Wu Bangguo speaks Mandarin with Shanghai accent

For your information: In the US, Visiting legislator Wu bangguo speaks Mandarin, not Wu dialect even though he is a native of Shanghai. Needless to say, he can speak Shanghainese. The Chinese Minister of Commerce Chen Deming is also a native of Shanghai. He speaks Mandarin with a heavy Shanghai accent. I noticed such when I met him in Suzhou as he was the mayor of Suzhou. Australian students in Suzhou rated me as a tri-lingual person because when I spoke Shanghai dialect,they could not understand at all even though they thought they learned Chinese already! Interesting encounter, indeed. Language is the nitty-gritty of Sino-American Economics of education,a form of human capital.

Former Chinese President Jiang is a graduate of Jiaotong University of Shanghai but he speaks Mandarin or Shanghainese with Yangzhou accent. Multi-accented voices,indeed!

I speak Mandarin with a slight Shanghai accent but a lot of folks in China and in the US think of my Mandarin as a native of Beijing. Such may be considered as mistaken identity at best.

Francis Shieh a.k.a. Xie Shihao, a student of American English and Chinese language with passion as a philosopher on 9/11/09 at 3 p.m.