In many schools in Hong Kong, Macau and Guangdong, Cantonese is the medium of instruction, though the students are taught to read and write standard Chinese, which they read with Cantonese pronunciation. Cantonese is also the main language of business, the media and government in both Hong Kong and Macau.
Early Years. Famed novelist John Ernst Steinbeck Jr. was born on February 27, 1902, in Salinas, California. His books, including his landmark work The Grapes of Wrath (1939), often dealt with social and economic issues. Steinbeck was raised with modest means. His father, John Ernst Steinbeck, tried his hand at several different jobs to keep his family fed: He owned a feed-and-grain store, managed a flour plant and served as treasurer of Monterey County. His mother, Olive Hamilton Steinbeck, was a former schoolteacher.
Mini Bio (1). John Steinbeck was the third of four children and the only son born to John Ernst and Olive Hamilton Steinbeck. His father was County Treasurer and his mother, a former schoolteacher.John graduated from Salinas High School in 1919 and attended classes at Stanford University, leaving in 1925 without a degree.ccording to his biographer Jay Parini and the New York Times, Steinbeck in the mid-1990s was the most popular deceased American writer, with 750,00 copies of his works selling annually.