Where is she now? 3 - I Love China

[liukaiqin]

Guangzhou. The man opposite me in the web den has the eyes they copy when they carve marble boddhisattvas. The woman beside him is delightedly saying into her microphone "I can hear you! I can hear you! Can you hear me?" From Chengdu

Comments

[goreism]

I hear Qiaotou has been renamed Hutiaoxia to capitalize on the gorge.

Do people on the street in Chengdu and Yunnan speak Putonghua or that sing-songy Sichuan variety of Mandarin that I can't understand? In Shanghai I understand that Shanghainese is becoming embattled.

[csn]

In Yunnan you can hear languages which sound nothing like Mandarin, much less Chinese!

[liukaiqin]

Sichuan Mandarin is well alive! It was great to hear it. My friend and I made friends with a bunch of lovely people in Chengdu and one of them was a local who thought it was great fun to speak Chengduhua to us, like, for our edification. My friend (Shanghainese) had no trouble understanding him and I was surprised how much I understood too - in terms of sound shifts I think Chengduhua is to Putonghua as Cork (Ireland) sheep farmer English is to "received pronunciation". Once I'd noticed that, everything he said cracked me up. Chinese with a Cork accent! His friends were like "For the sake of the foreigner, I BESEECH you to speak putonghua!" but he was having too much fun

[goreism]

If ever you pass by Beijing.... one never knows!
florent.bouilliez @gmail.com