New York Times: Banned books and milk powder

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/04/opinion/04iht-edyu.html?ref=hongkong

Hong Kong's Hot Commodities

By VERNA YU

Published: December 3, 2010

HONG KONG — Banned books and milk powder: What do they have in common?
This: They are among the most prized commodities on the must-buy list for many of the millions of Chinese tourists who come to Hong Kong every year.
In this former British colony, books considered too politically sensitive for mainland China are widely available in bookshops. And since news emerged two years ago that many young children in China had died or fallen seriously ill after drinking local formula adulterated with the toxic chemical melamine, imported milk powder has become a priority purchase for our visitors.
When a Chinese writer whose books are banned in China visited Hong Kong recently, I asked if he would have time to meet up for a chat.
“I would love to, but I’m afraid I have something really important to get done first,” he replied.
I thought he was probably busy with his new book, which daringly criticizes the country’s top leadership. But he surprised me.
“I have to take a crate of baby milk powder across the border for a friend,” he said. “I also have to buy more for my son before I leave. You know what milk is like in China,” he said, rolling his eyes.
Food safety was one key issue that prompted me to leave Beijing two years ago. When I became pregnant, everything that residents complain about in Beijing — air pollution, dangerous roads, and most importantly, food safety — suddenly became real issues.
Although that was before the tainted-milk scandal broke, there had been plenty of food scares floating around: The fake baby formula that killed 12 babies in 2004, the carcinogenic food-coloring that found its way into many food products in 2005, not to mention fake eggs, fake vaccines and flour tainted with powdered lime.
Just months after we returned to Hong Kong, news about the melamine-laced milk emerged — more than 300,000 infants were made seriously ill and at least six died from kidney stones resulting from drinking formula adulterated with the industrial chemical.
So it is unsurprising that many Chinese tourists flock to Hong Kong to stock up on foreign-produced milk powder. Here, imported goods are more readily available and less heavily taxed. In a busy, neon-lit shopping area, there is even a book shop popular with mainland Chinese tourists that specializes in books banned in China — and Japanese milk powder.
The proprietor told me that sales of milk powder surged after the melamine scandal in 2008. Nowadays, 90 percent of his customers are from mainland China and he sells up to 1,800 units of milk powder per month — bringing in double the profits he makes from books.
The Chinese media has also chronicled stories about people scrambling for foreign baby formula through a variety of channels, be it begging families living abroad to send it or paying couriers to sneak it in from Hong Kong.
My cousin, a working mother from southern China, used to queue up with hundreds of people to cross over to Macau to buy milk for her baby.
“Nobody trusts locally produced milk,” she fumed. “In fact, you never know what is safe to eat and what’s not.”
So popular is the demand for foreign-made milk powder that the Chinese tax authorities imposed a new rule in September that drastically cuts the duty-free allowance for milk powder brought into the country.
The lives of millions of Chinese babies are still at risk. This year, melamine-laced milk resurfaced in the market apparently recycled from contaminated powder that was not destroyed in the 2008 scandal. Recently, there have been accusations that a Chinese-brand milk-powder causes premature puberty in baby girls — although the manufacturer denied it.
Parents of children affected by the last scandal are outraged. They say this is happening because corrupt officials who condone malpractice have gone unpunished, while their own cries for help have been silenced. A father who campaigned on behalf of other families was recently jailed for two-and-a-half years. Another father, whose one-year-old died of urinary system failure due to tainted milk, was given “re-education through labor” detention this year for daring to complain on the Internet.
So it is perhaps not so amusing that even dissident authors, who cannot take their own books home, should make it a priority to take something they can take back to China: milk powder. But millions of parents who cannot afford to travel outside mainland China are less lucky.
One mother of a three-year-old girl who got kidney stones from drinking toxic milk told me that poorer families like them simply do not have a choice.
“People round here just can’t afford imported milk, let alone going to Hong Kong,” she said. “We feel hopeless but what can we do?”
Verna Yu is a freelance writer.

SCMP: The thorn digging into Beijing's shoe -- The main impact of Liu Xiaobo's Nobel Peace Prize may be to make his countrymen wonder who he is and why he received such an honour

South China Morning Post:
The thorn digging into Beijing's shoe
The main impact of Liu Xiaobo's Nobel Peace Prize may be to make his countrymen wonder who he is and why he received such an honour



Verna Yu

Oct 15, 2010


Simon Niu, a construction material procurer in Beijing, had never heard of Liu Xiaobo until he learned from the internet that Liu was this year's Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

"I thought it was very strange that it wasn't reported in the media," said Niu, 36. "I guessed that this person must have subversive opinions in the eyes of the authorities."







