A powerful group of immigrants

A friend who lives in Vancouver, Canada, recently mentioned an interesting detail in a chat: except for the elderly, almost no one in his Chinese circle communicated in Cantonese, but turned to Mandarin.

Is Cantonese the most powerful Chinese dialect overseas?

How does Cantonese go to the world? Cantonese is indeed the most powerful dialect among overseas Chinese, which depends on two points:

One thing is that overseas Chinese have the largest number of Cantonese speakers. Overseas immigrants before 1949 mainly came from Fujian and Guangdong provinces. Geographically speaking, the tendency of overseas immigrants in these two provinces is also very understandable. Fujian and Guangdong are located in the southeast coast, with less mountains and more land. China's traditional way of living by agriculture has limited space in Fujian and Guangdong. But the two provinces directly face the ocean and can communicate with Southeast Asia, India and even Africa through the monsoon. Therefore, Fujian and Guangdong have a tradition of overseas trade in past dynasties. Guangzhou and Quanzhou were oriental ports more than 1000 years ago. The vision of Fujian people and Guangdong people has never been limited to one acre and three points. When the local hungry people are desperate, it is a natural choice to sail overseas and rush out of a new world. During the period of the Republic of China, the National Government Central Radio specially set up so-called programs in Xiamen dialect and Guangzhou dialect as the standard sounds of Minnan dialect and Cantonese to broadcast to overseas Chinese.

How does Putonghua inherit the status of Cantonese?

Now Cantonese is not the most powerful dialect among overseas Chinese, and its position overseas is gradually being replaced by Mandarin, which also depends on two points.

One of them is the reform and opening up, especially after the new century, the main sources of overseas immigrants in China have changed.

Take new york as an example. In the last few decades of the last century, most people from China who immigrated to the United States came from southern provinces. But nowadays, more and more immigrants come from the north, and a large part of them have settled in Flushing, a suburb of new york. Today, Flushing has surpassed the Cantonese-dominated Chinatown and become the largest Chinese community in new york. In Flushing, you can almost seamlessly connect China's fashion consumption places: tea shops, hot pot restaurants, nightclubs ... In contrast, the statue of Dacheng Zhisheng Confucius curled up in Chinatown in lower Manhattan is like a historical relic.

On the other hand, the wave of laid-off workers in the 1990s led to a large number of laid-off residents in the north where state-owned enterprises were the main industrial forms. They had nowhere to make a living and had to take risks to work overseas.

At this time, overseas Chinese, from top to bottom, have been shuffled into groups that speak Mandarin.

There is no need to lose Cantonese because of this. It may no longer stand in the center of overseas Chinese life stage, but its shadow is still projected on the curtain behind the stage, even on the audience belonging to foreigners who were originally separated from Chinese life.

Cantonese, like Panda and Kung Fu, has become an indispensable element in foreign imagination and description of China.