STANDARD LANGUAGE: Primary students in Qingdao City, east China's Shandong Province, participate in a Mandarin promotion activity on September 11, 2009 (LI ZIHENG)

On April 28, Guo Degang, a well-known crosstalk performer from the Beijing-based Deyun Xiangsheng Troupe, held a special show at the Shanghai International Gymnastic Center. The theater was far more crowded than it was in 2006 when Guo first put on a show in Shanghai.

But Guo's audiences in Shanghai were largely migrants from northern provinces. Very few native Shanghai people attended his performance due to a language barrier, though Guo's Beijing dialect is similar to Mandarin, China's standard language that is taught in schools across the country.

A similar problem has also occurred with Zhou Libo, a famous comedian who uses the Shanghai dialect on stage. Though Zhou frequently gives performance in Beijing, local Beijingers are rarely present at his shows.

Many entertainers have complained that they were unable to reach audiences outside their home cities.

"When we go to Beijing, we can only sing in Mandarin, which cannot express properly what we originally want to say with the lyrics," said Mei'er, a singer of Top Floor Circus, a rap band from Shanghai.

Speaking Mandarin

According to statistics on the website of China's Ministry of Education, the country has more than 80 dialects and languages among its 56 ethnic groups.

Communicating across various dialects has long been a problem in China. In the early 20th century, some Shanghai intellectuals launched the Common Chinese Language Movement to create a common vernacular medium for national communication. The Beijing dialect was chosen as the pronunciation standard, due to the large number of speakers and its relative simplicity.

Wen Zhao, a student at the Beijing Foreign Studies University (BFSU), feels more comfortable using the Beijing dialect. "I am from northeastern Liaoning Province. The dialect of Liaoning always features in comedies and if I speak the Liaoning dialect, people begin laughing as soon as I start speaking," he told Beijing Review.

Wen's words were echoed by quite a few young people, who don't want to be labeled as outsiders by speaking their local dialects.

Wu Xiaoyang, who comes from southwest China's Sichuan Province, felt like an outsider during her first semester at BFSU as she could only speak the Sichuan dialect. "All my teachers in primary and middle schools spoke the Sichuan dialect. I really could not get used to the new language environment in Beijing," she said.

But Wu is lucky to some extent. For most Chinese people, adjusting to the Beijing dialect, which Mandarin is based on, is much easier than learning the dialects of southern regions of China such as Shanghainese or Cantonese.

Zheng Qiang is from Anhui Province and he stayed in Shanghai after graduating from Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Zheng feels uncomfortable when some Shanghai locals speak Shanghainese at meetings. "It is actually offensive for them to do this as they know quite a few people at the meetings don't understand Shanghai dialect," Zheng said.

Chen Yizhu, a woman from Jiangsu Province, has been working in a law firm in Hong Kong for eight months, but she can only understand about half the Cantonese words she hears. "They employ me for my professional knowledge, but I am not prepared to learn another language for the job."

For Zheng and Chen, to spread Mandarin is necessary since it can avoid the inconveniences caused by the differences of the dialects.

Maintaining identity

In 1986, spreading Mandarin was the prime task of language regulators nationwide. Most of the broadcast programs on TV and radio are required to be in Mandarin and announcers are required to pass a test of Mandarin before they are employed. School teachers all over the country have been encouraged to speak Mandarin in classes.

However, this emphasis on Mandarin prompted growing complaints in recent years that fewer and fewer young people are conversant in local dialects.

"Now it is very hard to find a young announcer who can speak solid Hokkien dialect," said Chen Zhilong, a producer from southeast China's Fujian TV Station. "They all speak perfect Mandarin and, judging from the pronunciation, it is hard to tell where they are from."