'Save our cultural code'

Supporters of a campaign to save China's dialects from dying out are recording representatives from diverse communities in what will become a national project. Mei Jia and Han Bingbin in Beijing, and Zhang Xiaomin in Dalian, Liaoning province, report.

Nine residents from Dalian, Liaoning province, have been chosen to record their voices and represent the Dalian dialect, says China Audible Database of Language Resources organizer Chen Dejing. She is talking about an event that was part of an initiative to record and protect local dialects, as the prevalence of Mandarin is thought by some experts to be causing local dialects to die out, possibly within decades.

Linguistics professor Chi Yongchang at Liaoning Normal University believes now is the time to protect dialects, from the State level to the local level.