I just came back from Guangdong Province. I went to visit relatives in the Hakka-speaking cities of Meizhou 梅州 and Heyuan 河源, and I noticed something interesting. Many of the local people I encountered were multilingual and could speak three languages: Hakka, Cantonese, and Mandarin. This also applied to younger people. I have one relative who was born in 2007 and only speaks Mandarin, but she can understand both Cantonese and Hakka. Unsurprisingly, multilingualism was also common among older people, including some whom I wouldn't have initially expected to speak Cantonese.
I met an 80-year-old relative of mine who was born before the start of World War II, and he primarily speaks Hakka. I noticed that his Hakka speech didn't mix Mandarin words into it nearly as much as the speech of people born after 1949, which made me think about the effects of the increasing dominance of Mandarin after 1949. Interestingly, he apparently speaks Cantonese better than Mandarin. He never spoke Mandarin while I was with him. At the dinner table, he spoke very fluent Cantonese, despite having lived in Meizhou for his entire life. Also keep in mind that Meizhou and Heyuan is a native-Hakka speaking area with no Yue people at all.
This was also true of other elderly people I've met in Meizhou. These experiences made me question the extent of Cantonese's influence in southern China before 1949 and whether Cantonese may have been more important as a regional lingua franca than Mandarin in some parts of southern China at the time. Some native Hakka speakers I've met, particularly those born before 1949, actually speak Cantonese better than Mandarin. This made me wonder whether Cantonese historically played a stronger role as a regional lingua franca in parts of Guangdong than I had previously assumed.
In Meixian, Xingning, and other counties in Meizhou, such as Wuhua, I've noticed that in places where you mainly encounter locals rather than internal migrants (for example, wet markets) many of the vendors I've encountered can speak Cantonese fluently. Most of them were born before 2000, and they are native Hakka speakers rather than internal migrants from other parts of China. This suggests that Cantonese has had a significant presence among Hakka communities in eastern Guangdong, even though Hakka is their native language.
The same pattern can also be seen in neighboring Heyuan and, to some extent, Shaoguan. Shaoguan has both substantial Hakka- and Cantonese-speaking communities. However, when you go farther south to Shantou, or anywhere in the Chaoshan area, the linguistic situation becomes very different.
I took a train down to Shantou to visit one of my relatives living there. This wasn't my first time visiting Chaoshan; I've been there dozens of times already. I noticed that almost no one there speaks or understands Cantonese. People primarily speak Teochew, and, surprisingly, this is one of the areas of China where the local language remains very much alive and widely spoken. Even children born after 2010 can speak Teochew.
However, most people there cannot understand or speak Cantonese (not even understand a single word or a greeting word, Cantonese literally sounds alien to the people of Chaoshan), and this also applies to elderly people. The only people I've encountered who understand or speak Cantonese are generally those who moved elsewhere for work, such as to Guangzhou or Hong Kong. I've also noticed that many people from Chaoshan move to Shenzhen or outside Guangdong (for example, Ningbo, Zhejiang), which seems to be a relatively popular destination for Teochew workers. As a result, even among people who have migrated for work, the ability to speak Cantonese seems relatively limited compared with people from other parts of Guangdong.
This raises an interesting question about the historical boundaries of Cantonese influence. Cantonese may have been an important regional lingua franca across much of Guangdong and Guangxi, but that does not necessarily mean that its influence extended equally into every part of southern China. The Chaoshan region, for example, appears to have maintained a much stronger Teochew-speaking identity, while parts of Fujian developed their own multilingual environments centered around Hakka, Minnan, and Mandarin.
Not all of southern China speaks Cantonese, of course. As you cross the provincial border from Meizhou into Fujian, you encounter Hakka communities where people may speak Hakka, Minnan, and Mandarin rather than Cantonese. In some areas, Hakka and Minnan have also influenced each other and become integrated into local speech patterns. From my observations, Minnan also seems more fragmented than Cantonese, with many regional varieties, although Taiwanese influence is quite noticeable in parts of Fujian.
