Mandarin and Cantonization - Unedited Reply to David Tang

Being a member of Overseas Chinese Diaspora, I treasure how important to preserve one’s identity and one’s mother tongue in a minority environment. I thus have great empathy for Sir David. (David Tang Wing-cheung’s Cantonese is a rich and subtle language that must be preserved”, August 23)

Let me be clear, I am not in favor of suppressing Cantonese but I do take the stance to promote the use of Mandarin for the Chinese anywhere anytime.

I want to discuss about the spread of Mandarin usage outside the Mainland China by relating my family experience in the South East Asia. My parents received Chinese education in Mandarin at about the turn of 1960s, they still converse to each other in Mandarin, never mind that they are both Fukienise (Fujianese in Pinyin) by descent.

As a young child growing up in repressive environment in the 1980s, my generation was constantly reminded to speak more Mandarin and less vernacular when we went to school. This was true for Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei, the three former British colony in South east Asia.

Even the Indonesian Chinese who migrated to Hong Kong, most of whom left Indonesia between 1950s-1960s, Mandarin is still proudly spoken among them perhaps with an accent Sir David would perhaps regard as insufficiently good.

These show how readily the South East Asian Chinese accept Mandarin as their own common language. A big credit to all the pioneers and successive generation of Chinese educationist who have the foresight to install Mandarin as the unifying spoken language for the Chinese Diaspora. It was done without any political pressure from Beijing at all and with the consensus of all the major tribes of Chinese.The major resistance to Mandarin are perhaps among the Cantonese peoples. I am increasingly affirmed of my view that there is a sort of Cantonese-centrism in pocket where the Cantonese descent forms the majority. It is also very ironic that many prominent Cantonese would rather speak English than Mandarin.

I know this may be controversial. My own experience has been that the Cantonese speaking peoples tend to impose their own as the "lingua franca". This is true from Vancouver to Kuala Lumpur, not to mention Hong Kong.Cantonese speaking peoples instinctively regard Cantonese as more sophisticated than Mandarin or other vernacular which may be true. The often cited evidence is that the Tang Dynasty's poem is best read out in Cantonese than in Mandarin. The Cantonization phenomena in Kuala Lumpur, I believe, is largely attributed to the rise of Hong Kong pop music and TVB popular dramas from the late 1970s. The reasons are rooted in the perceived Cantonese superiority and the popularity of its pop culture.

Many of the Chinese who lived in Hong Kong today are not originally Cantonese. According to the local Fukien (Fujian in Pinyin) organization, there is more than a million Fujianese in Hong Kong. If we add up the more frequently encountered waves of immigrants or refugees from Chiu-chow (Chaozhou in Pinyin), Shanghainese and Hakka (many of whom are actually native in the New Territory), the non-Cantonese number is definitely very substantial in Hong Kong.However, their second generation are all converted into Cantonese speaking. This in large part is due to the British colonial policy in teaching the Chinese in Cantonese. There is only one school that teaches Mandarin uninterrupted from the 1950s until today. Such is the miserable state of Mandarin in Hong Kong.Upon the handover, the former Chief Executive, Mr. C.W Tung advocated and implemented the mother tongue language policy which was right but he got it wrong in that the mother tongue was presumed to be Cantonese. Mr Tung hails from Zhejiang.That's ironic and unfortunate for Hong Kong.

There were indeed many great scholars such as Professor Qian Mu (钱穆) who came to Hong Kong and set up the predecessor of what is now the Chinese University during those difficult years in 1950s . Yet Mandarin didn't stay as the mainstream.What I find most amusing is that even the latest arrivals from the Mainland are rushing to be Cantonized, at least in their name. When applying for their identity card, they happily swap their name from Pinyin to Cantonese spelling. Abandoning Pinyin spelling supposedly make them Hong Kongers. Maybe they are not aware that the local Hong Konger are adopting English names such as David as their own.Of course the social political backdrop between Hong Kong and Overseas Chinese Diaspora are very different. Retaining Cantonese in post-handover is seen as keeping the "2 systems" in the "one country". Prior to the handover, the local Hong Kongers with memory of constant turmoil and persecution in the Mainland from the Great Leap Forward to the Cultural Revolution and Tiananmen Incident, have their own reservation of anything Mainland and these surely include Mandarin that is seen as imposed top-down.

What is the state of Mandarin today?

Only after the handover that the children are beginning to learn Mandarin; and only after the SARs that the shopkeepers are beginning to speak Mandarin of an acceptable standard to the Mainland visitors.

I think it is either very clannish or very colonial for Sir David to claim that Hong Kong would fare better politically if we continue to use a language which the northerners did not understand. The word "northerner" is very segregationist last heard in the era of American Confederacy but I could find myself amused with the word as yet another Sir David's demonstration of caricature with great sense of humor.

The promotion of Mandarin in Hong Kong at least in the school as the main medium of instruction whilst teaching Chinese doesn’t deprive the cultural value of Cantonese. Cantonese as a vernacular like the Taiwanese will always be around, alive and kicking.