Thinking back now, I realize that I was very lucky, because I began releasing Mandarin material together with my Cantonese albums, one after the other, when China was just starting to open up.

You'll have to learn Mandarin or Cantonese, and preferably both.

As more Mandarin-speaking migrants from other parts of China move into Guangzhou and other Chinese communities across the world, Cantonese is becoming less prominent, analysts and experts say.

CantoneseTHE first reports of protests on behalf of the Cantonese language in China that I saw, about two weeks ago, I dismissed.

For example if a back-end system generates an error in one language (say English) but I need to display it to the user in another language such as Cantonese.