UK prevalance of mandarin Chinese

[Flickserve]

I am on a driving trip of the UK.

It seems there are mainland Chinese everywhere. It's a curiosity that I have been able to hear Mandarin pretty frequently in the UK. Manchester has quite a few families and made quite an impression with additional marriages to local indigenous population.

The exception was Betty's in Yorkshire (won't say which one!). We saw no Mandarin Chinese speakers in that town.

I was surprised to see a number of Chinese tour groups into the Lakes but few will do the activities such as horse riding or walks.

Just arrived in Edinburgh and heard mandarin in our guesthouse - this is not surprising.

[roddy]

Definitely more prevalent than Cantonese now, I think. I still hear a bit of Cantonese as we live next door to a sheltered housing complex with lots of old Chinese folk, but out and about in town (also Edinburgh) it's much more likely to be Mandarin. And it's not that rare, either, if you're in the tourist or shopping bits.

[li3wei1]

I hear Mandarin almost every time I take a train. I live near Sheffield, and there's a big student population there.

[ChTTay]

I am from somewhere near Harrogate and I can't say I'm surprised at not seeing Chinese people living there or being tourists. However, if you had gone to York (which also has a Betty's I believe) you would have seen a healthy number of tourists and students around from China.

Leeds Chinese population also grew quite a bit when I was there. I only judge this on my impression and also the increased number of Chinese supermarkets, travel agents etc. some popped up and were gone months later - too soon I guess. Leeds also had a tourist red sightseeing bus. I only ever saw Chinese tourists on it. Maybe they don't know there isn't much to see.

I lived in Manchester too. A lot more Chinese there - I believe the second biggest Chinese population in tr UK outside of London (am I wrong? Maybe I made that up). A good China town there and an ever increasing number of Chinese students.

[stapler]

So I'm burning time at work and did a little "research":

 

It seems the British statistics bureau counts Mandarin and Cantonese as the same language. According to the last census there are about 140,000 "Chinese" speakers in England and Wales. With a population of 56 million, 0.25% of the population speaks "Chinese" in 2011; making it the 9th most spoken language.

(http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171776_302179.pdf)

 

The USA also doesn't distinguish between the Chinese languages. As of 2011 2.9 million people spoke "Chinese" or 0.93% of the population (311.7 million at the time), making it the third most spoken language after English and Spanish

(https://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/acs-22.pdf)

 

According to the Canadian 2011 census 1.1 million people spoke a Chinese language. From a population of 34.34 million 3.2% of the population speaks Chinese. The 5th most spoken language after English, French, Indo-Iranian languages, and Romance languages.

(http://www12.statcan.ca/census-recensement/2011/as-sa/98-314-x/2011003/tbl/tbl3_2-1-eng.cfm)

 

From the Australian 2011 census there are 336,000 Mandarin speakers (2nd most spoken language after English) and 263,000 Cantonese speakers (5th most spoken language after English, Mandarin, Italian and Arabic). Separately Mandarin speakers make up 1.6% of the population and Cantonese speakers 1.2%. Or in total 2.8% of 22.3 million people.

(http://www.censusdata.abs.gov.au/census_services/getproduct/census/2011/quickstat/0?opendocument&navpos=220#cultural)

 

The New Zealand bureau of statistics seems to be down but according to Wikipedia as of 2013 there are 52,200 mandarin speakers (1.3% of the population, 5th most spoken) 44,600 Cantonese speakers (1.1%, 7th) and 42,700 other Chinese (1.1%, 8th) or in total 3.5% of 4.4 million people.

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_New_Zealand)

 

I can only imagine those numbers across all countries have increased substantially over the last 4 years.

[somethingfunny]

Stapler:

 

1.  Good research.

2.  I need your job.

 

I believe Manchester and Newcastle have pretty big Chinese populations, that I've come across anyway.  You can find out more here.

 

Out of interest, have any of you ever looked through a Chinese language tour book for the UK?  The contents go a little something like this:

 

1. London (~50 pages)

2. Oxford (~25 pages)

3. Cambridge (~25 pages)

4. Edinburgh (~10 pages)

5. York (~10 pages)

6. Other (Durham, Bath, Manchester)

 

I guess this itinerary is probably the same for people of any country visiting the UK, it's just weird sometimes to look in a book about the UK and not even see somewhere like Birmingham mentioned in the contents.

[Shelley]

Southampton University has a very large Mainland Chinese Student population, I am always hearing snippets of Mandarin in my local Sainsburys which is close to the uni and a mini china town has sprung up within walking distance of the uni, presumably to cater for students.

 

@Flickserve if your driving tour takes you down south, drop us line and maybe we can meet up and go for tea

[somethingfunny]

Oh yeah, that was something I forgot to mention in my post, pretty much anywhere thats in the vicinity of a university is bound to have a lot of Chinese speakers around.  Small Chinese "supermarkets" full of Chinese students deciding whether to try cooking again or just buy loads of instant noodles.  Those places are great, pretty much the only people that go there are asian so if you're white and you go just a few times they'll start being really nice to you (in my experience anyway).  There was a Korean one in Bristol that used to have fresh Sushi on a Friday, ah...

[geraldc]

There's a boom in Jay Chou wedding related tourism in Yorkshire.

 

This thread has reminded me I really need to get to Highgate and go look at Marx's tomb. Back in the day, that was what every mainland visitor wanted to see. 

[Flickserve]

I missed that Jay Chou tourist spot...did we miss anything?

The wife loved the food and ambience when eating at Betty's - we sat there for over two hours! It was my first visit to Ilkley in over 20 years. I never imagined returning looking like a China tourist. Granted that I rarely travel back to the UK.

Roddy, we walked into the tourist shops and there are a number of mandarin sales assistants. It's the first time I have seen mandarin speaking shop assistants in the UK. I joked to my daughter that she has another parttime job option should she choose to study in Edinburgh. The kids are thinking it is quite natural to be in UK and hear mandarin or cantonese on the streets.

Wonder what we will see in Fort William, Inverness and Aberdeen. @shelley, unfortunately, we didn't make it to Southampton - the closest we went was Stonehenge and Avebury.

[Shelley]

unfortunately, we didn't make it to Southampton

 

Oh well, at least you have had a good tour of the best sites to see in the south.

[geraldc]

I did the Highlands a couple of weeks ago. The Diageo owned distilleries have some leaflets in simplified Chinese, and the Macallan distillery has a sign in Chinese saying tax free for tourists.  The Highlands are full of Germans on BMW motorbikes, any Chinese there would be on coach tours, so we never ran into them.

 

The Crannog seafood restaurant in Fort William (highly recommended) did have a couple of large tables full of mainlanders. Other than that can't say we ran into any other Chinese.

 

Jay Chou got married in North Yorkshire, so Selby Abbey is now on the tourist map.

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/jay-chou-and-the-draw-of-destination-weddings-how-selby-went-global-10006740.html

[mouse]

 

 

This thread has reminded me I really need to get to Highgate and go look at Marx's tomb.

 

Do it! Marx's big old head is in East Highgate, which was the poorer cemetery back in the day. It's free to enter. You have to pay for a tour guide to enter West Highgate cemetery, but it's well worth it. Amazing place.

[somethingfunny]

 

 

the tourist shops and there are a number of mandarin sales assistants.

 

Theres a place called Bicester Village (its between Leamington Spa and Oxford) which is a high-end retail outlet selling slightly out-of-date ranges at heavily knocked down prices.  As soon as you get off the train, everything is in Chinese.  Everything.