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Impressions of Language in China

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Beverly Hong Fincher
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Extract

From 12 October to 13 November 1971 I listened to various forms of Chinese as it is spoken in the People's Republic. I listened with the ear of a Chinese educated – after leaving Amoy as a small child – in various dialects as they are spoken by Chinese in South-East Asia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan and the United States. I was pleased both as a Chinese and as a professional linguist to discover immediately that language as well as a Chinese face remains a social passport in the People's Republic just as in Chinese communities elsewhere. I entered at Shumchun through the gate for Chinese with my three-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Leta. Leta is even more fair-skinned and blonde than her American father, and an army guard on the bridge was somewhat startled to see a westerner coming in that way.

Type
Report from China
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 50 , April 1972 , pp. 333 - 340
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1972

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References

* I am grateful to the Social Science Research Council, and also to the Chinese studies programme of the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, for contributions to the expenses of my trip.Google Scholar

1. See my article in the Washington Post “Outlook” section, 13 02 1972.Google ScholarPubMed

2. This is a problem with which UN interpreters and translators have had some difficulty, judging from my conversations and some press reports.Google Scholar