When the Nobel committee announced in Norway last Friday that Liu had won the prize, news immediately spread across the world - except on the mainland. Internet searches yielded only an angry response from the Foreign Ministry or articles condemning the award as a plot to destabilise China.



Niu said he was angry that the government was trying to hush up the news. "Why is there so much we are not allowed to know? Who is this man? Why is he behind bars? Why kind of person is he? What has he done?" he asked. "To have to go to such a lot of trouble [to hide the news], it just shows the government lacks confidence," he said.



The awarding of the first Nobel prize to a Chinese national under the communist regime will probably cause millions of Chinese like Niu to start asking who Liu is and why he deserves such an honour.



The award serves as an endorsement of Liu's two-decade advocacy of peaceful political reform in the face of government repression and a powerful morale boost for China's democracy movement, which has been largely stalled since the Tiananmen crackdown in 1989.



"Students are going to look up who this guy is," said Nicholas Bequelin, senior researcher at New York-based Human Rights Watch. "The decision to jail Liu and make an example of him has effectively turned him into a figurehead of the democratic movement, and Charter 08 has now become the central document for the movement."



Liu was sentenced last year to 11 years in jail for inciting subversion of state power, as he was a key drafter of Charter 08 - the boldest call for democracy, rights and political reform since Tiananmen.



It was believed to be one of the longest sentences handed down on the mainland in a case involving freedom of expression.



The Nobel committee said the severe punishment meted out to him made him "the foremost symbol of this wide-ranging struggle for human rights in China".



Even so, the central government has remained defiant.



A Foreign Ministry spokesman questioned the "true intention" of the award this week and said the nation would not change its one-party political system. The government also called off a planned meeting with the Norwegian fisheries minister, put Liu's wife, Liu Xia , under house arrest and barred European diplomats from visiting her.



Despite the outward stridency, analysts said the award would force top leaders to reflect upon the government's current strategy: for all the money and resources it has spent on silencing Liu Xiaobo and quashing Charter 08, not only has he not been forgotten, but he has become a respected international symbol of peaceful resistance in the face of oppression.



"The top leadership must be rather annoyed and are asking why nobody foresaw this, but we have long predicted this: if you arrested and jailed him, he would definitely get the prize," said Chen Ziming , a fellow Tiananmen activist who the government accused of being the "black hand" behind the pro- democracy movement, and jailed for 13 years.



Analysts said the government's decision to make an example of Liu has backfired at a critical juncture when China, an emerging economic power feared by some countries as a threat, sorely needs respect and a better image in the international arena.



"The leadership have managed to inflict on themselves the very thing they have tried to avoid for the past 20 years, which is to have a figurehead for the democratic movement in China," Bequelin said.



Jean-Philippe Beja, a senior research fellow at the Centre for International Studies and Research at Paris-based Sciences Po, said the jailing and heavy sentence given to Liu and his winning of the Nobel prize have made Charter 08 - originally signed by 303 activists, lawyers and intellectuals - echo around the world.



"From the Communist Party's point of view, that is very disruptive," Beja said.



Indeed, the government appeared rattled by the news of the award by virtue of the actions taken against Liu's wife. Dozens of rights activists and dissidents have also been detained, harassed or questioned by the police since the announcement of the award. Several rights lawyers were harassed, some prevented from leaving home and one detained at a guest house.



Although activists expect the crackdowns to continue for some time, they believe they are likely to be knee-jerk reactions that will not last.



"In the short term, crackdowns are inevitable. They fear that Liu Xiaobo's award will galvanise the grass-roots [activism], but the civil rights movement is not something that the authorities can control," said Ye Du, a Guangzhou-based liberal writer.



Instead, activists say the award has lifted their morale and will help speed up democratisation in the long run.



"The emergence of a spiritual leader in a democratising society is bound to have a catalysing effect, like Nelson Mandela in South Africa and Vaclav Havel in Czechoslovakia," Ye said.



A rights activist based in Sichuan , Chen Wei , said the award would allow more people to understand the spirit of Charter 08 and prompt more to participate in the fight for democracy.



It is unclear how the leadership will respond to international calls for Liu's release and whether it will change the way it handles dissent.



