Resumen de “Long time no see”: the use of chinese pidgin english as a cultural identity symbol by the canton anglophone trading community
The earliest narratives sent to Europe from China were by European Catholic missionaries and dated from the sixteenth century, a time when China was still relatively unknown in Great Britain. These were gradually complemented and replaced by accounts by traders, colonial agents, and explorers. This chapter examines some of the descriptions of Chinese Pidgin English (CPE) in eighteenth-century English and North-American travel writing, looking first at the way it was represented in general terms, before focusing on the way it sounded to the Western ear. CPE is also analysed as a symbol of the identity of the eighteenth-century British and North-American commercial community in China. After traders and their relatives returned home, they continued to use and spread words and expressions such as “savvy”, “no can do” and “long time no see”, still employed nowadays all over the world by English speakers.
