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I wonder if Mandarin speaking majority of China has a feeling of supremacy over the other dialect speakers equivalent to white supremacy towards non-white people in the USA?
It does seem that Cantonese have so much pride in their own culture, especially the Hong Kong people, that they have almost created their own separate national identity. I would not be surprised if there were Hong Kong Cantonese supremacists.
I even wonder if Cantonese have supremacy feelings over other Chinese speakers who are Non-Cantonese speakers.
I think the simple answer is, yes, but it's not very noticeable in every day life, imo. Chinese, but also Japanese and Koreans are all fairly nationalistic, and their views on nationalism do have an ethnic/racial bias. Many Hong Kongers are very proud, to a fault, of their city state. I dated a HK girl back in college and she definitely looked down upon mainlanders. Was it really supremacy, I'm not sure... She thinks HK's downfall is Beijings fault, so much so, she has immigrated to the US and abandoned her city, her parents have followed her as well.
It may be controversial, but I do think Beijing is fighting a cultural war with mainly the Cantonese in the south. Most of the smaller minorities have been given more rights to teach their local languages and cultures, but from my understanding and anyone can correct me if I'm wrong, schools in Guangzhou and Hong Kong (to a lesser extent) are now required to use Mandarin as the main teaching language and Cantonese has been moved to language classes and is no longer the language used to teach other class materials.
I think the simple answer is, yes, but it's not very noticeable in every day life, imo. Chinese, but also Japanese and Koreans are all fairly nationalistic, and their views on nationalism do have an ethnic/racial bias. Many Hong Kongers are very proud, to a fault, of their city state. I dated a HK girl back in college and she definitely looked down upon mainlanders. Was it really supremacy, I'm not sure... She thinks HK's downfall is Beijings fault, so much so, she has immigrated to the US and abandoned her city, her parents have followed her as well.
It may be controversial, but I do think Beijing is fighting a cultural war with mainly the Cantonese in the south. Most of the smaller minorities have been given more rights to teach their local languages and cultures, but from my understanding and anyone can correct me if I'm wrong, schools in Guangzhou and Hong Kong (to a lesser extent) are now required to use Mandarin as the main teaching language and Cantonese has been moved to language classes and is no longer the language used to teach other class materials.
Mandarin is mandatory in all schools of China (by policy). However it is enforced in various degrees.
In Sichuan province, for example, many schools especially rural schools still teach in Sichuan dialect. However, Sichuan dialect is relatively similar to standard Mandarin, so people who learned Sichuan dialect only can still communicate with other Chinese people. Cantonese, on the other hand, is completely unintelligible to those who never learned it, so people have to switch to Mandarin to outsiders. When the classroom has students from Hunan, Jiangxi, Sichuan... the teacher cannot speak Cantonese in class, because some students will understand nothing.
All major cities in south China are losing local dialects: Shanghai, Guangzhou, Nanjing, Wuhan... No exception.
I wonder if Mandarin speaking majority of China has a feeling of supremacy over the other dialect speakers equivalent to white supremacy towards non-white people in the USA?
It does seem that Cantonese have so much pride in their own culture, especially the Hong Kong people, that they have almost created their own separate national identity. I would not be surprised if there were Hong Kong Cantonese supremacists.
I even wonder if Cantonese have supremacy feelings over other Chinese speakers who are Non-Cantonese speakers.
Does anyone think so?
China has many sub-cultures, and Cantonese are just 5% of the population.
It is true that many Cantonese people are proud, and sometimes even "supremacist". However, the same can be said to Shanghainese, Beijingers, and so on. Basically people from every province have a strong regional identity and are generally proud of it for different reasons.
In terms of stereotype in China, Cantonese people are "wealthy", "open", but "physically unattractive", "loud". If you read Chinese, you can find people from different regions of China say very nasty things about each other online. This is something you never observe in America.
China has many sub-cultures, and Cantonese are just 5% of the population.
It is true that many Cantonese people are proud, and sometimes even "supremacist". However, the same can be said to Shanghainese, Beijingers, and so on. Basically people from every province have a strong regional identity and are generally proud of it for different reasons.
In terms of stereotype in China, Cantonese people are "wealthy", "open", but "physically unattractive", "loud". If you read Chinese, you can find people from different regions of China say very nasty things about each other online. This is something you never observe in America.
Yes. It is true that regional discrimination is all over China. However, I think the Cantonese hold the crown as being the most prided and prejudice against all other Chinese groups.
Although, part of it is just simply Cantonese pride, however Hong Kong also plays a big role in this due to their 155 years of British colonial history becoming the first Chinese territory to be modernized and constantly keeping up with the pop culture of the world especially western European style cultures while China was always completely slow in keeping up to date, especially after Mao Ze Dong closed China's relations and interaction with the rest of the world. Including Hong Kong's entertainment was the first Chinese entertainment to fully develop and become popular and is widely available in Guangdong Province. This is one of the big factors, perhaps the largest in why Cantonese speakers in Guangdong, especially the Guangzhou people for a very long time have looked up to Hong Kong as the standardized modern Cantonese culture, but also as a more trendy Chinese culture compared to the rest of China and the influence is still there, especially with the entertainment being available and all of these factors make them even feel more prouder of their Cantonese culture and language and to keep it alive.
Whereas in other parts of China that have other dialects, they do not have the popular entertainment like Hong Kong and do not have that same influence to stay as proud of their dialects. It is not to say they do not have take pride in their dialectal culture, but the influence to encourage them to keep it alive is not as strong like with the Hong Kong entertainment's influence to it's own Hong Kong city and to the Guangdong Province. So even though, there has been a tremendous influx of other Chinese regional groups often speaking Mandarin into Guangzhou, the original Cantonese speaking population is still large and with the popular Hong Kong entertainment being so widely available, both the original Cantonese speakers and Mandarin speakers in Guangzhou enjoy the Hong Kong entertainment and often many of the Mandarin speakers will pick up on the Cantonese a little bit and then slowly learn along with Guangzhou Cantonese speakers.
