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When
I was in New York City, a Chinese friend of mine told me that she didn’t
feel that she was actually living abroad. We see Chinese people all over
the city, we read Chinese newspaper and eat Chinese food, we visit Chinese
doctors and hire Chinese lawyers. We don’t act any differently than
we were in China. Once when I thought of this, I felt so funny. What the
sense of living in America then? However, when I look at Little Italy, Hispanic
neighborhood uptown in Manhattan, the Polish neighborhood and Russian neighborhood
in Brooklyn, I know I’m wrong about judging my own people. There’s
nothing wrong to have one’s own community in a foreign country. There’s
nothing wrong to keep one’s language and culture. To live in a foreign
country doesn’t mean we have to discard our own culture and value.
It becomes even more important to maintain all of these of a culture. Of
course, I think it’s equally important to learn about American culture
and understand American people. It’s hard to balance these two though.
In
general, we see the USA as a big melting pot. People from all over the world
bring their own culture and meet here. Of course, we speak English with
all the different, yet unique accents. That just reminds me of bringing
up a subject about China. Do
you know that China has her diversities, too? There are 56 different races
in China. We don’t have any discrimination between one of another though.
Race of Han is the majority. The official language in China is called Putong
hua (Mandarin). Some of the minority races live in certain areas all their
lives and have their own languages. They stick to their own community and
seldom mingle with Han people. They keep their own traditions and customs
just like Chinese people form a China Town wherever they go in the world.
For the race of Han, we spread out all over the country. We have all the
same traditions. |
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We
speak the language of Han, which is called "Hanyu" (Chinese language).
But the dialects vary a lot in different regions. There are 8 main dialect
systems in China according to the regions. But if we take local dialects
into account, there would be numerous. In the mountain area of southwest
of China, people who live in this mountain wouldn’t understand people
who live in the next valley. If I go to Shanghai, I wouldn’t understand
anything that Shanghai people talk about unless they speak Mandarin to me.
Besides, there’ll be a lot of confusion if I try to understand Shanghai
dialect with my Mandarin knowledge. For example, when a Shanghai barber
says "Da tou", he means to give you a haircut. But it sounds like
he’s going to beat you on your head. Because "Da" in Mandarin
means "to beat somebody" or "to have a fight", however
in Shanghai dialect it means "to handle" or "to do".
Even though the word of "tou" means "head" in both Mandarin
and Shanghai dialect, "da tou" turns into a totally different
meaning to people who speak Mandarin. The clients who only speak Mandarin
would definitely run away from that Shanghai barber. Mandarin is required
in schools in China. You’ll find a lot of students speak Mandarin in
school with their classmates and they change it to their own dialects when
they talk to their families. Beijingers supposedly speak the most standard
Mandarin. When they speak really fast and use their slang, people from other
regions in China have trouble understand them, too. Minority races people
nowadays learn Mandarin while they keep their own language at the time.
I find out lately that American people speak English with different accent,
too. I guess the world will never lack of diversity in this sense. As usual,
welcome to your comments and questions about China and Chinese culture.
I try to answer them. The idea of writing about Chinese dialects was given
by Yan-Bing. We’re looking |
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