The death of Cantonese in America
I’m sorry I haven’t posted in the last three weeks, but I was home in New York, having an uneventful but welcome vacation, seeing friends and family, and experiencing a lovely bout of bronchitis despite the unusually terrific weather there. Now that I’m back in Beijing (as of yesterday), I expect to be back to posting here as well, despite a looming deadline next week for my book! Of course, now that I’m in China, I came across an interesting article in the LA Times about the pressures on the American Cantonese community to learn Mandarin: business, politics, entertainment have all moved toward Mandarin as the dominant language since the onslaught of immigration from parts of China beyond Guangdong began twenty-five or thirty years ago. It’s an interesting look at the culture of chinatowns and the cultural differences contingent on this language divide.