Some believe Liu's prize could lend support to Premier Wen Jiabao's outspoken remarks on the need for political reform in recent months. But given that the top leaders will change in two years, it is unlikely that anybody would want to upset the status quo, Beja said.



"During a succession, everyone holds their cards close to their chests," he said.



Meanwhile, others say the leadership may one day decide, after a recalculation of its own power interests, that keeping Liu in prison represents too much of a liability.



"The Chinese Communist Party calculates such things strictly in terms of one question: what will maximise the strength of the Party's monopoly grip on power?" said Perry Link, a China expert at the University of California, Riverside.



"In the short term, increased repression will be their answer... In the longer term, maybe after a few years but before Liu's sentence is served in full, they may calculate that the costs to their power of the embarrassment of holding a Nobel laureate in jail are greater than the costs of letting one free-thinking intellectual go free."



After finding out that Liu was punished and honoured for his efforts to call for democracy and political reform, Niu said he was glad someone spoke on the behalf of millions of others who, like himself, do not have the courage to stand up for themselves.



"In China, lots of people curse the system every day, but we have no influence and we don't have any hope," he said. "Now I have more of an idea why he deserved the prize."

Copyright © 2010 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All right reserved

周日話題﹕俾阿仔學廣東話 My article in Mingpao's Sunday supplement: Let you child learn Cantonese

周日話題﹕俾阿仔學廣東話


(明報)2010年10月10日 星期日 05:10

【明報專訊】最近在國際先驅論壇報，紐約 時報及南華 早報發表過文章談論香港父母用英語跟孩子溝通的現象，非常驚訝不僅在香港及海外的媒體及網站引起了廣泛討論，甚至有遠自盧森堡，法國 ，以色列 的讀者來信作出回應，所產生的迴響是我始料不及的。



似乎語言教育在海內外都是一個令大家容易引起共鳴的課題。



為人父母的，哪有不想望子成龍 的？我明白父母的一片苦心，總希望把最好的給孩子。我大學修語言系，略知皮毛，所以我寫文章的目的，也是希望向父母們解釋一些基本的語言學習概念，也希望他們能參照語言及教育學家的意見，衡量利弊作出有智慧的決定。



其實更令我關注的，是這現象的背後，究竟說明了什麼？暫且不談對錯，在香港，原來有這麼多教育水平不低的父母，認為我們的母語不值得傳給下一代！他們認為雖然用英語比較吃力，但情願自己辛苦一些，也要不惜一切務求子女講得一口地道的英語。



這，是否因為香港被英國 統治了150年，長期在殖民地主義下，讓我們失去了自信及對本土語言及文化的尊重，認為我們自己的東西不值一哂？是否因為廣東話是方言，沒有普通話及英語的國際地位，在凡事追求功利，競爭的社會裏，使得我們願意拋棄用了一輩子來表達思想感情，標誌著我們身分認同的母語？是否因為多數上一代也是漂泊到香港的移民，對本地語言文化的感情紥根不深，所以採取一種實用主義，覺得沒用的就扔掉？或是，更深一層的想，這是否顯示了我們香港人看不起自己的根，以自己的身分為恥？



四歲小孩不屑用廣東話交談



若是如此，不要小看我們這種不經意流露的輕蔑，因為小孩子感性敏銳，我們這種態度，也必然傳給我們的下一代。筆者就曾經見過一個四歲的小孩，他父母雖然用廣東話跟人交談，但自小用英語跟他溝通，按理孩子在廣東話的環境裏，沒有完全聽不懂的可能。但別人一嘗試用廣東話跟他說話，他就一臉不屑，很不高興的跺腳，看見這種情景，我只有替他嘆息﹕香港是中國人的社會，你也長有一副中國人的臉孔，四歲的你已經不耐煩人家跟你說中文，那前面幾十年的路，你不是還有很多的氣讓你生？



