ABSTRACT
The 85 million people who speak the various dialects of Wu live in the provincial-level municipality of Shanghai and in Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces. Those in Jiangsu Province live primarily south of the Yangzi River. Zhejiang prefectures were Huzhou, Jiaxing, Hangzhou, Yenzhou, Quzhou, Jinhua, Chuzhou, Wenzhou, Taizhou, Shaoxing, and Ningbo. The Chinese character wu, used to refer to the sublanguage of Han Chinese that is spoken in Zhejiang Province and adjoining areas to its north, has a long history. The Wu sublanguage has many archaic features that distinguish it sharply from modern Mandarin. "The Shanghainese has always been considered a species apart by his countrymen," stated one commentator. The port city of Wenzhou in southern Zhejiang is geographically isolated from the rest of the province, although its hinterland, up the narrow river valley of the Ou Jiang, does connect it precariously to the Jinhua area.
