Anson Tong Wrote About Her Experience Speaking A Regional Language

For Joysauce, Anson Tong wrote about growing up speaking Shanghainese, a regional language.

Tong told Study Hall that Shanhainese is considered “mutually unintelligible with Mandarin.” The essay explores her “reckoning with the way Shanghainese as a language has lost popularity due to Mandarin standardization” and touches upon how her “Shanghainese fluency has declined” due to seeing her family less.

Tong writes, “I always thought of Shanghainese as defined by the small and complicated island of my own family, but it also ties me to so many others, whether through the language and culture or through grappling with the immigrant child dynamics involved.”

Tong’s writing has appeared in The Rumpus, Brooklyn Rail, and Chicago Review of Books.