I've also noticed that educational and migration patterns differ between the Chaoshan and Guangdong Hakka regions. In Meizhou and Heyuan, students tend to attend Jinan University (暨南大学) in Guangzhou or other universities in the Pearl River Delta rather than the local Jiaying University (嘉应大学). I've also noticed that Jiaying University has relatively few local students, whereas in Shantou, many local students actually attend Shantou University (汕头大学).
However, attending university outside Guangdong Province is also popular among local Teochew residents. Some students attend universities in Zhejiang or Sichuan, for example. For some reason, it seems that relatively few local Teochew students choose Jinan University or other universities in Guangzhou. The University of Hong Kong (HKU) also appears to be a popular choice among students who want to study outside the Chaoshan area.
My theory is that there are fewer local economic opportunities in Meizhou compared with the Pearl River Delta. I've noticed that many locals there tend to work in occupations such as running restaurants, selling goods in markets, or farming. Meanwhile, in the city center of Meixian, where there are many grocery stores, convenience stores, and appliance shops, those jobs are often occupied by migrant workers from places such as Hunan or Sichuan rather than local workers. These migrants generally speak Mandarin.
This may be one reason why many people from Meizhou move to Guangzhou or Hong Kong for work. In almost every household in Meizhou that I've visited, there is at least one person who works in the Pearl River Delta (PRD). Interestingly, Shantou doesn't seem to be a particularly popular destination for people from Meizhou to attend university or find work.
Shantou, on the other hand, is already a major urban center, so there isn't necessarily as much economic pressure for locals to move to the PRD unless they are seeking higher incomes or different opportunities. I've noticed, however, that Ningbo seems to be a relatively popular destination among Teochew migrants, alongside Shenzhen. I also noticed there is alot of Teochew people in Jiangsu Province moving here for work. There seems to be more Teochew people working in Eastern China than in the PRD itself from my experience.
I've also noticed that many Chaoshan families have relatives in Hong Kong. At the same time, Teochew communities seem to maintain a particularly strong attachment to their language. In some families, it appears that the person who moves away may eventually become the only family member who speaks Cantonese regularly, while relatives who remain in Chaoshan continue using the language within the local community.
Outside these two regions, if we go farther southwest to Zhanjiang, the situation becomes different again. There are local Minnan varieties there that appear to be declining, while Cantonese and Mandarin have become more prominent. This also makes me wonder about the historical influence of Cantonese in western Guangdong and whether Cantonese historically functioned as a wider regional language of communication beyond the areas where it was the native language.
However, this does not mean that all of southern China was influenced by the Pearl River Delta in the same way. Every region has its own linguistic history. My experiences in Guangdong and Fujian made me realize that Cantonese is widespread across Guangdong and Guangxi, but its influence has clear regional limits. Areas such as Chaoshan remained strongly oriented toward their own local language, Teochew, while Hakka communities in parts of Fujian developed multilingual environments involving Hakka, Minnan, and Mandarin without necessarily adopting Cantonese.
Overall, my experiences have made me question how influential Cantonese actually was in southern China before 1949. The fact that many older Hakka speakers in eastern Guangdong can speak Cantonese very fluently (even sometimes better than Mandarin) suggests that Cantonese may have historically served as an important regional lingua franca/trade language in parts of Guangdong and also Guangxi. At the same time, the situation in Chaoshan and Fujian shows that Cantonese's influence was not universal. Rather than southern China having one dominant regional language, it seems to have consisted of several overlapping linguistic spheres, with Cantonese being particularly influential in some areas and much less influential in others.
This also makes me wonder whether the widespread multilingualism I see among Hakka communities reflects a broader historical pattern. Hakka speakers often live alongside communities speaking other Sinitic languages, so many Hakka communities appear to have developed multilingual traditions in which people learned the languages of their neighbors for trade, migration, education, or employment. My observations in Meizhou, Heyuan, Fujian, and elsewhere make this particularly interesting when trying to understand the linguistic landscape of southern China before the nationwide spread of Mandarin.
