Thoughts on" Mandarin and Cantonization"

A wonderful post from KY on the above subject! Agree, its better to comment as a posting because after all, this blog is about our virtual conversations.

Growing up, I certain felt a little adrift because I do not speak Cantonese, while the more "fashionable" amongst us sometimes banter away in slangy Cantonese acquired from the latest TVB drama. As a child, I hardly heard Cantonese being spoken by the elderly in Brunei - only by teenagers. Brunei is perhaps one of the less Cantonized communities in SEAsia, most Chinese were Fujian (Min-nan especially from Jinmen), followed by Hakka, Hainan, Cantonese and by Foochow (many from Sarawak), some Baba-Nonya, Peneng-ite Fujian, Teochew being the minority. In fact, I did some informal surveys. First when I was in primary school, my Chinese school had a curious practice of recording our ancestral origins against our names in the class file. So if you peek into the teacher's attendance file you could see quaint references to our ancestral "counties" against our names - which was how I found the vast majorities (more than 60%) of my class were from Jinmen. Either that or their parents did not know better. The second informal poll was by wondering around the Chinese cemetery during Qingming and reading the tombstones. However, my impression was they were more variety among the dead. Among the dead, there were more Cantonese - Toisan, Huichow, DaPu etc.

One theory is that being a relatively new Chinese settlement - few families go back even 100 years and most families trace their first generation to the 1930s or the immediate post-war - this trend favoured migrants from Taiwan as opposed to the Communist Mainland. The second theory is that many of the Cantonese probably inter-married with non-Cantonese men hence the off-springs are mainly identified with the non-Cantonese father-side. The third theory is that in Borneo, the Cantonese population was relatively smaller to begin with. Sarawak is a large bastion of Foochow migration and Sabah is mainly Hakka, whereas the Cantonese are very well represented in West Malaysia due to the tin mining industry.

Mandarin is definately the lingua franca for Chinese of our parent's generation, which unified the different dialect groups. Thanks to the growth of China, Putonghua will probably continue to have a strong presence in SEAsia. Certainly, the unifying language and a common "Chinese" identity that Chinese education produced made many inter-clan/dialect marriages possible, which then weakened the dialect/clan based identity even more.

Another influence which I believe made a big difference was the continuing support from Nationalists in Taiwan for Chinese education in SEAsia as a counter-weight to leftist influence. Again, Mandarin was heavily promoted as the "guo yu" national language for overseas Chinese. Large numbers of younsters of my parent's generation including my late-father benefited from university education in Taiwan. Many of them went to Shifan-Daxue, the teachers training university and returned to be the next generation of educators in Chinese schools. Brought up on the elitist version of China (with KMT influence?), they can claim direct lineage to many of the proponents of the May 4th Movement; in fact, many of the university professors in Taiwan in the 50s and 60s were the surviving intelligensia of the May 4th generation.

My late-father was a founder and long-time member of the Brunei Taiwan Alumni Association. I think it would be fascinating to study the impact of this sub-culture of SEAsian Chinese educated in Taiwan in the 50s, 60s and 70s. As a Chinese-educated generation, I believe they had a formative experience like no other generation that came before - or anytime after.

A third source of inspiration behind the fate of Mandarin in SEAsia came - ironically -from some one who were the nemesis of Chinese-educated community. In heavily promoting the use of Mandarin at the expense of dialects, Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore was influential in continuing the growth momentum of Mandarin in SEAsia. In particular, by setting himself as an example and forcing himself to learn to speak Mandarin in his 30s -40s after he become PM inspired a lot of Chinese to do the same. Without official encouragement in Singapore in the 70s and 80s, the critical mass of Mandarin speakers in SEAsia would be weaker today. In a roundabout way, Singapore schools helped to preserve Mandarin in Indonesia. My Indonesian-born Uncle claimed that the older generations all spoke only dialects but the latter generation spoke only Mandarin because they were sent to school in Singapore in the 70s and 80s - so he (Taiwan-educated/Mandarin speaker who "exiled" himself from Indonesia since the early 60s) could only talk to his nephews but hardly to his siblings!

Hong Kong is a different story. Within the Chinese speaking world, presumably Hong Kong was the least affected by politics or political interference. Would it be correct to presume that - the evolution of Chinese culture as practiced in Hong Kong is as close as it gets to what it would have been without political oppression and manipulation? Can Hong Kong can be considered a control-sample for cultural/linguistic development i.e. as a proxy for what would happen for China if simply left alone - but with large dose of foreign influence?

So if Hong Kongers believe in Cantonisation because of its perceived superiority to Putonghua, is it simply a case of the Cantonese being what the Cantonese have pride themselved for hundreds of years i.e. as the rebels, mavericks, non-conformists and smartie-pants who sneer at the central authority too far away to control them? By the way, similar attitude exists amongst the Shanghainese or Zhejiang-ese or (more politically-tinged way) in Taiwan. So practicality in commmunication aside, the BIG question is - how much does speaking Putonghua or Cantonese or Shanghainese - or English even - affect one's identity as Chinese?