Cartoon incites war of words in China

[Harold F. Schiffman]

China Struggles to Unify a Nation of Myriad Dialects

 Thousands of years of Chinese linguistic heritage have come down to this:
a squabble over Tom and Jerry.  Dubbed into regional Chinese dialects, the
warring cat and mouse have been huge TV hits _ and a good way to pass
home-grown culture down to the younger generation, programmers say.

     Not so fast, says the central government up north in Beijing, which
for decades has promoted standard Mandarin as the only Chinese language
worthy of the airwaves. The State Administration of Radio, Film and
Television has ordered an end to broadcasting in dialect, saying kids
should be raised in a ``favorable linguistic environment.'' The move has
put Tom and Jerry _ or ``Cat and Mouse,'' as the show is called here _ at
the center of a long-running debate about how to maintain national
cohesion amid a linguistic sea of highly distinct regional accents,
dialects, and wholly separate language groups.

     ``As an artist, I think dialect should be preserved as a part of
local culture,'' says Zhang Dingguo, deputy director of the Shanghai
People's Comedy Troupe which does Tom and Jerry in Shanghainese.
``Schools don't allow Shanghainese to be spoken, and now TV doesn't
either. It looks like Shanghai comedy will be dying out,'' he adds.  The
government calls the Mandarin policy vital to promoting a common Chinese
identity in this vast land of 1.3 billion people, 56 ethnic groups and
seven main Chinese dialects spoken by the Han ethnic majority.  ``Thank
you'' is pronounced ``xie xie'' in Beijing, ``do jey'' in Hong Kong, and
``sha zha'' in Shanghai. Need to know a price? Ask ``wa tsui gim'' in
Fujian, but ``duoshao qian,'' in Mandarin-speaking northern China.

     The pronunciation of Chinese surnames can induce mild identity
crisis. Mr. Xu (pronounced ``shoe'') in northern China becomes Mr. Ko in
Fujian, which itself is called Hokkien in the local dialect.  Promotion of
Mandarin _ known here as ``putonghua,'' or ``common tongue'' _ began in
the 1920s and became policy in 1955, six years after the communists seized
power. Its use has been encouraged through an unending series of social
campaigns, including the current one featuring TV presenter Wang Xiaoya on
billboards exhorting Shanghainese to ``speak Mandarin ... be a modern
person.''

     In the latest campaign, Shanghai city officials are being required to
attend classes on perfecting their pronunciation, schools are nominating
contestants in city-wide Mandarin speech contests and foreigners are being
invited to Mandarin classes.  Totally distinct from Chinese, the languages
of minority groups such as Tibetans, Uighurs and Mongolians are officially
recognized and taught in schools. Important documents are translated into
major minority tongues and four of them _ Tibetan, Mongolian, Uighur and
Zhuang _ appear on Chinese bank notes.

     Chinese dialects are based on the same system of writing. That means
Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong can enjoy subtitled Mandarin movies and
Mandarin-speakers can order off Chinese menus in the far west of the
country.  Rising incomes, greater travel freedom and the spread of
education are also helping to break down linguistic barriers. Yet no one
is predicting they'll dissolve entirely _ or soon.

     ``Many parts of China are heading for a situation of what linguists
call diglossia, where there is one `high' or public language ... and one
`low' or local language that is used among friends and family,'' said
Stevan Harrell, an expert on Chinese languages at the University of
Washington.  Use of dialects may even be strengthening in some areas with
strong local identities, sometimes for economic reasons. In Guangzhou
(that's Mandarin for the great southern city of Canton), broadcasters are
allowed to speak Cantonese to compete with the nearby Hong Kong stations.

     In places like Guangzhou and Shanghai, prevalence of the local
dialect helps exclude outsiders from social networks that are key to
securing good jobs and entry to better schools. Outsiders say it smacks of
bigotry.  ``If you want to find a good job and be a success in Shanghai,
you have to speak Shanghainese. Even if you do, they can pick you out by
your accent and discriminate against you,'' said Steven Li, an accounting
student flying home to the western city of Chongqing.

     Preservation, not exclusion, was the purpose of Tom and Jerry in
dialect, said Zhang, the producer.  ``You've got Shanghainese kids who
can't even speak Shanghainese,'' he complains. ``I have friends who've
moved to Shanghai and want to learn the language to better integrate into
local society.  ``Isn't watching TV easier than studying textbooks?''

     Zhang cites semilegal Shanghainese broadcasting that pops up on local
radio as evidence of continued demand for dialect programming. For now,
Tom and Jerry will continue in Shanghainese on video, along with other
versions in close to a dozen dialects.  Oddy enough, Tom and Jerry didn't
speak in the original cartoons, so the dialect versions give them voices
they never had.  Despite support for dialects, Mandarin's influence
reaches deep.  Speaking the language well is considered a sign of good
breeding and education. And because China has bound use of Mandarin so
closely to the idea of national unity, promotion of other dialects can
sometimes be seen as insulting if not traitorous.

     Self-governing Taiwan's efforts to promote its local dialect have
been angrily denounced in Beijing as ``anti-Chinese.'' Even at an
entertainment awards show in Shanghai, Chinese reporters drown out Hong
Kong celebrities speaking in Cantonese with exasperated shouts of ``speak
Mandarin.'' The annual meeting of China's legislature is a jamboree of
regional accents and languages. Delegates, including Tibetans, Cantonese
speakers from Hong Kong and Macau and Turkic Uighurs from Xinjiang in the
remote northwest, struggle to make themselves understood in Mandarin.
Other delegates and Chinese reporters strain to understand.

     The farther from Beijing, though, the tougher communication becomes.
In the bazaar in Minfeng, a town deep in the Xinjiang desert, ethnic
Chinese strain to understand Turkic Uighurs' thickly accented, broken
Mandarin.  ``Every Uighur student who comes here has already learned
Chinese in elementary school. Their levels vary wildly, but they can all
understand it at certain levels,'' says Li Qiang, principal of Middle
School No. 1 in Korla, a town in central Xinjiang.  But, he allows, ``We
sometimes need to work very hard to understand each other.''

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