Hegel sat at the podium in a lecture hall at the University of Berlin—a city he described as the focal point of modernity—delivering his lectures on the philosophy of the “World Spirit” (Weltgeist). Hegel was a brilliant thinker, but not a particularly gifted teacher. He possessed almost no oratorical skill; his voice was dull and monotonous, punctuated by constant coughing and throat-clearing, as he incessantly re-explained sentences he had just uttered. More importantly, he spoke with an accent utterly out of place in Berlin: a Swabian accent from Southern Germany, while most of his audience spoke Northern Prussian Standard German. Compared to the modernity of the Prussian standard, the Swabian accent was thick with a rustic, provincial air. Most fatally, while “Idea” (Idee) was the pivotal concept in Hegelian philosophy, many of his listeners required a long period of adjustment just to recognize his mumbled, heavily localized pronunciation as the lofty Idee.
In a sense, Hegel’s own deeply regional accent was the greatest refutation of his philosophy, which sought universality. That a thinker so preoccupied with the universality of Spirit would use an intensely localized accent is a striking irony. Similarly, a common joke on the internet today is that the biggest hurdle for phone scammers is their inability to use standard pronunciation, betrayed instead by their regional inflections—be it Mandarin with a Henan accent or English with an Indian one.
I recently remarked to a friend from my hometown that Bazhong dialect (a variety of Sichuanese) sounds “rustier,” whereas Chengdu dialect sounds more “standard.” He took umbrage at this, criticizing me sharply and demanding a justification. I found myself unable to provide a demonstrable reason, forced instead to resort to a subjective “feeling.”
My own Sichuanese is a more “standard” version, yet this standard is not a living accent; it was constructed through self-directed learning. Sichuanese varies from place to place. My middle school classmates came from all over the province, bringing their various accents with them, and it was only then that I realized just how many varieties of Sichuanese existed. In that linguistic melting pot, by the time I graduated, I had forged a standard Sichuanese devoid of regional markers. That is to say, when I speak Sichuanese, no one can identify where exactly I am from. Curiously, I seem to be an exception; other students arrived with their accents and left with them upon graduation. Now, I always feel that the Bazhong accent is a bit “clunky” and the Chengdu accent a bit “cutesy,” but I cannot provide any rational basis for this.
However, my linguistic adaptability did not extend to Mandarin. During my undergraduate years, a professor once remarked: “You speak English better than you speak Mandarin.” Given that I would rate my English accent as mediocre at best, this was likely a critique rather than a compliment. While at the University of Virginia (UVA), I was once corrected on the spot by a bartender for my pronunciation of a particular word.
For the vast majority of people who learn English as a second language, they will carry an accent influenced by their mother tongue for the rest of their lives. I recall two amusing incidents. Once, during an international student and scholar exchange at UVA, the moderator asked who had visited New York. A Chinese student answered that she had. When asked where she went, she replied “Spy Museum,” but because her pronunciation of “Museum” was so heavily shaped by “Chinglish,” almost no one understood her. The moderator asked her to repeat herself, and she gave the same answer; this went back and forth three times, and still, no one followed. Finally, someone deduced her meaning based on the word “Spy” and provided the correct pronunciation for her. Another time, the power went out in my house, and my landlord gave me instructions over the phone on how to flip the circuit breaker. He was from Romania and is now an associate professor. Over the phone, in a thick Eastern European accent, he told me to push the “Blake” switch. I couldn’t for the life of me understand what “Blake” meant. After three rounds of confusion, it finally clicked: it was “Black”! Black!
Of course, most people—myself included—likely do not consider accents to be of great importance, as language is merely a vehicle for thoughts and ideas. As long as communication is smooth, whether an accent is regional is fundamentally a non-issue. Faculty recruitment at American universities generally doesn’t care how thick a foreigner’s accent might be.
The more significant question is: why do we say Swabian, Henan, and Indian accents are “more regional,” while we rarely describe Berlin, New York, or Shanghai accents as “regional”? The aesthetic of phonetics and the economic prosperity of a region are certainly factors. But this focus may cause us to overlook something more sublime.
