Ms Shen (not her real name) is a charming young Shanghainese in her late twenties who represents the new breed of Chinese professional: bright, inquisitive, professional in demeanor, willing to challenge what’s presented her, articulate. As I do most Shanghainese, I asked her where her parents were from, always excited when they say one or the other is originally from Suzhou. In her instance, as well, I told her she looked like a Suzhounese. Suzhou is only 75 km away, and there are a great many Shanghai people for whom at least one parent was originally from Shanghai. I was wrong in her case.

Her father’s side was Shanghainese a couple generations back, while her mother was from Zhenjiang, near Nanjing. Still, she seemed proud that part of her family was from Jiangsu province. I asked what she spoke in the household when she was growing up. She answered Shanghai-hua (Shanghai “speak”). Her mother had come to Shanghai to study, and had learned to speak the local dialect when it was all that was spoken in Shanghai, back in the day.

Shanghai-hua, though, is different enough from Mandarin to be, well, another language, really; as different from Mandarin as Portugeuse is from Italian. Suzhou-hua – of which I speak probably four words, which tickles the locals to no end – is a kissing cousin of Shanghai-hua, as is Kunshan-hua and Changshu-hua. Suzhou friends tell me they can understand Shanghai-hua but cannot speak it; though, with time and immersion, they’d likely be able to pick it up pretty quickly. Move a little further west of Changshu in southern Jiangsu province – to Wuxi, for example, just a forty minute drive from Suzhou – and the dialect switches to something Suzhounese cannot even understand.

Indeed, it seems this language divide has its roots in the Three Kingdoms period, when the Wu, Wei and Jin empires were at each other’s throats for dominance of China after the fall of the Han dynasty a couple thousand years ago. John Woo’s recent Red Cliff films are about the battles of the period. Shanghai-Suzhou dialect comes from the Wu Kingdom, interestingly, and has been passed down through the generations by word of mouth.

Now, it seems, Shanghai-hua is disappearing. “Very few young people nowadays speak Shanghai-hua,” Ms. Shen told me. “I speak it, but I know a lot of young Shanghainese who can understand it when it is spoken to them, but cannot speak it themselves. Instead, they speak Mandarin.”

“Like Cantonese in the States with American Born Chinese,” I said. “One ABC friend of mine told me he used to hate it when his relatives spoke Cantonese to him: he said it sounded like they were always pissed at each other. Still, I think now he can’t even understand it.” I asked her, “Why do you think it’s disappearing? is it that Shanghai has become more international, or because of the Chinese from other parts of China come to Shanghai to live and work?”

She said without hesitation, “The wai di ren [literally, outside people; the term Chinese use for Chinese that have moved into their 'hood; not always necessarily a positive connotation]. So many Chinese from other parts of the country have moved to Shanghai. The first language choice is Mandarin, then English. Only the older generations now speak Shanghai-hua, with themselves, and with their children and grandchildren. And in the countryside of Shanghai municipality they still speak Shanghai-hua. But in the city, it’s disappearing.”

Such is the cost of “mandarization”.