我擔心很多父母對語言與文化的密切關係缺乏認識。在大學時，教授經常強調，語言是文化的載體，一個民族的歷史過程會因應社會，文化的變遷而發展出獨有的一套詞彙及文字。一個民族有某些概念，它的語言便產生某些詞彙去表達那概念，相反，沒有某些概念，便沒有那詞彙。一種文化經過時間的過濾，便會形成自己獨特的語言，用以表達該民族的思想。所以，一個人在某個文化成長，他的母語便是塑造他對世界認知的工具。我們的母語，讓我們理解我們文化中的某些概念，也同時局限了我們對自身文化沒有的概念的認識。簡單的例子，比如，中國人有「米」跟「飯」之分，不吃米飯的西方人就只有「RICE」，沒有煮熟非煮熟的米之分，層次高一點的概念，如中國文化裏的忠孝，禮義廉恥，男女長幼的尊卑之分，都還在我們生活中不知不覺地發揮影響。西方相對平等的人倫觀念，中國人也肯定不容易接受。比如我的英籍丈夫的叔伯父，姨母等，比他年長四五十年，卻要求他不要再喊他們uncle，auntie，理由是他不再是小孩，應該平等地直呼名字，令我這個被朋友認為很西化的人，每次聽到他直呼90歲的姨母的名字時，覺得特別刺耳，這就是我自小成長受中國文化潛移默化的烙印。



既然語言是文化傳承的工具，每個人都代表著他一套的背景文化，價值觀，人生觀等，父母們可曾想過，你輕視廣東話，但又勉強用外語跟孩子溝通，卻無法貼切地表達自己，孩子將來長大，你們之間在文化上及溝通上可能出現鴻溝﹕你的一套有可能不被孩子接受，甚至被瞧不起呢？也可曾想過，我們今天唾棄母語，會剝奪下一代認識我們的意識形態、核心價值及身分認同的權利呢？以前每個孩子都琅琅上口的唐詩、童謠（如「月光光照地堂」）和傳統故事（如二十四孝），充滿中國文化涵義，這些一旦翻譯成英語，已經失去了很多文化元素。我們真要把這些傳統當作糟糠嗎？我們是否要他們只能從外語及西方的角度去認識我們的歷史及文化？



「不知扣鈕英文怎麼說」



曾經有一位自認英語不大靈光，但又選擇全用英語跟小孩溝通的朋友對我說，孩子在中國人社會長大，不擔心他會缺乏接觸中國文化的機會。但試想，缺乏流暢地表達自己的語言工具，如何把你重視的觀念栽種在孩子心裏呢？一位英語不錯的媽媽抱怨，孩子頑皮起來，她也未能用恰當流暢的英語責備他。一位英語不甚流利的爸爸坦言，很多時候根本詞不達意，有天他想跟孩子解釋如何扣鈕，發覺自己不會說，要打電話向朋友求救。我慨嘆的是，這位爸爸，跟我們聊天時，談笑風生，地道的廣東話風趣傳神。但一轉身對著自己兩歲的孩子說話，卻變得結結巴巴，用生硬的讀音，有限的詞彙，錯誤百出的文法，費勁地一句一句拼出英語句子。做他的朋友，我只能惋惜他不讓孩子認識他最真實自然的一面。他說，孩子將來大了，自己的英語不夠用，還是要說回廣東話的。可是，我的朋友，你可知道孩子學習第一語言的黃金時期是零至四五歲左右，錯失了這時期，補學中文便變作學外語一樣難，增加學習重擔？為什麼不在孩子的母語學習期自然地讓他們吸收我們的語言資產呢？為什麼逼他們受罪，用我們不甚流利的，錯誤百出的外語作他們的語言典範？



我並非抗拒學外語的風氣，但是家長千萬不要以為多學英文便等於沒有學中文的空間，幼兒的腦袋是靈活的，可以承載多種語言，別誤會以為要英文好就要放棄中文。



可能很多家長沒有想得那麼多，只是單純的想子女學好英語，為日後上名校，找工作鋪路。但他們有否想過，即使不談文化及溝通的問題，單從功利的角度看，在今天競爭劇烈的社會，雙語能力才是將來的方向？單靠英語，中文不精，怎可跟雙語寫讀能力高的同齡人競爭？筆者14歲到英國留學 ，大學畢業後在英國或香港的跨國公司均找到工作，不單是因為我能操地道的英語，也是因為我能毫不費勁的寫、讀中文。現在外國公司需要的是了解中國文化及市場的人才，而並非土生土長而中文不精的人。



其實香港不缺學習英語的機會，很多幼稚園都有外籍英語教師，坊間也不乏英語教材，如電台、電視節目有英語廣播，圖書館有英語讀物，隨處都有中英對照的廣告，商店有中英貨品標籤等，父母可加以利用，激發孩子對外語的興趣。要是資源許可，更可以帶孩子外遊，讓他們實地練習英語，我相信這些措施都足以讓孩子輕鬆地掌握英語，非要不惜一切把有瑕疵英語強加於他們身上作母語。



