It’s a tiny ass island yet whenever a British person hears another British person they’ll be like “Oi guvenor! I know exactly where in Merry-ol-England they are from! Clearly they’re from Bovinshire-upon-Weavilton!” And Bovinshire-upon-Weavilton is a town like 10 minutes away from where they live.
I was watching the Chinese movie eight hundred and I was thinking, how did people communicate with each other back then? Did most people even know mandarin?
As far as I understand, China’s had state-enforced lingua francas for centuries, and Beijing ‘Mandarin’ has been dominant for at least the last couple of hundred years.
But yeah, I’ve met people today who barely speak mandarin, so it must have been wild back in the early 20th century. I’d imagine heavy use of local translators. I might be misremembering but I feel like Mao brings it up in one of his works about the Long March while they pass through Yunnan.