"A brain needs washing if there is a problem, just as clothes need washing if they're dirty and a kidney needs washing if it's sick," said Jiang Yudui, chairman of the Beijing-friendly China Civic Education Promotion Association of Hong Kong, according to news reports. Jiang's comments in July came at the same time that tens of thousands, including many parents pushing their children in strollers, took to the streets to protest against the plan.
No I do not. That's just what you teach to your citizens. When the US took over Puerto Rico, kids there damn well learned English, the American history, the national anthem, and the star spangled banner in school. Do you call that assimilation? Or is that OK because it's the US that did it?
If that's not assimilation, then I have no clue what the term means.
> "Or is that OK because it's the US that did it? "
If your argument relies on all Americans being hypocritical sycophants of the American government, it's a bad argument. Criticism of America is mainstream in America. One can be American and be critical of the American government, just as one can be Chinese and be critical of the Chinese government. In fact there is ample reason for both to be critical of both.
EDIT: Actually do not call it assimilation. Learning Mandarin as a shared language does not mean eradicating Cantonese, and most Hongkongers are ethnic Chinese and share much of the same culture, there's nothing to assimilate.
Wiki: Cultural assimilation is the process in which a minority group or culture comes to resemble a dominant group[1] or assume the values, behaviors, and beliefs of another group.
Mandarin is a dialect, just like Cantonese.
China has been actively trying to eradicate Cantonese but mainly backfired. In Guangdong, no less.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guangzhou_Television_Cantone...
So yes, it is assimilation when you force your dialect on others.
> most Hongkongers are ethnic Chinese and share much of the same cultuRe
I beg to differ. Mao destroyed a lot of cultural relics during the Cultural Revolution. Things that used to be wide spread such as idol worshiping is no longer seen in China and only in Hong Kong. Hong Kong resembles more of the traditional China culture than China does today.
Mandarin in Hong Kong as far as I know would've been strictly in addition to, not instead of Cantonese, much like learning English in Quebec.
So again, not assimilation.
> Mao destroyed a lot of cultural relics during the Cultural Revolution.
The relics may have been destroyed, but (most of) the people lived, some still living. Culture doesn't die with the relics, it lives with the people.
> Things that used to be wide spread such as idol worshiping is no longer seen in China
It's certainly less wide spread now, especially in big cities. But it's still common in small towns and villages. Dive deeper next time you visit China.
I would have to disagree with this. Those people are in their 70s now. And without relics, there is no anchor for cultural values.
Cambodia did the same thing and it has been a disaster to their culture.
The destruction of the relics was on purpose. Hence “cultural” revolution.
> its stated goal was to preserve 'true' Communist ideology in the country by purging remnants of capitalist and traditional elements from Chinese society, and to re-impose Mao Zedong Thought as the dominant ideology within the Party
It was a deliberate attack on Chinese culture to solidify Maos power.
Your statement sounds too much like marketing speak without any substance. I think I heard it before. Oh yeah: Thor Ragnorak. It is low effort.
Relics without the people are pretty meaningless. There's very little you can learn about the ancient Egyptian culture even with all the preserved relics.
Sadly we lose tradition, heritage, and culture with the passing of every person. That's universal, Cultural Revolution or not, east or west. But personally I've seen new relics and artifacts recreated after the end of Cultural Revolution, so all is not lost.
> Your statement sounds too much like marketing speak without any substance. I think I heard it before. Oh yeah: Thor Ragnorak.
Well if it's cliche it's only because it's true. BTW never saw that movie, or any of the recent Marvel junk.
Give me a break dude. Are you free to criticize your government or not? I freely criticize mine, and you should do the same.
But we are talking about Hong Kong here. And it has been a model of restraint here, if you are being honest with yourself.
Puerto Rico is a poor example, especially since they seem to want to be inducted into the U.S. officially as a state! Hong Kong does not seem to share the same sentiment with Beijing.
No it is not. It's only assimilation if you aim to wipe out the local language and culture and replace them with your own.
So it's not assimilation in either case, Puerto Rico or Hong Kong, as the US did not attempt to eradicate Spanish, nor is China trying to eradicate Cantonese.
People who accuse China of assimilation are surely smart enough to know the difference. The thing is, they have already made up their minds, China is evil no matter what it does.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puerto_Rico
History does tend to repeat itself, doesn't it.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statehood_movement_in_Puerto_R...
And don't put gibberish Cantonese scripts as an example, it's called 白字 which means illiterate writing style. You can type that online in forums and IM, SMS to friends but it's not something official nor standard. Should Ebonics be taught in schools instead of standard English?
Spoken Cantonese is a different language from spoken Mandarin, with different grammar and vocabulary, and when you write them down you get correspondingly different written languages. That written Cantonese hasn't undergone a formal standardization the way Mandarin did in the early 20th century doesn't make written Cantonese gibberish, just not fully standardized. And written Cantonese isn't only used for memeing on forums or text-speak, it's also widely used for casual writing in newspaper columns or in advertisement, or to authentically transcribe spoken Cantonese (rather than paraphrasing in Mandarin). See also:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Written_Cantonese
https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/index.php?s=written+ca...
