What language is spoken in Guangzhou?

Cantonese is the language of the Guangzhou street: you hear it in the dim sum halls of Liwan, the dried-seafood shops on Yide Road and the chess games under the banyans in Yuexiu Park. It sounds loud and clipped, with six tones to Mandarin's four. Mandarin (Putonghua) is the official language, though, running the city's paperwork, schools, metro and police. Since the 1980s Guangzhou has drawn millions of workers from Hunan, Sichuan and Guangxi, so your Didi driver or hotel cleaner may speak no Cantonese at all. Use Mandarin for anything practical, taxis, tickets and pharmacies, because almost every resident under 50 speaks it. Then add one Cantonese word, 'm goi' (唔该), for warmth. In Cantonese it means both 'thank you for the service' and 'excuse me'. Say it to a Panxi Restaurant server pushing a cart of steaming baskets and you get a grin that Mandarin 'xie xie' rarely earns. The writing is simplified characters, the same as in Beijing. Hong Kong, 120 km down the Pearl River, uses the traditional script instead.

English in Guangzhou tends to be thinner than in Shanghai or Beijing, even in the tourist zones. It holds up at the international hotels in Zhujiang New Town, at the Canton Tower ticket counter and around the Pazhou exhibition complex. The Canton Fair's autumn session usually runs from mid-October into early November and brings interpreters and English signs to Pazhou. Outside those 3 zones, English drops away fast. The wet-market stalls around Qingping Market, the noodle shops of Xiguan and most taxi drivers work in Chinese only. Many restaurants now take orders through a WeChat QR code, and the menu behind it is often Chinese only. The Guangzhou Metro is the one place where you won't need any Chinese: station signs are bilingual, and trains announce stops in Mandarin, Cantonese and English, so you can ride from Gongyuanqian to Canton Tower station without saying a word.

Google services are blocked in mainland China, so a Google Translate download from home can let you down on the arrivals floor at Baiyun Airport. Two fixes work. A travel eSIM such as Jetogo usually routes your data through a server abroad, which tends to keep Google Maps and Translate working, so install it before you board. Inside China, WeChat translates any chat message when you long-press it, and Pleco is the best offline Chinese dictionary, with a camera reader that handles menus. Both give Mandarin readings rather than Cantonese, but in Guangzhou that rarely matters, because menus and signs are written in standard Chinese. On day one, ask your hotel front desk to write its address in characters on a card. Guangzhou taxi drivers rarely read pinyin, and almost none read English.

Language anxiety peaks at the yum cha table, so start with 3 dish names. Har gow (虾饺) are see-through shrimp dumplings with a chewy, slightly sticky skin, siu mai (烧卖) are open-topped pork and shrimp cups, and cheung fun (肠粉) are slippery rice-noodle rolls doused in sweet soy. At Guangzhou Restaurant on Wenchang Road, expect roughly 15 to 35 yuan per basket, about US$2.20 to US$5.20. Two Cantonese gestures can stand in for words: tap two fingers on the table when someone refills your cup, the local thank-you for tea, and leave the teapot lid propped open so staff will bring hot water without being asked. The halls ring with clattering porcelain and smell of pu'er. Pointing at the next table's steamer works in every dim sum hall in Liwan.