G ROWING UP in the Dabie mountains of western Anhui at the height of the Cultural Revolution, Yu Yan learned from a young age that many innocent acts could get her into trouble, starting with using her mother tongue—a dialect of the Chinese language known as Lower Yangzi Mandarin—in her school playground. Fully 70m Chinese speak some form of Lower Yangzi Mandarin, a language that is unintelligible to Chinese raised in northern cities such as Beijing. But back in those dark days of thought control, a little girl chattering in mountain dialect risked a scolding—at least—for not using putonghua, the state-standardised form of Mandarin that was the language of Maoist orthodoxy.

Nearly half a century later, officials still promote putonghua as a tool of national unity. Yet the value of local dialects is on the rise, as Ms Yu, who now manages an old people’s home in the coastal province of Zhejiang, knows well.

Her private facility, called Riyuexing, is perched in a steep, terraced valley above the county town of Wencheng. Its 160 residents are mostly men in their late 70s or older. Rural families seem keener on keeping grandmothers at home, Ms Yu observes delicately. Old men have bad tempers, do not listen and can smell bad, she says. Only about a third of her charges speak putonghua. That obliges Ms Yu to hunt for care workers who can, between them, speak the four or five local dialects heard in the home’s plain but airy corridors. Interrupting an intense game of mahjong, Chaguan asks an 89-year-old resident whether it is possible to make friends with others at the home who speak different dialects. “You can’t,” he growls, turning back to the tiles.

There are practical reasons to hire dialect-speakers, notably when caring for residents with dementia, who need constant guidance in a world turned foggy and frightening. There are commercial reasons, too. The home opened in 2015, and though fees are low, at about 2,000 yuan ($285) a month, rural families break with tradition by placing the elderly in care. They need to know that the residents will be treated kindly and that being put into the home is not akin to a death sentence, as Ms Yu puts it.

An official study in 2013 estimated that 400m Chinese, or almost a third of the population, are not proficient in putonghua. Most of them live in smaller cities, rural areas and regions with many ethnic minorities. The education ministry has pledged more effort to teach the official tongue. But in tucked-away corners of China, like Wencheng, where dialects change from valley to valley, linguistic diversity is increasingly seen as a business opportunity.

An ageing society and growing spending power in China’s backwaters are bringing old people’s homes to unfamiliar places. To prosper, this growing industry needs to talk in languages that its newest customers understand. More generally, China is evolving from a manufacturing and export behemoth into an economy sustained more by domestic consumption. Businesses previously focused on large urban centres and coastal boomtowns. Now they are looking for growth in smaller, unflashy cities where lower housing costs, higher birth rates and more migrant-friendly residency laws could see annual household consumption triple between 2017 and 2030, according to Morgan Stanley, a bank.

Earlier this year Alibaba, a technology firm, announced a project to teach its Tmall Genie smart speakers to recognise dialects, starting with Sichuanese, the largest regional tongue, before moving on to Cantonese and eventually most others. Consumers in smaller cities, especially older ones, are not always “savvy with keyboards”, says an Alibaba representative, and are more likely to treat smart speakers as a companion, calling up traditional operas or health information, or audio-books for grandchildren left in their charge. Younger consumers may be more comfortable in putonghua, but that does not mean that dialects will disappear, because speaking a dialect feels like “home”, she adds.

The central government remains capable of cruel chauvinism towards minorities deemed a threat to national unity. Uighurs, a Muslim ethnic group in the western region of Xinjiang, have seen their language all but banned in schools and vanish from bookshops, with long spells in prison or re-education camps for those who resist. The Tibetan language is under similar pressure. But in places like Wencheng, in the Chinese heartlands, the same forces that drive commercial services to use dialects are also pushing local officials to do the same. The office in Wencheng that issues identity cards and other official paperwork recently opened a dialect-speaking service desk. The same office offers video conferencing to the legions of Wencheng natives who live in northern Italy, many as workers in clothing factories. The government wants to maintain close links with overseas Chinese, so it is pragmatic about the dialects that are commonly used in the diaspora. Language is a complex business in Wencheng, a dusty town filled with strikingly fine espresso bars, selling Italian coffee to returnees who know their Lavazza from their Illy. Luo Jianyang, a café-owner, explains how she brought her children home from Italy in 2012 because she worried about their poor putonghua. She now frets that she should teach them Wencheng dialect, too.

Can you hear me now?

Western politicians once confidently predicted that growing Chinese prosperity and the emergence of a middle class would trigger calls for political liberalisation in China. That proved overly optimistic. The country’s rulers have chosen a very different, authoritarian path, insisting that only absolute control by the Communist Party can promote continued development. But in spheres outside politics, companies big and small are giving more thought to how to make individuals feel heeded and respected. Even in unfashionable corners of China, millions of consumers have a voice, and—unlike in the era of central planning—that voice does not always have to speak standard Mandarin. ■