[Edit: That kids were (and perhaps are) taught to read and write in Mandarin at school using Cantonese sound values, rather than writing in Cantonese, also doesn't say all that much about Cantonese as a written language. Rather, it demonstrates that Hong Kong is a diglossic (well, polyglossic) society.]
Completely wrong. A Chinese character is more or less equivalent to a word in English/French. Are all the words the same in English and French? Can you look at French text and know what it's saying if you didn't speak French already? Someone who speaks only Cantonese can read and understand text written by Mandarin speakers without any issue. The reverse is less true, see below.
> Spoken Cantonese is a different language from spoken Mandarin, with different grammar and vocabulary, and when you write them down you get correspondingly different written languages.
Wrong again. They use largely the same grammar and vocabulary.
Because Cantonese is ancient Chinese, over the years they have lost track of what semantic characters to use for some of the Cantonese words.
Tracking down which semantic character corresponds to which Cantonese word could be done if there's enough interest and funding for such work. Once the mapping is done, you will be able to write down Cantonese and have it understood all over China.
Since the work hasn't been done, you can only write down Cantonese with the help of some phonetic characters, which denote only pronunciation but not meaning. It's not gibberish, but neither is it proper written Cantonese. EDIT: Even in its current form, written Cantonese is still 80% intelligible to Mandarin speakers.
Most Chinese characters are monosyllabic, and most Chinese words are polysyllabic consisting of multiple characters. A Chinese character is a morpheme, and it also happens that many common words are also single character morphemes.
> Someone who speaks only Cantonese can read and understand text written by Mandarin speakers without any issue.
Because we've all been taught to read and write in Mandarin from the very beginning of our education. Again, Hong Kong is a diglossic society.
> They use largely the same grammar and vocabulary. Because Cantonese is ancient Chinese, over the years they have lost track of what semantic characters to use for some of the Cantonese words.
They share a lot of grammar and vocabulary (...but not all of it) because they share a language ancestor. Cantonese is not ancient Chinese, but it's a descendant that conserved a lot more consonants than Mandarin (and a lot of sound merger is actually happening right now in Hong Kong over the last 100 years, but it's commonly derided as "lazy sound").
> Once the mapping is done, you will be able to write down Cantonese and have it understood all over China. Since the work hasn't been done, you can only write down Cantonese with the help of some phonetic characters, which denote only pronunciation but not meaning. It's not gibberish, but neither is it proper written Cantonese.
See [https://books.google.ca/books?id=pFnP_FXf-lAC&pg=PA51] for a description of common strategies for writing Cantonese. Phonetic borrowing is one strategy, and the most common one, yes, but that's no different than characters in standard Chinese, the vast majority of which are a radical with a semantic category (but not a complete meaning) + a phonetic component.
A Mandarin-only speaker can decide for themselves how intelligible that colloquial Cantonese exchange on page 52 is, what with the difference in vocabulary and grammar.
Most modern Chinese words are polysyllabic, but these words are the same in Cantonese and Mandarin. Your comparison to English and French is still false.
> > Someone who speaks only Cantonese can read and understand text written by Mandarin speakers without any issue.
> Because we've all been taught to read and write in Mandarin from the very beginning of our education.
I doubt that. Suppose you were only ever taught written Cantonese. I believe you'd still be able to read Mandarin writings, simply because you would still recognize all the words.
> They share a lot of grammar and vocabulary
So they are not so different after all.
> Phonetic borrowing is one strategy, and the most common one, yes, but that's no different than characters in standard Chinese, the vast majority of which are a radical with a semantic category (but not a complete meaning) + a phonetic component.
Phonetic borrowing, or other ways of making up new characters, might not have been necessary. If we could be bothered to trace the origin of a made-up Cantonese character and find the original Chinese character.
For example, 冇 is wholly unnecessary when we already have 無.
Even with the lazy approach of making up Cantonese specific characters willy nilly, I counted only dozens of them from the Wikipedia article you linked. So how different is Cantonese really from Mandarin, besides the pronunciation?
However, spewing blatant lies about your own language, culture, or heritage invites only ridicule and scorn from honest people who know any about Hong Kong and China.
Is there anything I said that's factually untrue? Or are you afraid of the truth?
The treaty is dead. The people still in the streets have other agendas that have nothing to do with rebelling against "assimilation".
Here is that agenda, also known as the 5 demands:
1. Kill the extradition bill. Done.
2. Retract use of the word “riot” to classify the protests.
3. Release and drop charges for protesters who have been arrested.
4. An inquiry into the widespread, well documented police brutality.
5. Universal suffrage.
In other words, they want their right to peacefully protest & vote for their leaders. To claim they have such rights already would be to ignore their words and their plight entirely.
https://www.vox.com/world/2019/8/22/20804294/hong-kong-prote...
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/59nbp5/hong-kong-stabbing...
Uninformed opinions are cheap, StarTrek is fun, downvoting is easy. But the truth, that pesky truth, is just so darn inconvenient...