In what is one of China's greenest cities a mere 160 km from Vietnam, you can find a colorful mix of cultures and customs in Nanning, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. This region in southern China is home to many of the countries 56 ethnic minorities and is famous for its diversity. Nanning is another bustling city in China, but the Chinese spoken here is a lot harder for me to understand. Many Putonghua or Mandarin (China's official language) words pronounced 'shi' in the north of China are pronounced 'si' in the south, other such differences include; 'de' becomes 'di' and 'le' becomes 'lei'…, and I haven't even started on the various local dialects and languages that are spoken in this region. To my knowledge Guangxi is host to a number of Sinitic languages including Mandarin, Ping, Cantonese and Hakka… and within those there are local dialect/language differences to the point of one village resident not being able to understand a neighboring village resident. But in China unlike in the west, the people have been brought together by the written language. In times gone by, if a Scotsman wrote to and Englishman in his native 'Scots English', the Englishman would have been at a loss to translate it. This has consequently resulted in the gradual decline of such regional languages in the UK in favor of the more dominant Standard English. However, in China although many minorities speak in different languages, many of them use the Chinese script - the characters represent the same meanings and can be universally understood, regardless of the pronunciation. Moreover, a lot of Han Chinese I saw visiting the area were extremely interested in learning some of the words spoken by the minority groups in the region, and the minorities were equally keen to share their knowledge.

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