Thousands of years of Chinese linguistic heritage have come down to a squabble over Tom and Jerry.
Dubbed into regional Chinese languages, 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 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 different Chinese languages, 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, languages and 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 Shang-hainese. "Schools don't allow Shanghainese to be spoken, and now TV doesn't either. It looks like Shanghai comedy will be dying out."
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 languages spoken by the Han ethnic majority.
Promotion of Mandarin -- 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 and schools are nom-inating contestants in city-wide Mandarin speech contests.
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 appear on Chinese bank notes.
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, 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 Shanghai-nese. 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 Chongqing.
Preservation, not exclusion, was the purpose of Tom and Jerry in dialect, Zhang said.
"You've got Shanghainese kids who can't even speak Shanghai-nese," 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?" he said.
For now, Tom and Jerry will continue in Shanghainese on video, along with other versions in close to a dozen 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. Even at an entertainment awards show in Shanghai, Chinese reporters drown out Hong Kong celebrities speaking in Cantonese with exasperated shouts of "speak Mandarin."
Seven people sustained mostly minor injuries in an airplane fire in South Korea, authorities said yesterday, with local media suggesting the blaze might have been caused by a portable battery stored in the overhead bin. The Air Busan plane, an Airbus A321, was set to fly to Hong Kong from Gimhae International Airport in southeastern Busan, but caught fire in the rear section on Tuesday night, the South Korean Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said. A total of 169 passengers and seven flight attendants and staff were evacuated down inflatable slides, it said. Authorities initially reported three injuries, but revised the number
A colossal explosion in the sky, unleashing energy hundreds of times greater than the Hiroshima bomb. A blinding flash nearly as bright as the sun. Shockwaves powerful enough to flatten everything for miles. It might sound apocalyptic, but a newly detected asteroid nearly the size of a football field now has a greater than 1 percent chance of colliding with Earth in about eight years. Such an impact has the potential for city-level devastation, depending on where it strikes. Scientists are not panicking yet, but they are watching closely. “At this point, it’s: ‘Let’s pay a lot of attention, let’s
UNDAUNTED: Panama would not renew an agreement to participate in Beijing’s Belt and Road project, its president said, proposing technical-level talks with the US US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday threatened action against Panama without immediate changes to reduce Chinese influence on the canal, but the country’s leader insisted he was not afraid of a US invasion and offered talks. On his first trip overseas as the top US diplomat, Rubio took a guided tour of the canal, accompanied by its Panamanian administrator as a South Korean-affiliated oil tanker and Marshall Islands-flagged cargo ship passed through the vital link between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. However, Rubio was said to have had a firmer message in private, telling Panama that US President Donald Trump
CHEER ON: Students were greeted by citizens who honked their car horns or offered them food and drinks, while taxi drivers said they would give marchers a lift home Hundreds of students protesting graft they blame for 15 deaths in a building collapse on Friday marched through Serbia to the northern city of Novi Sad, where they plan to block three Danube River bridges this weekend. They received a hero’s welcome from fellow students and thousands of local residents in Novi Said after arriving on foot in their two-day, 80km journey from Belgrade. A small red carpet was placed on one of the bridges across the Danube that the students crossed as they entered the city. The bridge blockade planned for yesterday is to mark three months since a huge concrete construction
RSS