A river severs Northern shore and Southern land;

Between my home and me but a few mountains stand.

"Moored at the Ferry", Wang Anshi

 

 

re: http://www.jamestown.org/single/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=36722&tx_ttnews[backPid]=7&cHash=c2040e95b2

  

(Thanks to Bridgewater State University [nee College] Professor WKT for sharing this with his Facebook friends. This comment will make sense only for those who have followed the story and/or read the above hyperlinked news item.)

 

I am unaware of any efforts on the part of the Party to stamp-out topolects. To the contrary: television programs in local topolects - Hangzhouhua, Shaoxinghua, etc. - are increasingly popular, and seem to have tacit if not explicit government support.  In Zhejiang Province,  topolect programming has strong government support, precisely because it helps keep the Mandarin-challenged, work-a-day subclass of local rustics connected to the Party's media teat. 

Then there's this: Central- and local-government initiatives, often promulgated by ministries of culture and tourism (and very often promoted at the specific behest of Beijing) seem  actively and consciously to celebrate local cultures, not stifle them. This is in part because Beijing is scrambling to have just about everything under the Mainland sun listed on UNESCO's 'intangible cultural heritage' register. Promotion of distinct local cultures -  their local food, beverages, folkways and handicrafts - serves to bring tourism and therefore money into areas that have not benefitted much from trickle-down enconomics with Chinese characteristics; and when it is "green tourism", it helps communities recover from or temper industrial sprawl and its typically environmentally-taxing creep. 

Local-languages are part of this: they're colorful, keep the tourist experience authentic, and enable many rural and sub-urban have-nots to sustain their communities (and maintain their margin-of-existence livelihoods) without the language skills typical of better-educated Chinese citizens.  The Party is also very keen to ensure that those still waiting to move up from a bicycle to an electric scooter - or: from an outdoor well to indoor plumbing - feel like they are still valued members of the Da Zhongguo family. Any attempt to rub-out a topolect (nevermind a language-group as large as a dialect) would be seen as a classist move, and would be strategically ill-advised. (Zhongnanhai isn't that foolish.) Celebrating local topolects also serves as public evidence that China can achieve harmony despite its domestic heterogeneity. (It also "proves" there is flourishing domestic heterogeneity. This is of increasing importance, since the Chinese government is often on the hot-seat for steamrolling or "Han"-icising ethnic minorities.)

Now, it may be that - because of Hong Kong's unique and complicated colonial heritage - Beijing from time to time likes to take the cat out of the bag and wave it at the HKSAR, or rattle the sabre with a tad more gusto than usual; but that's in part because the Hong Kongnese tend sometimes to get more excitable than other PRC populations --- one might say they sometimes flare-up out of proportion to the nature and ammount of accelerant Beijing sprays them with.**

'Linguistic centralization' is an unfortunate phrase. (Western anti-Party propaganda again?)  The people of China have, as does any polity anywhere, a legitimate interest in promulgating a national language -- even if it is 'artificial' (Waldron's term -- though putonghua isn't 'artifical in the way the Esperanto or Vulcan is.) China's economic boom, to the extent that it relies in large part upon export-manufacturing, requires or at least benefits from businessmen in Heilongjiang being able to speak effectively with merchants in Guangzhou, who can speak effectively with a logistics company in Chengdu, who can liase with a Mandarin-speaking French-national. As there is no evidence that the Party wants to wipe Cantonese/Yu-derivative topolects from the face of the Earth (or from the Middle Kingdom) - and no good reason why it would want to - the very worst that can be said is: from time to time national interest requires governments to make decisions that are unpopular locally -- something that sometimes is an ineliminable part of state-building, and often a necessary part of state-stabilization. Requiring French in Canda, or pushing Spanish in the American classroom, may or may not threaten the traditions (if not interests) of Anglophones; but (statuatory) bilingualism in both nations is, or may be, highly-desirable. What we are witnessing, now, in Hong Kong is not linguistic genocide.

 That's why it will be unfortunate if Hong Kong pride becomes stubbornness: this is indeed exactly the kind of case where ugly push can become uglier shove faster than the beat of a hummingbird's wings. Foreigners with academic-only interest in China (read: educated voyeurs) need really not to let their visceral antipathy for the CCP interfere with their critical-thinking skills; and if non-nationals are going to weigh-in on these sorts of things, I hope they will (ahem) dare to get 'truth from facts'. (I always forget -- who said that? William James or Mao Zedong?)

And anyway, just because a progressive think-tank like The Jamestown Foundation says it doesn't have a political agenda doesn't mean... it doesn't.  Those who have limited command of Chinese languages, nota bene: the inset photograph of the man holding the sign "I love Guangdonghua" seems suspiciously propagandistic. Unless I am misunderstanding the point both of the sign and the photograph's explanatory caption, "Wo ai guangdonghua" sounds in Mandarin the same as "stew winter melon [dong'gua]".  I guess it sort of does. But if someone told me "wo ai guangdonghua" I would not for a moment think s/he was taking about cooking gourds, and so the joke is on the sloganeers.