錯過黃金時期 學母語如學外語



最近一位語言治療專家跟我提到，一位受過高深教育的媽媽為了用英語跟孩子溝通的決定懊悔不已，向他求助。自孩子出生開始，她夫婦倆一直用英語跟他說話，到了他小三時才猛然發現中文的重要性，但孩子已經錯過了學習母語的黃金時期，到八九歲再像學外語般惡補中文反覺非常吃力，而最要害的是他的社交能力受到很大的阻礙，在學校被同學排擠，而且英文也只是平平，作父母的，便覺得是自己害了孩子，毁了他的前程。



天下父母都是為了孩子好，我嚕嗦了這麼多，只是希望家長們不要好心做壞事 ，能冷靜地坐下來分析利弊，作出一個理性的選擇。



其實父母是孩子第一個老師，為什麼不把我們最自信，最揮灑自如，用了一輩子表達自己的語言及塑造我們的文化，原汁原味的傳承給下一代？



文﹕余詠恩

Interview in Ming Pao: me hard-selling speaking to your children in your mother tongue again!

Go to page 2 for the interview:

http://life.mingpao.com/cfm/ebook3.cfm?File=20100921%2Fhappy%2Fhappy.txt

The quest for English comes at a price - SCMP

The quest for English comes at a price


Problems when Cantonese speakers talk to their children in English

Verna Yu

Aug 02, 2010

Cheryl is one of many middle-class Hong Kong parents who have high hopes for her children. Even before her son was born, she was determined he would speak English like a native speaker.

So ever since Daniel came along, she and her husband have been speaking to him in their less-than-perfect English, even though they realise their ability is limited. A native Cantonese speaker, she speaks passable English but is far from fluent because she hardly ever uses the language in her daily life.

Like many Hong Kong parents, they have little faith in the local education system and want their son to get into an international school and study abroad when he is older. So why not give him an early start in English?

"If Daniel's English isn't good, he will be disadvantaged in life," the mother of one said. "Kindergarten and school interviews - everything is so competitive these days. So we want him to get used to the language as early as possible."

But her husband admits that talking to their two-year-old toddler in a foreign language can sometimes be frustrating. "The other day I wanted to tell him off and I couldn't find the right words to express myself," the father sighed, shaking his head. "So I just lapsed into Cantonese."

Emily's mother is equally adamant. She and her husband speak Cantonese to each other and to their relatives, but switch into English when they speak to their two young children, aged two and four.

The children utter only English words and are unable to communicate with their grandparents, who speak only Cantonese. But their parents think it is the inevitable price to pay for getting the children into an international school.

"I heard that at some kindergarten interviews, if they hear you speak in Chinese, you will be rejected right away," Emily's mother said.

Daniel and Emily's parents are among a growing number of local Hong Kong parents who have decided to give their children a head start in life by trying to make English their native tongue.

And who can blame them? The standard of English in Hong Kong has been seen as declining since the change of sovereignty more than a decade ago but fluency in the language is still a ticket to good schools and jobs, as well as a status symbol.

But linguists and educational professionals are warning that parents' language choice can have a far wider impact than just their children's language ability - it affects their sense of identity, cultural values and the family relationships.

For a start, if the standard of the parents' English is just moderate, they should not expect that by speaking to the children in flawed English, the youngsters will end up speaking perfect English.

"For the first few years [of their lives], the children take on features of the parents' non-native English because they use it as a model," said Professor Virginia Yip, director of Chinese University's Childhood Bilingualism Research Centre.

With flawed English as a model, the child may end up being functionally bilingual but unlikely to achieve a native standard in the language without regular contact with native speakers.

More importantly, educators say, parents should be aware that their communication with their children and their ability to express their feelings will be severely curtailed, unless they are near-native English speakers themselves. Daniel's father is a case in point.

Dr Angel Chan of Polytechnic University's Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies said: "If parents use a language they're not very proficient in to communicate with their children, they risk sacrificing their chances of having a close relationship with them.

"We often use our own language to communicate our intimate and subtle feelings, so why not take advantage of our mother tongue to build an intimate relationship with our children?" she said. "Life is not just about language ability."