It is interesting, the overseas Chinatowns in America/Canada and even in western Europe for a very long time were overwhelmingly Cantonese and they often were more like extensions of Hong Kong culture on some level even though many of the Cantonese were from mainland Guangdong because with the popularity Hong Kong entertainment being available, it played a big role and the western cultures are very similar to Hong Kong's western influence and that also plays a role as well. But later on around the 1990s and afterwards, when an influx of other Chinese populations that did not speak Cantonese and often Mandarin speaking began arriving, just like Hong Kong and Guangzhou, the Cantonese speakers detested them because of the cultural especially linguistic differences and felt threatened that their Cantonese culture influence may disappear and feeling pressured they may need to learn Mandarin since for a very long time they were able to just simply communicate with almost any Chinese speaker in Cantonese. However, the Cantonese speakers that could speak Mandarin had a more like bittersweet relation with the Mandarin speakers; they got along sometimes linguistically, but culturally not too much. The Cantonese that did not learn Mandarin were more biased towards the Mandarin speakers, especially the overseas born Cantonese that did not learn Mandarin with their family actually were the most biased towards them and did not want to associate with general Chinese culture as a whole and often rather associated as simply being American, Canadian, English or whatever European nation they were born to.
Yes. It is true that regional discrimination is all over China. However, I think the Cantonese hold the crown as being the most prided and prejudice against all other Chinese groups.
Although, part of it is just simply Cantonese pride, however Hong Kong also plays a big role in this due to their 155 years of British colonial history becoming the first Chinese territory to be modernized and constantly keeping up with the pop culture of the world especially western European style cultures while China was always completely slow in keeping up to date, especially after Mao Ze Dong closed China's relations and interaction with the rest of the world. Including Hong Kong's entertainment was the first Chinese entertainment to fully develop and become popular and is widely available in Guangdong Province. This is one of the big factors, perhaps the largest in why Cantonese speakers in Guangdong, especially the Guangzhou people for a very long time have looked up to Hong Kong as the standardized modern Cantonese culture, but also as a more trendy Chinese culture compared to the rest of China and the influence is still there, especially with the entertainment being available and all of these factors make them even feel more prouder of their Cantonese culture and language and to keep it alive.
Whereas in other parts of China that have other dialects, they do not have the popular entertainment like Hong Kong and do not have that same influence to stay as proud of their dialects. It is not to say they do not have take pride in their dialectal culture, but the influence to encourage them to keep it alive is not as strong like with the Hong Kong entertainment's influence to it's own Hong Kong city and to the Guangdong Province. So even though, there has been a tremendous influx of other Chinese regional groups often speaking Mandarin into Guangzhou, the original Cantonese speaking population is still large and with the popular Hong Kong entertainment being so widely available, both the original Cantonese speakers and Mandarin speakers in Guangzhou enjoy the Hong Kong entertainment and often many of the Mandarin speakers will pick up on the Cantonese a little bit and then slowly learn along with Guangzhou Cantonese speakers.
It is interesting, the overseas Chinatowns in America/Canada and even in western Europe for a very long time were overwhelmingly Cantonese and they often were more like extensions of Hong Kong culture on some level even though many of the Cantonese were from mainland Guangdong because with the popularity Hong Kong entertainment being available, it played a big role and the western cultures are very similar to Hong Kong's western influence and that also plays a role as well. But later on around the 1990s and afterwards, when an influx of other Chinese populations that did not speak Cantonese and often Mandarin speaking began arriving, just like Hong Kong and Guangzhou, the Cantonese speakers detested them because of the cultural especially linguistic differences and felt threatened that their Cantonese culture influence may disappear and feeling pressured they may need to learn Mandarin since for a very long time they were able to just simply communicate with almost any Chinese speaker in Cantonese. However, the Cantonese speakers that could speak Mandarin had a more like bittersweet relation with the Mandarin speakers; they got along sometimes linguistically, but culturally not too much. The Cantonese that did not learn Mandarin were more biased towards the Mandarin speakers, especially the overseas born Cantonese that did not learn Mandarin with their family actually were the most biased towards them and did not want to associate with general Chinese culture as a whole and often rather associated as simply being American, Canadian, English or whatever European nation they were born to.
Hong Kong people "discriminate" Cantonese speakers from mainland as much as Mandarin speakers, if they can tell the difference. The HK vs mainland thing should not be understood as a language or cultural conflicts only.
Mainlanders do not look up to HKers any more (compared to decades ago). So sometimes they become very angry when HKers reveal the discrimination.
Anyway, most young overseas Chinese can speak Mandarin now, even if their native language is Cantonese. Occasionally you still meet a young person who only speaks Cantonese. Typically such people are not interested in Chinese culture at all, and they only learned Cantonese because their parents speak it at home, and they cannot write any Chinese character.
The han are supposed to be the center of the world.
The rest of the world is divided into barbarian sectors. Strangely, america is called mei guo "beautiful country".
There is one chinese supremacist on this board. He's very angry, xenophobic, nationalist, and dislikes dark people and anglos. He also despises tibetean and tawainese independence.
I wonder if Mandarin speaking majority of China has a feeling of supremacy over the other dialect speakers equivalent to white supremacy towards non-white people in the USA?
Yes. They love smack-talking other dialects and accents that aren't standard.
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Chinese think they are better than everyone period.
True. And that makes them an extra pleasant people than they already are.
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There is one chinese supremacist on this board.
More like 10.
Ok, maybe 3. Definitely more than 1.
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