a private inquiry into national schizophrenia (I)

I thought I could learn Hokkien. After all, isn't that just another Chinese dialect. So my lesson with K started from the basics, pleasantries, food, etcetera. I had no problem accepting that the Hokkien version of the classic Mandarin greeting I've eaten sounds more like Slovenian than Chinese. Its exoticness borderlines hilarity: "Wa Chia Boein". And it is actually misleading to spell "Boein" with a "B" as the consonant in fact squats miraculously between "P" and "B". For that, I had to imitate K's lip movements quite closely. It involved first forming a perfect 'O' followed by a prompt yet gentle touching of the lips to let out what sounds like a halfway air kiss, into which a little P-ness was somehow injected by drawing your lower lip slightly backwards. As I repeated merrily to commit the new consonant to my repertoire, K had the uncontrollable urge to shush me because I sounded like a squashed spring mattress-Go figure!

Then, it became apparent that "tears" are in fact "waste discharge from eyes" which in turn can mean the "eye gunk". And "eyes" also sounds the same as "meat" etcetera, which is nothing like Mandarin. And to my great frustration, they often don't correspond with written Chinese. "And there isn't a Hokkien thesaurus or grammar book!!" I thought it was a legitimate exclamation.

So apart from ensuring his military supremacy in the after life, Emperor Chin from whichever year BC did a thorough job to unify the Chinese language. That is, one written form based on the dominant northern dialects irrespective of its applicability to the minority dialects in the south. So basically, Hokkien, amongst many other southern dialects, survived as an oral language.

A written language so detached from its oral forms has two implications: the southerners would remain less educated than their northern counterparts; and they would remain isolated from the imperial bureaucratic system unless they chose to conform. So my impetuous guess is that it all comes down to conformity and control. The diversity of languages would encourage cultural and ethnic diversity and would in turn encourage political, economic and social dichotomy. So for good reasons, Hokkien amongst others must remain dialects and the Hokkien people under the umbrella racial identity of Han Chinese, despite that for a Mandarin to talk to a Hokkien, he would need an interpreter. And ouch, when you eat "meat", you eat an "eye".

I wonder if the southerners in fact attempted to perserve and develop their own languages, and if so what happened to those attempts. Or, has it always been a peaceful subordination to the cultural instructions from the imperial courts thousands of miles north? Or, was it even necessary to give a damn. After all, the southerners could take shelter in the safety of the distance and evolve at their own pace.

I wish I could travel back in the Tardis and perceive the moment of unification with my own eyes. For Han Chinese, the recording of history has always been an expensive and blood-stained exercise. For all we know, the grassroots history is apt to disappear without a trace so that what's left are the public relation campaigns of imperial courts dynasty after dynasty. Yet we live cozily in our micro-reality and educate our kids with the opposite of truth. (To be cont'd)