Wu Chinese

In terms of the number of speakers, Wu (Sino-Tibetan : Sinitic : Southern) is the second largest language in China and the 10th largest in the world. It is a soft and light language spoken mainly in the Jiang-Nan region, i.e., Shanghai, Zhejiang and southern part of Jiangsu.

Wu is very different from Mandarin in (at least) two aspects:

• it preserves much more phonetics and vocabulary from Old Chinese (making it the intellectual's language)
• it is more agglutinative and polysyllabic than Mandarin and has significantly higher amount of SOV word order, due to its Austro-Asiatic substratum.

General Maps (non-linguistic):

• Shanghai-Nanjing-Hangzhou-Ningbo area
• Wu Region
• Jiangsu Province Transportation
• Zhejiang Province Transportation

• The Period of Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms (AD. 907-960)
• Zhejiang Province in the Republic of China period (c. 1920)

Wu Music

• Listen to a beautiful song of Suchou! Lyrics are here.
• Yue Opera (a.k.a Shaoxin Opera): video excerpt from Dream of the Red Chamber. (another version). Lyrics here.
• Shanghai Opera

Some Resources (google caches, in Chinese):

• Introduction to Wu Chinese
• Geographical distribution of Wu speakers
• History of Wu
• Phonetics of Wu
• Wu literature
• Rare Chinese characters in Wu (many of them are inherited from Classical Chinese while others are relics from the Austro-Asiatic roots of Wu).