Mandarin and Chinese…
I don’t understand why to be qualified as a ‘Chinese’ you need to be able to write or speak Mandarin. To be true to your ethnicity you should be proud of your dialect.
Please remember that Mandarin is a north China dialect and until the mid-20th century, most Chinese living in southern China did not speak any Mandarin. However, despite the mix of officials and commoners speaking various Chinese dialects, Nanjing Mandarin became dominant at least during the officially Manchu-speaking Qing Empire but was replaced in the imperial court with Beijing Mandarin during the last 50 years of the Qing Dynasty (late 19th century). A single standard of Mandarin did not exist. The non-Mandarin speakers in southern China also continued to speak their regional dialects for every aspect of life. The new Beijing Mandarin court standard was thus fairly limited. This situation changed with the creation of an elementary school education system committed to teaching Mandarin
