Long Time No Talkee

The topic of Chinese Pidgin English is a vexed one. In 1930's Shanghai (the focus period for these blog posts) it was an essential element of everyday life in the International Settlement and no portrait of the place and time would be complete without it.... and yet it is, on a number of levels, an embarrassment.


Officially classed as a dead language Chinese Pidgin English was one of the earliest examples of pidgin English, developed to bridge a linguistic gap in order to conduct trade. Versions of pidgin survive to this day, most notably in the Tok Pisin used in Papua New Guinea.
The English first arrived in South China in the 1630s in the form of traders. Chinese Pidgin English was spoken first in the areas of Macao and Guangzhou, later spreading north to Shanghai by the 1830s.

This trade language was originally known as "Yangjing Bang English" in Chinese (洋涇濱, or 洋泾浜) and derives from the name of a former creek in Shanghai near the Bund where local workers communicated with English-speaking foreigners in pidgin (broken English). 

Yang-king-pang, Shanghai

This creek originally marked the division between the French Concession (to the South) and the International settlement (to the North). Because of it's ambiguous status in terms of land ownership it was also the location of numerous rough opium dens along the banks of the creek. Eventually the creek was paved over and turned into a road, but the division remained with French Tonkinese traffic officers (from what later became Vietnam) on the French side of the street, and Sikh police officers on the International Settlement side. 
English is well known for being the primary source of loan words in Shanghai dialect, a dialect of Taihu Wu Chinese, which arose from the Shanghai variant of Chinese Pidgin English.



Historically, it was a modified form of English developed in the 17th century for use as a trade language or lingua franca between the English and the Chinese. Chinese Pidgin started in Guangzhou (Canton) after the English established their first trading port there in 1664. Because the English found Chinese an extremely difficult language to learn and because the Chinese held the English in low esteem and therefore disdained to learn their language, Pidgin English was developed by the English and adapted by the Chinese for business purposes. The term "pidgin" itself is a corruption of the pronunciation of the English word "business" by the Chinese. Chinese Pidgin continued in use until about the end of the 19th century, when Pidgin came to be looked upon by the Chinese as humiliating (because English speakers considered it ridiculous) and so preferred to learn conventional English instead. English language teaching has been widespread throughout modern Chinese history- it was made the country's main foreign language in 1982.


Chinese Pidgin English was based on a vocabulary of about 700 English words, with a small number of words from other sources.Grammer and syntax are simple and positional; that is, grammatical categories are indicated by the position of words in the sentence rather than by infelctional endings, prepositions, or the like (e.g., in English “John loves Mary” is distinguished from “Mary loves John” by the position of the words in the sentences). Typical sentences in Chinese Pidgin are Hab gat rening kum daun (Have got raining come down) “There is rain coming down”; Tumoro mai no kan kum (Tomorrow my no can come) “Tomorrow I can't come”; and Mai no hab kachi basket (My no have catch basket) “I didn't bring a basket.”

Certain expressions from Chinese English Pidgin may have made their way into colloquial English, a process called Calque. The following is a list of English expressions which may have been influenced by Chinese.

• long time no see is similar to the Mandarin phrase "very long time not see" (好very 久long time 不not 見see (Simplified: 好久不见), meaning "haven't seen [you] in a long time") and the Cantonese 好耐冇見 (meaning the same. The meaning can also be mutual "we have not seen each other in a long time"). The Oxford English Dictionary states that "long time no see" originated in the United States as "a jocular imitation of broken English."

• look-see  (看look 見see) This phrase is attributed to Chinese pidgin English by the Oxford English dictionary.

• lose face (丟lose 臉face), meaning to bring shame upon oneself.)

• no can do (不no 能can 做do), meaning "to be unable to do". Also the imperative "do not attempt to do!".

• no-go (不no 行go), meaning "not okay", or "option not taken".) Also "the latest attempt failed" often used to describe some early space program efforts. "No-go area" means a forbidden place.

• where-to? (哪where 去to) meaning "to where are you going?" or "where are you headed?".) Also driver asking passenger "where do you want me to take you?".

• No this no that

No ____, no ____ predates the origin of Chinese Pidgin English, but is also a notable example of fabricated pidgin English: "no ticket no shirt" (沒no 票ticket 沒no 襯衣shirt) meaning, "If you don't have a laundry receipt, I won't give you your shirts", said to be a fabricated pidgin English unfairly attributed to the Chinese laundry proprietors. In 1886, a New York City Bill cited this phrase in reference to Chinese-owned dry cleaning establishments. In 1921 a movie titled "No Tickee No Shirtee" further popularized the saying. Another famous use of this phrase is "No money, no talk" (冇no錢money冇no得傾talk), which simply means "If you don't have the money, don't bother talking to me".

As we progress through the early part of the 21st Century much of the above seems a mere historical curiosity, and also a holdover from an age of more strident cultural and racial stereotyping... and yet this is to deny the continuing influence of this previous history on today's language usage - like ripples on the Huangpu river the effect of this 'dead language' can still be felt in the dialect version of Taihu Wu Chinese particular to Shanghai.
English is well known for being the primary source of loan words in Shanghai dialect, and these loan words have entered the language through the Chinese Pidgin English that was once so commonly used.