Foreword: Last time I shared with you the relationship between Chinese food culture and China ministries. In this issue, I will talk about another relevant topic - verbal communication. When serving mainland churches, how should we communicate with the believers there, and how can we communicate better with them to make our ministries effective?

Local Dialects and Putonghua

According to a survey on language uses in China conducted at the end of 2004 by the Ministry of Education and the State Language Commission of China, about 53 per cent of the population could converse in Putonghua, and only eight per cent had learned the language since birth. In other words, close to half of the mainland population communicated with others in their local dialects. For more than 90 per cent of the children, the first language they learned was a regional dialect, and they learned Putonghua only after they had gone to school. There are multiple dialects in China, a variety just in Guangdong alone, including Cantonese spoken by Hong Kong people. For effective communication with believers from various districts in China, people in Hong Kong and overseas need to learn the national language - Putonghua. For us who are not used to communicating in Putonghua, we need to pay attention to the differences in tones and choice of words between our dialect and that of the people in different provinces and Putonghua. The following are several worth-noting areas:

Differences in Tones

Those who have communicated with mainlanders will discover that no matter how fluent their Putonghua is or how familiar they are with Putonghua pinyin, sometimes the heavily-accented Putonghua spoken by co-workers from different districts is incomprehensible. For example, the way some co-workers from the central region say  "one hundred" is so unclear that Hong Kong co-workers can only try to figure out what they mean from the overall context of the conversation. The tones of some Northern co-workers can also hinder communication.

Different Choices of Words

Apart from the tone, there are also differences in the use of words. For example, a co-worker from the East told a Hong Kong co-worker that when he was staying at the home of an ethnic minorities family in a certain district, he was shocked to find people there did not have the habit of wearing "Ku Cha". The co-worker from Hong Kong was puzzled, without any clue what he meant by "Ku Cha". He did not have the chance to ask for an explanation, but finally judging from the context of what the co-worker said, he managed to guess the meaning. A mainland slang, "Ku Cha" actually referred to underwear. Another example is that mainlanders call people "lian / er bai wu" to mean they are silly. People in different regions scold people with different terms. Even a spoon is called differently in the North and South.

A habit of Hong Kong people is they like to mix Chinese and English together when they speak. As the English level of mainlanders continues to rise, some mainlanders are beginning to talk like Hong Kong people, mixing Chinese and English words as they speak. But we should try not to do this when speaking to mainlanders, since they may not understand what we mean, and may, as a result, feel alienated.

Giving Priority to Mutual Respect and Promoting Relationship

Another possible scenario concerns missionary trips to mainland churches. Members of the missionary teams may communicate with each other in Cantonese, while the mainland believers use their own dialect, and both sides use Putonghua to communicate with each other. But this can create a mutual gap, especially when someone suddenly switches back to his native dialect to discuss some sensitive issues with his own people. When this happens, the other party will feel embarrassed, and a distance can be formed between both sides. Such situation is inevitable for believers whose Putonghua is not so good. If that is the case, we should let the other party know about our language difficulty, let them understand the reason why another language is used instead.

Sometimes, even as our Putonghua is quite good, we may not understand what the other party is saying because of their accented Putonghua. This scenario is very common, especially with believers originating from rural areas (rural residents tend to speak with strong accents). If this happens, we need to be more patient and tolerant, and can ask the other side to speak slowly. If you still cannot understand, you can say things like "Did you mean…?", "I don't understand what you mean by …" etc. This will enhance communication, let the other side know that you are trying hard to understand what he or she is saying, increasing his trust and sense of identification in you. Don't be overcome by the shyness of asking questions and say you understand what he means, because he will find out from the remaining conversation that you had not really understood what he had previously said. This will destroy the trust and basis of communication between you.

Learning Cross-cultural Communication

Communicating with mainland co-workers is a kind of cross-cultural communication. Therefore, it is very important to "observe", especially how locals call an object, or describe a situation (e.g. the local term for underwear mentioned above), etc. Through observation and understanding, we can learn the common terms used by the other side, then have meaningful communication and narrow the mutual distance. It is also important whether we are willing to understand and communicate with the other side. When we try hard to understand them and let them understand us, the other side can feel our sincerity. This is the first step towards successful cross-cultural communication!

Let us work together in overcoming the challenge of cross-cultural communication!