rank-math domain was triggered too early. This is usually an indicator for some code in the plugin or theme running too early. Translations should be loaded at the init action or later. Please see Debugging in WordPress for more information. (This message was added in version 6.7.0.) in /home/teachbytes/public_html/wp-includes/functions.php on line 6114In many countries, cursing online about the government is so commonplace nobody bats an eye. But it\u2019s not such an easy task on China\u2019s heavily censored internet.<\/p>\n
That doesn\u2019t appear to have stopped residents of Guangzhou from venting their frustration after their city \u2014 a global manufacturing powerhouse home to 19 million people \u2014 became the epicenter of a nationwide Covid outbreak, prompting lockdown measures<\/a> yet again.<\/p>\n \u201cWe had to lock down in April, and then again in November,\u201d one resident posted on Weibo, China\u2019s restricted version of Twitter, on Monday \u2014 before peppering the post with profanities that included references to officials\u2019 mothers. \u201cThe government hasn\u2019t provided subsidies \u2014 do you think my rent doesn\u2019t cost money?\u201d<\/p>\n Other users left posts with directions that loosely translate to \u201cgo to hell,\u201d while some accused authorities of \u201cspouting nonsense\u201d \u2014 albeit in less polite phrasing.<\/p>\n Such colorful posts are remarkable not only because they represent growing public frustration<\/a> at China\u2019s unrelenting zero-Covid policy \u2014 which uses snap lockdowns, mass testing, extensive contact-tracing and quarantines to stamp out infections as soon as they emerge \u2014 but because they remain visible at all.<\/p>\n Normally such harsh criticisms of government policies<\/a> would be swiftly removed by the government\u2019s army of censors, yet these posts have remained untouched for days. And that is, most likely, because they are written in language few censors will fully understand.<\/p>\n These posts are in Cantonese, which originated in Guangzhou\u2019s surrounding province of Guangdong and is spoken by tens of millions of people across Southern China. It can be difficult to decipher by speakers of Mandarin \u2014 China\u2019s official language and the one favored by the government \u2014 especially in its written and often complex slang forms.<\/p>\n And this appears to be just the latest example of how Chinese people are turning to Cantonese \u2014 an irreverent tongue that offers rich possibilities for satire \u2014 to express discontent toward their government without attracting the notice of the all-seeing censors.<\/p>\n In September this year, US-based independent media monitoring organization China Digital Times noted numerous dissatisfied Cantonese posts slipping past censors in response to mass Covid testing requirements in Guangdong.<\/p>\n \u201cPerhaps because Weibo\u2019s content censorship system has difficulty recognizing the spelling of Cantonese characters, many posts in spicy, bold and straightforward language \u200bstill survive. But if the same content is written in Mandarin, it is likely to be blocked or deleted,\u201d said the organization<\/a>, which is affiliated with the University of California, Berkeley.<\/p>\n In nearby Cantonese-speaking Hong Kong, anti-government demonstrators in 2019 often used Cantonese wordplay both for protest slogans and to guard against potential surveillance by mainland Chinese authorities.<\/p>\n Now, Cantonese appears to be offering those fed-up with China\u2019s continuous zero-Covid lockdowns an avenue for more subtle displays of dissent.<\/p>\n Jean-Fran\u00e7ois Dupr\u00e9, an assistant professor of political science at Universit\u00e9 T\u00c9LUQ who has studied the language politics of Hong Kong, said the Chinese government\u2019s shrinking tolerance for public criticism has pushed its critics to \u201cinnovate\u201d in their communication.<\/p>\n \u201cIt does seem that using non-Mandarin forms of communication could enable dissenters to evade online censorship, at least for some time,\u201d Dupr\u00e9 said.<\/p>\n \u201cThis phenomenon testifies to the regime\u2019s lack of confidence and increasing paranoia, and of citizens\u2019 continuing eagerness to resist despite the risks and hurdles.\u201d<\/p>\n Though Cantonese shares much of its vocabulary and writing system with Mandarin, many of its slang terms, expletives and everyday phrases have no Mandarin equivalent. Its written form also sometimes relies on rarely used and archaic characters, or ones that mean something totally different in Mandarin, so Cantonese sentences can be difficult for Mandarin readers to understand.<\/p>\n Compared to Mandarin, Cantonese is highly colloquial, often informal, and lends itself easily to wordplay \u2014 making it well-suited for inventing and slinging barbs.<\/p>\n When Hong Kong was rocked by anti-government protests in 2019 \u2014 fueled in part by fears Beijing was encroaching on the city\u2019s autonomy, freedoms and culture \u2014 these attributes of Cantonese came into sharp focus.<\/p>\n \u201cCantonese was, of course, an important conveyor of political grievances during the 2019 protests,\u201d Dupr\u00e9 said, adding that the language gave \u201ca strong local flavor to the protests.\u201d<\/p>\n He pointed to how entirely new written characters were born spontaneously from the pro-democracy movement \u2014 including one that combined the characters for \u201cfreedom\u201d with a popular profanity.<\/p>\n Other plays on written characters illustrate the endless creativity of Cantonese, such as a stylized version of \u201cHong Kong\u201d that, when read sideways, becomes \u201cadd oil\u201d \u2014 a rallying cry in the protests.<\/p>\n Protesters also found ways to protect their communications, wary that online chat groups \u2014 where they organized rallies and railed against the authorities \u2014 were being monitored by mainland agents.<\/p>\n For example, because spoken Cantonese sounds different to spoken Mandarin, some people experimented with romanizing Cantonese \u2014 spelling out the sounds using the English alphabet \u2014 thereby making it virtually impossible to understand for a non-native speaker.<\/p>\n And, while the protests died down after the Chinese government imposed a sweeping national security law in 2020, Cantonese continues to offer the city\u2019s residents an avenue for expressing their unique local identity \u2014 something people have long feared losing as the city is drawn further under Beijing\u2019s grip.<\/p>\n For some, using Cantonese to criticize the government seems particularly fitting given the central government has aggressively pushed for Mandarin to be used nationwide in education and daily life \u2014 for instance, in television broadcasts and other media \u2014 often at the expense of regional languages and dialects. <\/a><\/p>\n These efforts turned into national controversy in 2010, when government officials suggested increasing Mandarin programming on the primarily-Cantonese Guangzhou Television channel \u2014 outraging residents, who took part in rare mass street rallies and scuffles with police.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not just Cantonese affected \u2014 many ethnic minorities have voiced alarm that the decline of their native languages could spell an end to cultures and ways of life they say are already under threat.<\/p>\nPerfect for satire, and protest<\/h5>\n
Falling silent<\/h5>\n