealand to visit Ellen and her family, and within a week they were engaged. “I went home mid-December, [Daniel] went home in January, and then on February 10, we got engaged,” she recalls.
The couple got married that year, 2016, in July, hosting a big Chinese banquet in Hong Kong. Afterwards, they moved to Christchurch in New Zealand, where they spent two years before moving to Northern Ireland in 2018. Today, the couple have two sons, Zac and Harvey, who make frequent appearances in the Peacocks’ videos.
For Daniel and Ellen, making content related to Cantonese, and introducing the language to their sons, has allowed them to rediscover their appreciation for it and all its quirks.
“As we started posting, I started to fall deeper in love with Cantonese again. We speak a little bit of Chinglish [English interlaced with Cantonese] at home, but I wasn’t fully immersed,” Daniel says.

Meanwhile, for Ellen, her upbringing as a third-culture kid – where she sometimes neglected certain traditions and felt “not Chinese enough” despite speaking Cantonese at home – meant that she wanted to fully embrace being a bilingual family and raise their children to appreciate Cantonese culture.
“You want to instil that in them and help them remember their heritage as well. So it’s just cultivating that positivity,” she says. Their parenting approach, she adds, is less focused on forcing their children to learn Cantonese than on encouraging them and just speaking it on a daily basis.
Today, even Daniel’s parents have learned to embrace Cantonese, often using certain words like bao (bread) and pei pei (blanket) when speaking to their grandchildren.
The couple’s varied content has resonated with the Cantonese-speaking diaspora all over the world, with plenty of fans from London to Melbourne leaving supportive messages, Daniel says.
They have attracted other followers too. “We’ve had messages from people outside the Cantonese [audience] that are in mixed-faith relationships or mixed-race relationships, and they resonate with us,” he says.












View this post on Instagram























A post shared by Daniel & Ellen (@itsthepeacocks)



Having been so embraced by their online community, Daniel and Ellen are planning on moving back to Hong Kong next year, to give their children the opportunity to be fully immersed in the Cantonese language and Hong Kong culture.
As for their future social media plans, they hope to work with the Hong Kong Tourism Board one day, to show their audience what the city has to offer.
“Since we’ve lived here in 2014 to 2016 versus now, it’s a very different Hong Kong,” Daniel says. “[But] I still love it. Hong Kong is Hong Kong, and the reality is, the world is suffering right now.
“No matter where you are today, there’s negatives. It is what it is. So I try and look at the positives … we would love to highlight how awesome Hong Kong is.”


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Hong Kong culture

How Northern Irishman speaking Cantonese like a Hong Kong native became social media star

The Peacocks are raising their children to be bilingual. Photo: courtesy of Daniel and Ellen Peacock 

Daniel and Ellen Peacock, content creators on Cantonese and Hong Kong culture, in Central on a recent visit to the city where they met and married. His mastery of Cantonese has gained the family a following on social media. Photo: Jonathan Wong

Creating content related to Cantonese has allowed Daniel Peacock to fall back in love with the language. Photo courtesy: Daniel and Ellen Peacock

Daniel and Ellen Peacock at Ocean Park in Hong Kong, when they first began dating. Photo courtesy: Daniel and Ellen Peacock

The Peacocks got married in Hong Kong in July 2016. Photo courtesy: Daniel and Ellen Peacock

The Peacocks are raising their children as a bilingual family. Photo courtesy: Daniel and Ellen Peacock

Australia’s bold experiment to ban under-16s from TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram – will it work elsewhere?

