没有尽头的城市

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The name of Wu（吳語）can be traced back to Spring&Autumn and the Waring States Period（春秋戰國）, and most probably obtained its reputation from Wu Kindom （吳國）during Three Kingdoms Period（三國時代）in the 3rd Century. Here, Wu does not refer to a geographical concept, but a liguistic meaning. It is nowadays accounted as a dialect or even a subdivision of Manderin, thus I am abound to correct this mistake--Wu is a language, not just a dialect.

Manderin never equals to Chinese. The Chinese language, in an accurate perspective, should occupy the same position as Germanic languages or Romance languages. If western linguistical typology is introduced here, Sino-Tibetan will be on the top of the family tree (as Indo-European), then Chinese languages (as Slavic languages, Romance languages, Germanic languages), and the bottom belongs to the single languages--Manderin, Wu, Cantonese, Min, etc.

What is the fact in China however? Manderin has enjoyed privilege since 1949, and other Chinese languages become dialects. Cantonese is a bit lucky to be an exception because Hongkong enjoys the right to act on its own, but still is annouced to be a dialect instead of a single language. Poorer are the rest languages, children who speak other than Maderin are forced to give up their mother tongue in schools; those who speak Wu or Min in the public are considered uncilivized or uneducated, and not to mention no TV or radio programmes can be produced in languages other than Manderin.

But is Maderin indeed superior to Wu or other Chinese languages? If demographically, yes. Maderin has around 800 million speakers, and ranked No.1 populous language in the world. While Wu has around 80 million speakers ranked 10th populous language. Nevertheless if we see linguistically, the answer might be reversed.

First, Maderin is possibly the poorest Chinese language in its phonemes. Shanghainese (a representative dialect of Wu) has 50 phonemes, Cantonese over 33, Maderin however 32. Wu is notable among Chinese languages in keeping the "muddy" plosives and fricatives of Middle Chinese. Thus it maintains the three-way contrast of Middle Chinese stops and afficates, which has been long lost in Maderin. French owns 35 phonemes, and 30 of which are same as in Wu (the same case in English), but very few Manderin phonemes is similiar to the western phonems.  Therefore people speak Wu are easier to master European languages' pronunciation, and vice versa.

Second, being a highly influenced language by the northern minorities (Mongolian, Manchu etc.), Manderin has lost numerous sound features of classical Chinese. When those minorites could not articulate correct Chinese pronunciation, they just changed it. However either Wu or Cantonese protects the original pronucation system. Thus today, we cannot fully appreicate classical poetry in Maderin since there're no rhymes at all. But if one turns to Wu or Cantonese, the poem revives. eg. let see 《感遇》from 《唐詩三百首》, the ending characters has no rhyming relations in Maderin as "潔jie，節jie，悅yue，折zhe", but they share the same rhyme in Wu.

Third, Wu preserves numerous cultural informations. A large quantity of historical resources were kept in Wu or other Chinese languages, but not Manderin. Classical Chinese has its own pronuciation recording system called 反切, for example ancient Chinese record the pronunication of  打 as 德冷切. It means 打 has the same consonant as 德 (d), and has the same vowls as 冷(eng). But it seems wrong in the perspective of Manderin. While if we try Wu, it is feasible. In Wu, 打（dang），冷（lang）, they have the same vowl.

What if Wu is driven out by the politically superior Manderin, what will happen? At that time we have to consult Korean, Japanese or Vietnamese to know the original Chinese pronunication, since the sound system of these languages were mostly influenced by Wu or Cantonese, not Manderin! (Japanese has 吳音 which is a directly borrow of Wu pronunciation, and Vietnamese is closer to Cantonese.)

But we have to confess that the orthography of Wu is far less developed than Manderin or even than Cantonese. That's a big barriar for Wu to spread. But most probably political elements are the major reasons. Wu has it glorious history with wonderful vernacular literary works before 1949. Soong Ching-ling used Wu to give speech in the ceremony of the establishment of PRC; Chiang Kai-shek and Soong May-lin was always proud of their mother tongue--Wu, and they don't speak Manderin in their whole life.

It is just impossilbe to list out all the advantageous features of Wu or other Chinese languages here. But it is clear that Chinese doesn't mean Manderin, and Chinese characters（漢字）does not only belong to Manderin, it belongs to Wu, Cantonese, Min, or even Japanese, etc.