Local Student launches a new campaign to “Save Cantonese Language” — Q&A with Julia Quon
In April 2021, Julia Quon and her classmates initiated a student group named “Save Cantonese at City College of San Francisco (CCSF)’’ after knowing that the Cantonese classes would be cut indefinitely next semester due to COVID budget cuts. Within three days, they held an AAPI and Black solidarity protest with other student organizations and collected over 1,000 signatures urging the school to save Cantonese Language courses.
“This is my second year taking Cantonese classes and I am advocating for Cantonese classes at CCSF for people like me who want to improve,” Quon said.
Quon is a full-time birth worker and a current nursing student at CCSF. She was born and raised in San Francisco.
Quon’s grandparents and parents immigrated from Hong Kong to the US in the 1980s. She has been speaking Cantonese with her family at home since she was a kid and started to take formal Cantonese classes during her senior year at UC San Diego.
“I identify myself as an Asian American, a Chinese American, and a Hongkonger,” Quon said.
You initiated the effort to Save Cantonese language classes at CCSF. What does the Cantonese language mean to you?
My family is from Hong Kong, and there are so many people from the Guangdong region who speak Cantonese as well.
Knowing many students took the class as a way to connect to their heritage and identity lit the fire under me — trying to save these classes. I am passionate about saving Cantonese because it is the language of thousands of people in San Francisco, not only people who are descendants of Hong Kong, but also from the Guangdong region.
Many immigrants in San Francisco do not get a voice on the table. It is important to stand up for other immigrants and people in the community who need these Canotense classes.
I think it is a very wasteful use of resources to take away the money where many immigrants need this. I was looking at Chinese for Affirmative Action, and their Language Access Laws in San Francisco have talked about how there are so many cases of Cantonese speakers not being able to access resources because there are not enough Cantonese-speaking professionals, like social workers and medical professionals. We need to save the Cantonese language because that is the language of the community. Their voices and representations also deserve to be heard.
Additionally, a lot of people who want to work in social service need Cantonese to help the people they are serving. So as a person who is going into public service, I was like “it is ridiculous that the school is going to cut these classes.” It is a huge slap on the face of the Cantonese and Chinese communities in San Francisco.
How has your experience with the Cantonese language been?
In San Francisco, I grew up with a lot of immigrants from Hong Kong or Southern China. Although I have never gone to Hong Kong before college, I grew up in a very strong Hong Kong culture. My grandparents speak Cantonese to us and my parents, speak both Cantonese and English to each other. Especially since I grew up with people from all different backgrounds, including people who speak Cantonese and people who don’t, I spoke a mix of languages in my childhood.
My sister and I went to Cantonese school when I was a little kid. There used to be like probably a hundred [Cantonese schools] around the city, but I think there aren’t as many now. Later, my parents were too busy to drive me to Cantonese school. So I began to only speak Cantonese at home, and it became slang. I went to public schools, but not Cantonese emerging schools, which are taught entirely in Cantonese in the city of San Francisco.
For me, it is a very communicative experience. I was like “I didn’t need to learn this. I already know English, so why do I need to learn Cantonese? I just speak with my 嫲嫲 (grandmother) and 爺爺 (grandfather).”
Going to high school, I was the only Chinese-American in my theatre class. I was like “wow, I am different and that’s okay. It doesn’t make me any less American than any white people”. I was proud to say that I am an Asian American. Since then, I started looking up classes. While I was at UC San Diego, I took a Cantonese language class. When I came back to City College [after teaching English in Hong Kong for a summer in 2019], I started taking Cantonese classes again.
Now, the CCSF Board of Trustees promises to offer 2 Cantonese classes next Fall. What steps did you take to secure these classes?
It was frantic. We had three days to save these classes. I couldn’t have done it without the help of my classmates. It was my classmates, Malissa Chow, Edward Peng, Lauren Chin, and other classmates who sent their testimonials, put our petition on Reddit, and helped with the website.
In April 2021, I found out that Cantonese courses were going to be canceled indefinitely. To me, this is incredibly unacceptable, because 75% of the 20–25% of Chinese speakers in San Francisco speak Cantonese. That was a huge insult. So I reached out to Jamie Tam, the organizer of the Save Cantonese at Stanford. I interviewed a lot of professors and teachers to try to figure out why Cantonese classes are being defunded. I called every single press organization I knew, including KTSF and Sing Tao newspaper. I even talked to a bilingual Spanish newspaper and the national black newspaper and Black Hunter points. There was a lot of press we got early on.