Linguists say parents should also consider how their language strategy will fit into their family and social lives. They should think about whether the children would be able to form close relationships with grandparents and the rest of the family. Will they also be happy for their children not to be able to read Chinese street signs, order food in restaurants and not understand what people are saying around them?

All of the factors inevitably affect a child's sense of cultural identity and belonging.

Linguists say language shapes our outlook in life, influences our thinking and is the carrier of our cultural values and sense of identity, so Chinese parents who try to provide only English should therefore consider whether they would be happy to sacrifice their Chinese values.

"If you want to cultivate a sense of identity, the role of language is indispensable," said Dr David Li Chor-shing, professor of English at the Hong Kong Institute of Education.

"A child's development of a sense of identity is very much dependent on his language, and who he socialises with."

Nursery rhymes, ancient poems and folklore passed down many generations are full of encoded cultural elements and children who learn them are subconsciously absorbing the values behind them, Li said. For example, classical tales such as the 14th century Twenty-four Pious Sons, which aims to teach the Confucian virtue of filial piety, lose much of their cultural meaning when translated into English.

Rejecting Chinese inevitably deprived children of opportunities to learn about their cultural roots, and could leave them confused about their self-identity, Li said.

Academics say that even from a purely linguistic point of view, there is no advantage in withdrawing Chinese altogether from children because the plasticity of infants' and toddlers' brains allows them to process two or even more languages simultaneously. So by all means, educators and academics say, take your children to English-speaking playgroups, but consider it an advantage that in speaking to them in Chinese and exposing them to English at the same time, you are giving them the chance of becoming bilingual. "Using Cantonese as well is not going to disadvantage the child, ultimately you would expect it to be an advantage, to give the child the gift of being bilingual," said Stephen Matthews, linguistics professor and bilingualism expert at the University of Hong Kong.

"If [parents] no longer speak Chinese to their children, we tend to think they're doing them a disfavour by unnecessarily depriving them of their ancestral language."

From a development point of view, parents could even be disadvantaging their children's language progress by artificially imposing English in an environment where the language was not naturally spoken, Cecilia Kam Oi-ping, principal of the Yew Chung International Kindergarten, said.

Kam said many Hong Kong couples spoke Cantonese to each other yet made every effort to ensure their children spoke English only. Many depended on language-teaching products such as videos and flashcards instead of real conversations as a language model.

She said parents who discouraged children from speaking the native language they could have easily picked up at home and in their natural environment were actually not helping them, as languages have to be acquired through linguistic interaction in real-life situations.

"You would actually be depriving them - they would have 50 per cent less learning opportunities," she said. "You need an environment and situations to learn a language.

"Using flashcards and video, children will only copy in parrot fashion but will not learn to communicate."

Some parents say that once their children have been accepted by an international school, they will switch back to Cantonese. But linguists say that by then, they would have missed out on the "golden period" of acquiring it as their mother tongue, while the child's brain is at the peak of its learning capability. A child who starts developing Chinese later than that would process the language in his or her brain like a second language and the grammar and pronunciation were unlikely to reach native-level.

"I would worry if a child has not been exposed to and used [a language] up to age four," Matthews said. "We would worry that they would be disadvantaged in that their Chinese will never be quite native-like."

Linguists worry that many Hong Kong parents have simply not been adequately informed on language issues and although well-meaning, they are often unaware of the possible consequences of their choice.

Matthews says he's come across more cases of children who were discouraged from learning Cantonese but who later wished they'd had the chance. Li agrees: "Many Hong Kong parents do not realise that their quest for English fluency comes at a heavy cost - in this process, are we also losing something?"

Copyright © 2010 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All right reserved

