Chinatowns

I went out to Chinatown today at the spur of the moment. As I was walking around I was reminded of all the similarities of the Boston Chinatown to the Oakland Chinatown. Everything just made me think of home. I overheard someone speaking in Taishanese. That made me extremely happy because I am of Taishanese heritage. A lot of the other Chinese people I have encountered at Harvard speak Mandarin whereas I speak a pretty different dialect, Cantonese.

I was having a dinner conversation with a friend the other day, and I discovered that she was of Cantonese heritage as well. We were pretty happy to find that out about one another, as this is a rare find at a place like Harvard. This actually got me wondering why there are so few Chinese people at Harvard who speak Cantonese, it wasn’t as though there weren’t any Chinese people around. My friend and I had a discussion and we thought maybe this has to do with class status. A lot of the Chinese people who speak mandarin here have parents who have jobs of middle class status, whereas a lot of Cantonese speakers are from lower to lower middle class status.

This might have to do with the fact that the southern region of China who had more Cantonese speakers tend to immigrate because of poverty where as the northern region of China, which had more mandarin speakers, immigrated because they wanted better lives than the ones they already lead in China. Because of this, the northern Chinese lead better lives when they come to America and are more able to provide a better education for their children. This in turn leads to them attending wonderful Ivy League or above the average universities and colleges. The southern Chinese lead lives as immigrants in the lower class status and a majority are not able to provide a better education for their children besides the free, public ones that are available in their neighborhood. This class difference that existed in China follows them as they immigrate to another country. For these Chinese people, their only hope and dream are for their American born children to obtain the most they can out of their free education and become successful one day.