Together with CCSF collective/CCSF Solidarity Committee/CCSF Student Coalition, we held a Black and AAPI solidarity rally to celebrate AAPI heritage month. So many students came out and supported us. Black students, Lantix students, and Philliphono students came out and supported Save Cantonese at CCSF. I would not have been able to save the program if not for the help of the community.
I launched the petition three days before the classes were to be cut. It was so fast. Everything was so so so fast. As of now, we have around 1000 signatures. I submitted it to the World Heritage Department and the Board of Trustees. I think the City College was surprised that we were able to get so much support so fast.
We did get negative pushback from the College, especially when someone said this cut deliberately hurt the AAPI, Black, and Brown communities at the rally. Someone from the administration said that the Cantonese Program should be glad and grateful that they still keep Mandarin. And I was like “Mandarin and Cantonese are two different languages, so I am not grateful.”
Although we received a lot of pushback, when we sent the petition to the Board of Trustees, we got a lot of community support at the Board of Trustee meeting where people called in. So many people that I don’t even know called in. Not just Asian people, students from the Black student union came out, supported us, and explained why Cantonese is so important to San Francisco. Because there was so much attention we were able to bring about the Cantonese at CCSF that we were able to save two classes for the next semester.
I am given one year to prove that Cantonese classes could be filled and should be saved. We have been doing social media campaigning, trying to get people signed up, and trying to spread the word. I got a hundred testimonies from health care workers and heritage speakers who support us.
How has the campaign been impacting you personally?
We started the campaign about a month ago. It is still really new. The way it impacted me is that it gave me a lot of hope because many people came out and supported us. It also renewed my faith in solidarity with different communities. Hearing non-Chinese folks sharing about why Cantonese is important when they do not speak Cantonese. It was so touching to hear black students talking about why Canotnse is important; it was very moving to hear white students talking about why they are taking Canotense — maybe their neighbors are speaking Cantonese. It gave me a lot of hope.
I think I am lucky to be in San Francisco. The movement here is supported by different groups of people, not just students, but also people in the communities, like teachers, social workers, nurses, doctors, and medical students. This gives me a lot of hope that the Cantonese Language can be preserved.
I get messages on Instagram from local people saying that Hong Kong is going to die out. I don’t think this is going to be true. The Board of Trustee meeting showed me that people in this community care. Not just Chinese people, white, black, and Latinx people also care about Cantonese. Some of them don’t even speak the language and they still care. If other people who don’t speak Cantonese care about saving the language, then I think people need to stop saying Cantonese is going to die. People from all different backgrounds came out and supported us. So it is not a dying language.
What is your vision for Cantonese Language Education at CCSF, and in the SF Bay Area?
Right now, we are pushing for a Cantonese Certificate program at CCSF, because the certificate programs are the ones that get the funding for students. There are three programs for Mandarins, an Associate Degree in Arts, a Certificate in Mandarins, and A Certificate in Mandarin for Heritage learners. But there is none for Cantonese at all. This means that all the funding goes to the Mandarin Program. That is not fair, because there are so many students in the Cantonese classes. Why does the school only fund the Mandarin classes? Percentage-wise, the Cantonese classes are more full and Mandarin. But, because there is only a Mandarin certificate program, due to the student funding formula, Mandarin is prioritized over Cantonese, even though there are more students enrolled in Cantonese classes. That doesn’t make sense — if there are more students in the Canotense classes, why wouldn’t they put more funding towards it? Because there’s no Cantonese Certificate program.
I respect and I think Mandraisn is awesome, but I think the funding should also be shared with the Cantonese Program. Symbolically as well as funding-wise, if we get a Cantonese Certificate Program, it will secure Cantonese for the future. Also, Cantonese is transferable to State schools, like the SF States, and the Cal States East Bay, but it is not transferable to the University of California. For example, if I took Cantonese and I wanted to transfer to UC Berkeley or UC San Diego, that would not count. We are trying to push for Cantonese in Higher Education and academia. Also, the folks in Save Cantonese at Stanford created the idea of unionizing Cantonese groups in the US and abroad. They are working on that and we are going to join the fight to Save Cantonese at Stanford.