In China, regional discrimination is often one-directional: Shanghainese look down on people from Henan, people in Zhejiang look down on those from “other provinces,” people in Guangxi look down on Northeasterners, and more generally, people from big cities look down on those from “small places.” In the United States, however, regional discrimination is often bi-directional. New Yorkers certainly look down on Missourians, but Missourians look down on New Yorkers just as much. To a New Yorker, Missouri offers nothing but a boring, stifling rural life; to a Missourian, it is unfathomable that New Yorkers live in matchbox-sized apartments yet remain so full of themselves.
In China, the gap in resources and information between urban and rural areas is largely one-dimensional. While children in big cities are already destined to be sent abroad, children from small towns are merely expected to find work in the provincial capital, or simply stay with their parents. Because certain major life decisions must be made and prepared for early, people from small towns do indeed sometimes “lose at the starting line.” A man from a small city marrying a woman from a metropolis might even have to pay a higher “bride price” (caili) as a form of compensation. When I was in middle school watching the show Happy Planet, a friend of mine in Guangzhou—whom I didn’t know at the time—was already reselling Taylor Swift CDs on Taobao, long before she knew Swift would become a global sensation. A friend of mine from a provincial capital recently went to work in a prefecture-level city in another province; he told me he envied those of us “from small cities” because we “wouldn’t feel miserable because of the limited resources of the city we work in.”
But fundamentally, I question China’s one-directional regionalism because one can spiritually transcend the limitations of locality. I acknowledge that from the perspective of objective resources and information, Henan is “more regional” than Shanghai, and small towns are more regional than big cities. However, we can seek independence from the “other” and the environment, reaching a state where “one relates only to oneself.” This Hegelian concept of freedom is actually more realistic today than ever before because the internet provides a magnificent tool. I only need to open YouTube to enjoy the breathtaking scenery of Scotland or the Alps, or to listen to a lecture by a scholar from the other side of the planet. I only need to open Twitter/X to learn the latest developments of the war in Iran, just as a New Yorker would. I can also read every book I can find.
Furthermore, people often overlook that big cities are, in essence, also a form of locality. No matter how much Shanghainese boast about their international lifestyle, “Shanghai” remains a local limitation. This locality is essentially identical to the locality of Shangqiu, Henan; it cannot be directly converted into “universality.” Is the coffee in Shanghai truly more sophisticated than the cuisine in Shangqiu? Many people who feel an intense sense of belonging to the big city they were born in are equally trapped by a narrow locality.
In fact, America’s bi-directional regionalism makes more sense because it indicates that New York, too, cannot be automatically equated with universality. Its cramped living spaces, frantic pace, and exorbitant cost of living have no right to represent the lifestyle everyone should aspire to. A few years ago, I longed to live in Beijing or Shanghai; now, I avoid them at all costs.
What I pursue is a universal life—to become a universal human. This means sublating (aufheben) locality as much as possible. A life where the spirit does not depend on the environment, but relates only to itself, is a universal life—which is to say, a life of freedom. The universality of my life exceeds that of most people born in big cities, which incidentally proves why big cities are also a form of locality. Thus, when people ask where I am from, I often don’t say I am “Sichuanese,” but rather “a person from Sichuan.” This is because the locality of Sichuan cannot define my spirit; I am free and do not need to depend on this “other”—even if my accent might occasionally give me away.
Is the universal human, then, a “citizen of the world”? Perhaps not. Every Chinese person who claims to be a citizen of the world is defeated by their own passport. But if being a “citizen of the world” means a moral commitment that transcends national borders, then I am willing to admit that I am one. However, this concept is not contained within the concept of the “universal human.” That is, becoming a citizen of the world does not automatically make you a universal human, and being a universal human does not necessarily mean you are a citizen of the world.
The universal human is a philosophical ideal—an ideal that can never be fully completed. It stands higher than the “citizen of the world,” a concept we are familiar with and which has been frequently critiqued in recent years. Most people might never have considered the possibility of the universal human; they simply want to be a Shenzhener, a Shanghainese, a Hangzhouer, or a New Yorker, and even take pride in those identities. But becoming a universal human is also a possibility worth aspiring to.
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