One Step Forward, 1.3 Billion Steps Back

Here’s a missive from 2008, just after the sacred Beijing Olympics when I finally could get a visa to China again:

Not that I smoke joints anymore but I do get disillusioned sometimes about my life goal which is to make Cantonese a world language. Here I was all happy about getting more and more students whom I can Canto-groom, thus making my dream of world domination a reality, and then I have to realise that there’s a province right under my nose which is hard at work making my dream come to nought. Zip zero and all that.

The province I’m talking about is Guangdong, home, nay, cradle of the very Cantonese language without which I wouldn’t be here. But as I’m toiling away with the spreading of the sacred Canto-word, it seems that Guangdong is giving up the holy Canto-ghost.

Last weekend I went to Long Tsuen (Dragon River) in the north-ish of the province and: Mandarin has become the new English! It used to be that if you spoke to very Canto-looking people they answered you in English. Now it’s bloody Mandarin! I address people in my Norwegian accented and therefore Canto-sounding Cantonese, and they answer me in Mandarin. Putong bloody hua.

I even met a couple who were obviously Canto natives; they spoke Cantonese to each other. But to their child they only spoke awfully accented Putonghua, not even wanting the child to learn the language in the province in which they live! I asked them why and they said they didn’t want their child to learn Cantonese.

This is going on all over the province. Will boring, communist party meeting, set in stone Mandarin win the day after all? Stand up, ye people of Hong Kong, soon to be the last bastion of Canto! I am thoroughly disillusioned and want to kill myself – linguistically at least. I have said many times that it’s no fun fighting a downhill battle, but this? It’s like two Hong Kong parents talking to their children in awfully accented English, not wanting them to learn the language in which … hang on, that’s already happening.

What is it with Cantonese, the most fun, vibrant, happening language on earth, that makes everyone want to kill it off?

Well it will be over my dead, stinking, putrefying body, that’s for sure. Stand up to be counted all you people out there who don’t want the fascist, dull, we-rule-and-own-the world, nationalistic, anti-fun-and-variety, support-every-awful-regime and kill-all-initiative language Mandarin, to win. Having lots of money, killing the whole world with fumes and being able to host a big sporting event isn’t everything you know.