Cultural heritage of China at risk with decline of dialects

Verna Yu
July 24, 2010


Jiang Yalin, 35, is one of the few people of her age back home in Guizhou who can still speak the Miao minority language.
Brought up by her ethnic Miao grandmother, she is proud of her heritage, yet when she talks to her three-year-old daughter, she uses Putonghua, also known as Mandarin.
"When I tried to speak to my daughter in Miao, her dad complained that he felt like an outsider," said Jiang, who married a northerner and lives in Zhejiang . "And there is simply no one else to speak Miao with here."
Jiang's story is just one of millions of similar tales of language and dialect decline across China as the nation's rich linguistic diversity faces unprecedented challenges.
Powerful forces such as Beijing's policy of mandatory use of Putonghua in government, education and virtually all of the state media, as well as rapid social and demographic changes, have eroded many dialects and minority languages.
Tensions came to a head in Guangdong recently after the province's political advisory body proposed that Cantonese television programming be replaced by shows broadcast in Putonghua. Grass-roots groups urged people to gather tomorrow to voice their support for the local dialect.
The rise of Putonghua was born out of a need to have a lingua franca in a more cosmopolitan and mobile society. There are more than 160 Chinese dialects, classified roughly into eight to 10 main linguistic categories, and many are mutually unintelligible. There are also nearly 130 ethnic minority languages spoken across the country.
The mainland's stellar economic growth in the past two decades has seen a massive influx of migrants from the countryside to cities. Millions of workers and students leave their hometowns every year for better opportunities in cities. Many marry people from other localities and, like Jiang, need a common language with which they can communicate with their spouse and children.
There are no official statistics on the pattern of dialect use on the mainland but anecdotal evidence suggests that the use of dialects is shrinking and is rapidly giving way to Putonghua.
Even in Guangdong and Fujian, the strongholds of the Cantonese and Min dialects, more and more parents are abandoning their native dialects in favour of Putonghua, believing this will give their children better access to education and jobs.
"Children have to speak Putonghua at school anyway, so it's better for them to get used to it at home too," said a mother from Guangzhou, who speaks Putonghua to her son. "Many parents in my hometown feel the southern Min dialect is useless so they opt for Putonghua when speaking to their children," said Chen Weirong, a university student from Quanzhou, Fujian.
Putonghua's superior status as a "civilised language" in nationwide campaigns has prompted some schools to go as far as punishing pupils for speaking dialects, even outside class. The Guangzhou-based Yangcheng Evening News reported this month that pupils at a local primary school who speak Cantonese after class are barred from becoming class captains, and subject to criticism in front of the entire school.
Linguists say the current trend is alarming. "You can observe the changes in language use in the direction of the standard language, Putonghua ... so [the dialects] are moving towards endangerment," said Stephen Matthews, a linguistics professor at the University of Hong Kong. "Parents' aspirations for their children will push them in this direction and policy steps will push them in this direction."
According to Unesco, a language is considered as being endangered when it is no longer passed by the elderly to the younger generation, as it will eventually disappear with the death of its last speakers.
David Crystal, prominent British linguist and author of the book Language Death, said: "There is certainly a real risk of language loss and this will be an irreparable loss to the wonderful diversity of Chinese culture."
Language decline is certainly not unique to China. Languages change when societies change and it occurs throughout history, all over the world. Celtic languages such as Welsh and Scottish Gaelic have long been under threat when the speakers move away to seek better economic prospects. Even those who stayed prefer speaking English, which gives them better opportunities.
"We see this sort of thing happening in many parts of the world, with the overall result that perhaps half the languages of the world are going to die out in the course of the present century," Crystal said.
So unless urgent action is taken by government and speaker communities, Crystal warned, more than 3,000 endangered languages may disappear in that time - one language dying every two weeks or so.
Unesco, which runs a preservation programme for endangered languages, recognises languages as intangible heritage and encourages a multilingual policy to foster cultural diversity worldwide.
"It would be marvellous if China were to support this kind of initiative, as is happening in several countries," Crystal said. "There is no need for Putonghua to be in conflict with Cantonese, for example. One is outward- looking, reflecting the need for national and international intelligibility. The other is inward-looking, reflecting the need for local identity. Many countries operate such a balanced policy very successfully."
But many worry that Beijing, which has national unity as its No1 political priority, overlooks the importance of social pluralism.
Professor Thomas Lee Hun-tak, a linguist at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said the central government lacked the awareness that multilingualism was an essential element in a nation's intellectual and cultural diversity.
"The [mistake] is that those national policies do not explicitly recognise that multi-dialectualism has a positive impact on nation building," Lee said. "[Officials] think it would be detrimental to national needs if dialects or localism are strengthened."
Li Gongming , a professor at the Guangzhou Arts College, said the central government's need for a national language to unify its massive population and communities' desires to preserve their identities had always been in conflict but little consideration had been given to the loss of regional linguistic and cultural heritage.
"For a long time we have had one language dominating our society's language space but we've gone too far," he said.
"We really don't want to see the decline of regional languages within our generation."
Affluent Guangdong is already in a better position than most other provinces to defend its dialect because of its economic prowess and the size of the Cantonese-speaking population worldwide - 70 million.
For the smaller linguistic communities, there is even more economic and social pressure on them to be assimilated into mainstream society. Linguists worry that within a generation or so, many mainland families that used to be bilingual could quickly slip into monolingualism.
But few recognise just how precarious the situation has become.
"The key thing is whether [the government] thinks it is essential to preserve the regional history and culture? And on a policy level, are there plans to support multilingualism?" Lee said. "We can't see any of this yet."
Some might argue that the death of dialects is an inevitable price to pay as China moves towards being a modern society, but linguists say more should be done to avoid the loss of the language heritage and cultural diversity.
"Language is the root of culture. If this root is gone, this culture will very quickly - within one, two or three generations - die out completely," said Professor William Wang Shi-yuan of Chinese University. "So we should help preserve endangered languages and culture."
And the need to preserve dialects, which have no written form but keep many characteristics of the ancient languages, is more urgent than ever.
"When a language without a writing system disappears, its speakers' experience is lost forever," Crystal said. "Language loss is knowledge loss and it is irretrievable."

