Shanghai Pride

Young family in Hong Kong

As the compradore economy made Old Shanghai affluent, Shanghainese started to become a little bit like their colonists, westernized in appearance as well as believing they were a cut above the average Chinese. Nothing is more apparent and irrational than the bigotry toward people from the north of Long River (Yangtze River), true blue Shanghainese keep track of who's got tainted blood even there's no such thing as indigenous Shanghainese neither as a people nor as a dialect (a lot of people agree the Foreign Concession Shanghainese 租界上海話 before 1949 as the standard dialect, it's based on the local language with hip and fast evolving foreign and outsider influences).  Before Nanking Treaty, only (poor) people whose livelihoods depended on the ocean were allowed to live by the sea (海禁) to counter Japanese pirate raids. The traditional political center near Shanghai was Nanjing (pingyin for Nanking), many time national capitol. The regional commercial center was Yanhzhou, the terminal of the magnificent Grand Canal of China, both cities happen to be on the north of the river. (Actually, Nanjing is on both side of the river, but it's called north by Shanghainese.)

When Pa left Shanghai and started to make a living as a textile engineer in Hong Kong, like most Shanghainese, they brought that pride with them (the textile mills were staffed with mostly Shanghainese).  People with similar background really had little interest in the local Cantonese culture and would speak very broken Cantonese even after spending decades there, If a Hong Kong Shanghainese is linguistically gifted,  he is more likely to study western languages rather than everyday Cantonese. (The British were worse, most HK born British kids couldn't read the most common sign in Chinese: 不准在此小便，or "Do not urinate here". Haha.)

For us that was born in Hong Kong, We grew up feeling we were different and that manifested in many subtle ways. Our Cantonese pronunciation was flawless, but there's something about the Cantonese tonality that struck us as being too expressive or even funny. We'd subconsciously flatten the tones and choose Mandarin like words and phrases to be not "too Cantonese".  Although Parents's transient stay in Hong Kong outlasted their years in Shanghai, we hardly interacted with the community and socialized mostly with families similar to ours and it took me a long time just to realize that the Cantonese culture is not inferior. Regardless, the upshot of all this is our generation's Hong Kong experience was somewhat watered down. (My younger sister returned to Hong Kong after college, she still does not think she totally assimilated.)


In China, the movement to eliminate local Chinese dialects is finally taking hold  after a 100 years, now Shanghainese speaking people are decisively a minority in Shanghai thanks to huge influx of out-of-town workers.  I am glad this effort hasn't been successful in Cantonese speaking areas, we cannot afford to lose the richness of our language in the name of progress (i.e., unification).

Here's an example of the Cantonese continuum that I think is priceless, a poem written in Tang Dynasty more than 1,000 years ago by Mr Hu (胡）making fun of his 胡 (northern barbaric people) wife who could not speak clearly:

呼十卻爲石
喚針將作真

忽然雲雨至
總道是天因

In both Mandarin and Shanghainese, 十 and 石, 針 and 真, 因 and 陰, had long degenerated into the same sounds as spoken by his Tweety Bird wife. They're still clearly distinct in Cantonese while the mispronunciations had become the official 國語。


(Also, the term compradore economy is unflattering in English, but in our Ningbo dialect, the transliterated word of compradore 康白度, still means a extremely successful person, a big shot, very flattering indeed.)