I am a person deprived of a dialect. I speak no dialect fluently other than Mandarin, the official language of today’s China. Possibly because of this, I have been fascinated by the linguistic ...

Almost two years before Wong Kar-wai’s period drama “Blossoms” brought Shanghainese back into the public spotlight, 23-year-old Hu Shiyang began writing her debut novel in the same dialect. Titled ...