Washington Post: On Chinese Television, What's Cool Is No Longer Correct

[Dioneae muscipula]

On September 29, 2005, Edward Cody contributed the story for Washington
Post on China broadcasting authority's move to prevent language
influence from Hong Kong and Taiwan from "affecting" the Mandarin in
China after the "Super Girl" show.

Read the story in
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/28/AR2005092802219.html

An outline of the article:
* On September 10, 2005 the State Administration of Radio,
Film and Television also demanded "masters of ceremony
should always use standard Mandarin Chinese and should
stop affecting Hong Kong or Taiwanese slang and accents."
* To millions of Chinese, Hong Kong and Taiwanese speech
has come to mean being cool. Most of the music and
performers making teenage hearts throb here have long
originated in the freer atmospheres of Hong Kong and
Taiwan.
* One producer at Beijing-based China Central Television
said official expressions of concern have become so
frequent that the latest set of regulations drew little
attention within the profession.
* Hunan province satellite television studio this summer
broadcast a groundbreaking singing contest, "Mongolian
Cow Sour Yogurt Supergirl Contest", in which viewers
were asked to vote for their favorites by cell phone
message, "American Idol"-style.
* The main sponsor, Mongolian Cow Dairy, went from third-
largest to the largest dairy in the country during the
show's run. Sales more than doubled, according to the
Shanghai Daily newspaper.

China Daily carried the Washington Post story in
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005-09/30/content_482104.htm
with a screen shot of the Sichuan girl, Li Yuchun, who won the
supergirl title in the contest in Changsha, Hunan on August 27, 2005.
Li got more than 3.52 million votes.

[john_ccy]

It's funny how many "purification" campaign goes on around the world,
for example the Academie Francaise trying to ban Americanisms from
French, etc. However, most of these campaigns have been relatively
unsuccessful since once something gets into popular speech, it becomes
hard to displace.

In any event, language is something that is always changing and
evolving, in any country, so the "standard" is always changing too.
Besides, what they call "standard" mandarin in the article should
really be called "Standard Mainland Mandarin" to be more exact. Taiwan
itself has a "standard" version of mandarin, which differs from the
mandarin spoken on the mainland. Not all Taiwan-derived phrasing, etc.
are slang terms, as the article would suggest, but just slightly
different ways of expressing things. A good parallel would be
"Standard American English" vs. "Standard British English" where there
are differences in word choice and phrasing even without the slang
terms thrown in.