Fangyan Films

In a scene, Feng Xiaogang seems to examine his outstanding linguistic trademark, Beijing Mandarin, and its privileged relationship with the national language in a self-mocking and self-reflexive way. Before this short clip, Shen Xue, now Yan Shouyi’s girlfriend, tells a joke mocking the bumpkin-like Henan people in a Henan accent, but Yan immediately rebuts that Henan Mandarin was the hegemonic language in Song dynasty, and Beijing Mandarin was only a barbarian language at that time.