Cantonese, Please!

I.H.T. Op-Ed Contributor


July 22, 2010


Cantonese, Please

By VERNA YU

HONG KONG — I had always presumed that speaking to your child in your native tongue was the most natural thing in the world. Apparently not everyone thinks so.



When we held a birthday party for our two-year-old daughter several months ago, I had a bit of a shock.



The first sign came when a four-year-old Chinese boy looked annoyed and frustrated when I asked in Cantonese what snacks he would like from the table.



“No, no, no!” he yelled in English. His mother promptly translated what I said into English.



This baffled me. The boy was born and bred here in Hong Kong, and his parents are both native speakers of the dominant Cantonese dialect, but they speak to their children only in their less-than-perfect English.



It turned out they have a simple reason: They want their children to get into a prestigious international school.



They worry that if their children speak Cantonese at home they will not learn enough English to pass the interview.



The mother is delighted with her achievement. Her son has been accepted by an international kindergarten and her younger girl’s first words were all in English.



I quickly realized that she wasn’t the only one who thought like this. I noticed that several other parents at the birthday party were also speaking broken English to their children.



“I will show you how does it work,” said one father in heavily-accented English, showing a toy train to his 19-month-old son.



He admitted with slight embarrassment that his English pronunciation and grammar were not great, and trying to communicate with his toddler in a language he himself is struggling with has led to problems.



“One day I was trying to tell him this is how you button your shirt,” he said, switching into Cantonese. “But then I couldn’t say it in English, so I had to ring up a friend and ask.”



I asked: Doesn’t he think it is better to talk to his toddler in the language he is most at ease in?



“I think you’ve lived abroad for too long — you don’t understand what parents here have to think about,” the boy’s mother said. “Competition for international schools is fierce. If we don’t make sure he speaks English now, he won’t pass the interview.”



I looked at her very cute toddler, who was busy chasing a ball on the floor, and felt a bit sad.



The boy is not yet two, and he was still babbling away in baby words. Yet in this competitive world, it is considered better for him to be exposed only to English, a language that his parents are not confident speaking but one they believe is more valuable than their native tongue.



More and more, ambitious parents in Hong Kong are giving their children a head-start in English by putting them into English-speaking play groups, kindergartens and international schools. At these elite institutions, Mandarin Chinese is sometimes taught as a second language.



As for the local Cantonese dialect, who cares?



I am saddened. What will happen to those age-old nursery rhymes our grandmothers taught us, the songs we sang at kindergarten, those Tang-dynasty poems that every preschool child was taught to recite?



And surely the classic tales of the “Twenty-four pious sons” — the stories that the Chinese have used to teach their children about the Confucian virtue of filial piety since the 14th century — can’t have the same cultural resonance when translated into English.



Besides, Cantonese carries echoes of ancient Chinese that no longer exist in the official Mandarin. It is a lively language full of colorful expressions.



It is our heritage, and if we don’t pass it on, who will?



When these children are not taught to speak the language of their ancestors, a connection with their native culture is bound to be lost.



And when they grow up, how will they see themselves? Will they still have a sense of belonging to Chinese culture? Will this society’s future elites be international in outlook, yet somehow rootless in culture?



Perhaps I’m being alarmist, but I wonder whether there will be a day when we in Hong Kong come to regret the decline of our language. By that time, it may be too late.





Verna Yu is a freelance writer.