Will Shanghai Expo change the city's traditionally surly attitude towards outsiders? [China Daily]

Mending ties with waidiren is a priority for the much-maligned Shanghainese as the city sets out to prove it can be a gracious Expo host.

Expo 2010 Shanghai is a perfect opportunity for the city's residents to prove they don't have a chip on their collective shoulder. It is the right time to mend ties, with immigrants from other provinces who often complain of discrimination by the Shanghainese.

About 50 million domestic tourists are expected to descend on Shanghai during the six-month Expo, giving locals an opportunity to undo the decades of animosity that have been built up between them and waidiren (outsiders), and prove they can be gracious hosts.

For Chen Gang, who moved to the city from Yunnan province in southwest China, such an attitude overhaul is long overdue. Chen left Shanghai for Beijing after several years of being made to feel like a second-class citizen in China's bustling financial hub.

"My Shanghai colleagues would often speak to each other in their local dialect and exclude me," he said. "Eventually I felt like I had no choice but to move."

Xiao Song, who works in public relations at a luxury hotel in the city, said she got a terrible first impression after arriving from Hunan province almost a decade ago.

"I went to buy a toothbrush and the store owner pointed at the cheapest brush and whispered under her breath that I couldn't afford a better one," she said. "From that point on I realized that if you want to settle here, you'd better learn the local dialect. It's a basic weapon." Within one year she could speak it fluently and with almost no accent.

Team effort

Stereotyped as huffy and inhospitable, the Shanghainese are downplaying these complaints on the one hand, and making subtle overtures on the other. Many shops have already started to ban the use of Shanghai dialect among their staff so as not to alienate customers.

Meanwhile, local communities are organizing various activities to make their residents better hosts for Expo. Residents of Putuo district's Ganquan community have signed an agreement to use bicycles instead of automobiles, while other groups are adopting plants to develop more greenbelts in the city.

Another community in Pudong district, close to the Expo Garden, has organized a team to persuade residents to dress in a more sophisticated manner and ditch their Hello Kitty pajamas, which are often worn by middle-aged people in public. In another development, some 500 Expo Families have been approved to provide home-stays and teach guests about local cuisine and lifestyles.

Retiree Sheng Chongming, who used to work in a state-owned enterprise, said her community has been told to put on a more friendly face for Expo. But she described the allegations of discrimination as "rubbish".

"They asked us older citizens to practice Mandarin with the aim of receiving visitors from other provinces. They also suggested we study English," she said. "Our community billboard urges people to keep the environment neat and tidy, not to hang clothes out on the balcony and behave politely in public.

"If we Shanghainese are inhospitable, why would we bother going to these lengths? I think it's rather the people from outside who have it in for us," she said.

Television programs that routinely pigeonhole Shanghai's men as selfish and effeminate and its women as shrewd and picky serve to reinforce Sheng's claim.

As it turns out, local celebrities don't get off much lighter. Hurdles champion Liu Xiang is a case in point. When Liu won the Olympic track and field gold medal at Athens in 2004, the Chinese public praised him as a hero "not resembling a Shanghai man in any shape or fashion".

However this changed four years later when Liu limped out of the National Stadium during the Beijing Olympics prior to his race due to a nagging injury. He was subsequently mocked as "a coward, a typical Shanghai man".

Things came to a head last December when two presenters on Shanghai Radio's daily Music Breakfast show began bantering in Shanghai dialect during a live broadcast, prompting one listener to text them asking them "not to use Shanghai dialect anymore".

"I hate you Shanghainese," added the sender with a lack of respect that infuriated presenter Xiao Jun.

"Please roll yourself into a ball and slowly roll out of the city that you hate," he curtly replied.

With both sides blaming each other for the animosity, it is often difficult to untangle the truth. However a survey conducted last year by Chen Xinkang, a professor at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, suggests that discrimination against people from other parts of China is becoming a major problem in Shanghai.