Shanghai Is an International City

I started Chinese class at Fudan University last week. My class is very international, with students from the US, Austria, Tajikstan, Turkey, France, Japan, Korea, etc. Actually there are a lot of Central Asian students studying Chinese here (many of them are little thugs in training, not suprising since their necessarily wealthy parents are probably involved in organized crime, as most wealthy Tajiks, etc. are wealthy for that reason). Luckily for me, in the new global world the lingua franca is English, and so most of them speak it quite well (although our Chinese is still in the development stage).

Shanghai is a much more diverse and international city than Taipei was. First of all, there are many, many expats here (on business, often, but also working for NGOs/the government or studying Chinese); then Shanghai is a place that tourists visit, of which there are also many (no one went to Taiwan to sightsee). But perhaps most importantly, China is an incredibly diverse country and people from all parts come to Shanghai to make their fortunes. The far west of China (the province is called Xinjiang, pronounced Shin-jahng) is part of the old silk road, with oasis towns, huge deserts, and ancient caves full of carvings celebrating Christian, Muslim, Buddhist and Hindu religions (all of these had their devotees then). The people there are ethnically different than Chinese along the coast: they look like Afghanis, and mostly Muslim today. In Shanghai, the men still wear little flat-topped hats and vests (sometimes the women wear head scarves but this is not as common) and often own noodle shops or sell dried apricots and fruitcake on the street. Their food is very distinct too: they don't eat pork being Muslim, and eat flat bread (sort of like Indian nan) instead of rice. I am hopeful of visiting Xinjiang at some point and seeing the camels, the bazaars, and the ancient Silk road cities.

Each province in China actually is quite distinct: they all have their own mutually incomprehensible "dialect" which is really a different language (the government tends to gloss over all differences in their propaganda), and different styles of architecture, food, clothes, etc.This means that Chinese people have a lot of tolerance for my attempts to speak Chinese: they're used to puzzling out weird accents and broken Mandarin just from other Chinese people! However, the writing system (which isn't phonetic) is the same everywhere, and this does make it easier to communicate. The Shanghai natives also have their own language (Shanghaiese) and I hear it in the street often. I like the diversity of it all: very different from Taiwan, one of the most homogeneous societies in the world!