Not only Uyghurs and Tibetans are now fighting for their minority languages, as the Catalans do in Spain. Now, South Chinese are also protesting Beijing's "national language".
(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
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Beijing, China. We "ethnic minorities" noted with interest the thousands of Cantonese people in southern China who went to the streets in late July to fight for their language, Cantonese.
This happened after the Beijing regime increased the pressure for Mandarin ("putonghua", "the national language") to be the main language on the television channels in Guangzhou (Canton). The march probably ended peacefully.
Inspired by the language protests within the ethnic majority group with the Han Chinese in the Canton region, the Uighur minority in western China has written many articles on the matter online. And the blogs on the language website TibetAss.com were also full of articles with titles such as: "Maybe the Spanish language question has inspired the Chinese?"
Several point out that when Spanish dictator Francisco Franco forbade the Catalan people to use his language, he created a scar that would not heal. During this year's Soccer World Cup in South Africa we could see the Catalan flags at the stadiums. In this way, the language dispute in Spain reached the rest of the world.
Chinese authorities should take Franco's policy as a warning, in order to avoid the division created by the repression of local dialects. They should take this advice and make the dialects and languages Cantonese, Minan, Hakka, Tibetan and Uighur into official Chinese languages. In this way, they could strengthen the different groups' sense of belonging to China.
Will let language die out
However, an article in the Beijing Evening News temperamentally stated that "promoting mandarin is an important national policy, which does not need to be discussed further or questioned. What can be questioned and debated is whether Cantonese, as a local dialect, will die out on its own over time due to increased urbanization, or whether its annihilation will be accelerated by human intervention. "
But "Cantonese" is by no means a minority language: it is a pure Han Chinese dialect for over 70 million people in Guandong Province, Hong Kong and Macau. If this language will be neglected to such an extent that it can hardly survive, what about the situation of Tibetan or other ethnic languages in this "great unified country"?
I vividly remember that in 2002, while still a member of the “system,” I went to Yunnan (a southwestern province of China) to attend a literary conference on the poetry of ethnic minorities. There I heard a Beijing envoy say outright that “it has been many years since the party's committee leader Wan Li stated that ethnic minorities who have never had a written language do not need a written language today. And the minorities who have a written language should just let it die out, our whole system uses a 'unified language', the Mandarin language, the male language. »
The broadcaster looked around at the poets with a minority background and then said in a deep voice: "And I completely agree with this statement."
Everyone was shocked by the arrogant tone of this broadcast. I took notes, and for the first time, I began to pay attention to this topic.
Imprisoned during the Cultural Revolution
I once interviewed an old Tibetan writer in Lhasa. He was deeply concerned about the state of the Tibetan language today, but said: “If we emphasize the importance of the Tibetan language, we will be accused of narrow-minded nationalism. The official guidelines of the authorities are as follows: The higher the level of the Tibetan language, the stronger the religious awareness and thus the reactionary behavior. "
The name of this ancient Tibetan writer is Tashi Tsering. His ideas and thoughts are actually very progressive and modern. When he was young, he returned to his homeland after completing his studies in the United States, but he was imprisoned during the Cultural Revolution in the 60s. In his old age, he established, and provided financial support to, 72 schools in the poor and remote areas of the Tibetan U-Tsang region.
Furthermore, in 2007 he submitted an official statement to the Autonomous Tibetan People's Congress. Referring to the serious crisis facing the Tibetan language, he said:
"Using Tibetan in schools, and establishing an education system for the study of the Tibetan language, is not only important for cultivating thinking people, it also means the most fundamental human rights of the Tibetan people. This is the foundation that can create equality between ethnic minorities. "
An article in a Cantonese publication states that due to the central authorities' pressure for cultural unity in recent years, many places have witnessed the original cultural features slowly disappearing. This is what the Cantonese are now worried about. Cantonese can still take to the streets to fight for their language, but what about Tibetans? What about Uighurs? Mongolians?
Cantonese can openly and in black and white demand: "I am willing to speak Mandarin, but do not force me to speak Mandarin!"
Different treatment
But we "ethnic minorities" can only see slogans hanging at the entrances to our schools in Lhasa, which read:
"I am a child of China, I like to speak Mandarin", or "Mandarin is the language of our school". And no one dares say a word.
Is not this to "treat those on the inside and those on the outside differently," as it is called in a Chinese proverb? Despite the common claim that we in China live in "a large family", which embraces 56 ethnic minorities, it seems that Han Chinese and "ethnic minorities" are treated very differently.
We all hope to be able to live in a place where we can freely defend our own language in the same way we would defend our home. As Tsegyam La, a former Tibetan teacher, sarcastically remarked on Twitter:
“When thousands of Cantonese gather to take to the streets, demonstrate and fight for their own language, the curtain falls and peace is maintained; If thousands of Tibetan protesters had taken to the streets and fought for their language, they would have been arrested, imprisoned and accused of being 'Tibetan separatists calling for division'. ■
Translated from English by Silje Bekeng
Born in Llhasa, Tsering Woeser is one of Tibet's leading writers. She has previously been under house arrest in Beijing for several years. Woeser writes exclusively for Ny Tid.