Australia wants to ban children under 16 from social media. Photo: AFP

Social media apps and video-streaming services are still facing scrutiny from US regulators over youth safety and privacy concerns. Photo: TNS

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese speaks in parliament on the Online Safety Amendment Bill. Photo: AAP/Reuters

Youths use mobile phones while waiting for the MTR in Hong Kong. Photo: Jelly Tse

Many institutions are calling for social media curbs on children, asserting that the platforms are contributing to a youth mental-health crisis. Photo: Dreamstime/TNS

Australian teenagers using their phones to view social media, which will be banned for under-16s by the government. Photo: AP Photo

Governments are calling for better protection for children from social media’s negative effects. Photo: Shutterstock

Elim Chan on cancel culture, what she wants to do next and what she thinks of Hong Kong

Elim Chan conducts the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra. Photo: Keith Hiro/HK Phil

Conductor Elim Chan in Hong Kong, her home city, where she conducted the HK Phil four times in November 2024. In an interview, she talks about cancel culture, next steps and why Hong Kong is “a special place”. Photo: Antony Dickson

Elim Chan conducts the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles in July 2024. Photo: Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times/TNS

Elim Chan conducts the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra in a Symphony Under The Stars concert in November 2024. Photo: Desmond Chan/Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra

Conductor Elim Chan on the podium during the first night of the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra’s “Swire Maestro Series: Elim Chan & James Ehnes” concerts on November 22, 2024 at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre Concert Hall. Photo: Keith Hiro/HK Phil

Elim Chan conducted without a baton in the first of her concerts with the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre Concert Hall, but used a baton for the second one. Photo: Keith Hiro/HK Phil

James Ehnes (left) is the soloist in Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto with the Hong Kong Philharmonic conducted by Elim Chan (right) on November 22, 2024. Photo: Keith Hiro/HK Phil

Elim Chan conducts the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre. Of her future, she says “certain orchestras are looking, both in Europe and the States”. Photo: Keith Hiro/HK Phil

What Chinese animal am I? Characteristics of the Dragon, Snake, Horse, Goat, Monkey, Rooster, Dog, Pig, Rat, Ox, Tiger and Rabbit and when their years fall

Animals of the Chinese zodiac. Illustration: Shutterstock


Up next in the Chinese calendar is the Year of the Dragon. The dragon is one of 12 animal signs denoting the years in the Chinese calendrical cycle. The traits of each animal are believed to be reflected in the people born under their signs. Dragons are gifted, lucky, confident, intelligent and charismatic. Photo: Shutterstock

Bronze horse statues at a shrine in Taiwan. Those born in the year of the horse are said to be magnets for attention. Photo: Shutterstock

Sculptures of goats, part of a display of sculptures of the 12 Chinese zodiac animals at a scenic area in China. Photo: Shutterstock

A lantern in the shape of a rooster on display during Lunar New Year celebrations in Sydney, Australia, in February 2016 to herald the Year of the Rooster. Photo: Shutterstock

The rabbit is the luckiest Chinese zodiac animal of them all. Photo: Shutterstock

Hong Kong noodle history and the different noodle styles explained

Shrimp roe thick noodle lo mien from Kwan Kee Bamboo Noodle in Hong Kong. Photo: Llewellyn Cheung

Roast goose with lai fun rice noodles from Yung Kee in Hong Kong. Learn about the different kinds of noodles served in the city, how they are traditionally made, and the foods they are typically paired with. Photo: Llewellyn Cheung

Wheat noodles originate in Northern China, while rice noodles have Southern Chinese origins, says Dr Siu Yan-ho, a lecturer in Chinese language and literature at Baptist University. 

Marco Li Ka-chi of Kwan Kee Bamboo Noodle balancing on a bamboo pole to make noodles. Photo: Llewellyn Cheung

Shrimp roe thick noodle lo mien at Kwan Kee Bamboo Noodle. Photo: Llewellyn Cheung

 Cheung Wing Kee started making noodles in the 1950s, producing small quantities using labour-intensive methods.

Roast goose with lai fun rice noodles. The thicker, neutral-tasting noodles are perfect for absorbing the flavours from the roast goose and broth. Photo: Llewellyn Cheung

Lifestyle

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Daniel Peacock’s trip to a Chinese takeaway got him talking Cantonese again, and posting videos with his Hong Kong-born wife that are a hit


Daniel Peacock’s trip to a Chinese takeaway got him talking Cantonese again, and posting videos with his Hong Kong-born wife that are a hit.


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