There's a big difference between a facemask and a oral sex ("kou'jiao"), between the rare equine species the grass mud horse and  fuck your mother! ("cao ni ma"), and "shooting an airplane" and, well, shooting an airplane ("da fei'ji "-- a handjob.) One rarely hears any of these phrases and confuses it with something homonymic but semantically improbable.*** Apparently, the photo was selected for placement in this news item  because the clean-cut, educated-looking middle-aged man is an exemplary representative for the protesters -- and golly, there's even English there for all the lao'wai (foreigners) who enjoy seeing "the people" stand-up to the Party.

That was sweet of them. Guess they knew the photo would be running in places where people don't read Chinese characters -- or the traditional characters favoured in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

 JC

* The Shanghainese pride in their distinct versions of the Wu dialect is legendary, and throughout Zhejiang Province (the only region of China I know with any real intimacy) "tu'hua" is solidly the lingua franca.

Parties to this discussion should note, too, that 'Shanghainese' spoken on the 'dong' side of the Huapu differs (Pudong, a.k.a. Pudong Development Zone, "East of the Huangpu River" -- the bit opposite The Bund with the Oriental Pearl Tower and a clot of steel and glass architecture that looks like a Godzilla movie set) from that spoken on the 'xi' side (Pu'xi -- "West of the Huangpu River" -- the original, or, main part of the city of Shanghai) --- one can even find variations between old timers  from up by The Bund and the coffin-dodgers down in Hongqiao District. Huzhounese and Hangzhounese - though neighbors whose respective cities have urban centers not more than 45 minutes apart by car - speak rather different topolects, as do Ninbgonese from Ningbo Central and Ningbonese from Yuyao (etc., etc.). 

The point is (and I'm not 100% sure Mr Waldron [cit supra] makes this crystal clear) that Cantonese is indeed one of the major dialects (Yu), but up and down the Mainland many millions of ordinary Chinese are not speaking putonghua as their first or default language. The "Mandarin or Cantonese?" bifurcation is far too simple, and is misleading.

 

** Remember, always, that the Qing lost HK because of the nasty policies and gunboat diplomacy of the British Empire. (The Queen would have had  Zhoushan, too, China's largest archipelago, which is off the coast of and is administratively part of Zhejiang Province; but the imperial court said no to that one -- see Hanes/Sanello The Opium War.)  Beijing is more than a little sensitive about Hong Kong, and one can hardly blame them for that: Rightly or wrongly, it was embarassing to many Chinese to have a colony of white-folk on their doorstep, given that the colony was among the spoils of very unjust policies and imperfectly justifiable wars. Many mainlanders, too, seem to have mixed feelings about their southern brothers, and more than a few don't mind Beijing yanking on Hong Kong's choke-collar now and then. Western media will likely sidestep this fact, but my experience is that many mainland Chinese nationals are either indifferent to requring a more putonghua-accessible Hong Kong, or are in favor of it. This being an instance of Beijing actually promulgating policies that are consistent with the public will and majority sentiment, we can expect this detail not to be discussed in our quality press.

 

*** Having said that: During the SARS crisis, a friend of mine - a tall, good-looking boulevardier who at the time was shuffling-off his China-illiteracy - entered a Japanese-style KTV/lounge/brothel establishment in the Jiading District of Shanghai.  It was one of the few places open when the pandemic-scare reached fever-pitch. This is the story he told me. It might be true.

All female service staff (who are also the female servicing-staff) were wearing surgical facemasks. (The irony.) The waitress/escort brought a drink list to my friend, and asked him if he would like a kou'jiao [facemask]. As mentioned my friend was studying Chinese languages via comparative anatomy, and so he knew that this phrase (or one sounding very very much like it) meant blow-job.

"Shen me?", he asked in joyous surprise  -- "What?"

"Kou- jiao, kou-jiao" she replied, pointing at her facemask and enunciating each syllable with great care. It seemed to him however that she was actually gesturing to her mouth; and given the nature of the estabishment in question, this was sufficient to confirm that he did indeed hear what he thought he heard, what he hoped he heard.

"Zhe'li ma? Xian'zai ma?" -- Here? Now?

"En -- shi 'a!" -- Yup.

"O,...na hao ba -- hai you yi ping Lao'hu'pai pi'jiu" -- Er, ok -- and I'll have a bottle of Tiger Beer with that.

She returned a few moments later with the beer and the facemask. (The remainder of the dialogue, as he told it to me, in English only:)

"Oh, thanks -- I don't want this".

    "But you said you wanted a kou'jiao".

"Oh, yeah -- so, I need to wear this?"

    "You said you wanted a kou'jiao".

"Yes, er, well, ok".

 [He takes a long sip of his beer. She continues speaking:]

    "Ok, do you mind paying for this now?"

"No -- no problem." He looks at the slip -- RMB35 for the beer. "What about the kou'jiao?"

    "It's free".

"So... then... I need to wear this, right?"

    "Only if you want to".

But I want the kou'jiao.

     "Crazy! I just gave you the kou'jiao!"

Apparently it was at this point that she worked out that there was a bit of... misunderstanding. She burst into a bit of laughter that her facemask couldn't conceal, and called a coworker over to explain to her what just transpired. At least that's what he thinks happened, since the two young women spoke rapidly and in a local dialect. As he tells the story, they found him so lovely and charming that they both sat and drank with him.

Later that evening, one of them gifted him another free facemask, he claims.