Chinese culture is converging...I think that is true...but the culture converging is not only happen in China,but also spread all over the word, just like a lot of people speak english and wear T-shirt and jean, no matter where he/she comes from. Globalization makes the whole word becoming more and more similar. Well...if you know about the chinese history, it's not hard to find that from thousands of years, the king of each dynasty they do a lot of work to make the culture converge, and it's turned out very benefit for dominion over such a vast area.Like the first Emperpor of Qin (259-210B.C), he unified the characters,so even we can't understand each other's dialect sometimes, we can still appreciate one another's literatures and so on. Also that's a very important reason for why in four countries with an ancient civilization, China is the only one who's culture never breake up. As for the mandarin...that's really makes our life more convenient,but it's also harmful for the local culture if we never study the dialect...I feel lucky I never lose this 'special language', I talk my family with dialect, but when I go to school I talk with my teachers and classmates with Mandarin. I think most of Chinese have this habit since he/she was a child. and also I don't think it's a hard thing to speak perfect Mandarin if you practice and imitate a lot. :) Hmm...you know, an increasing number of people realized it's very important to protect the local culture and to keep the culture diversity. I think China do a lot of work for this...at least in music field, I know the national folk music is becoming an focus in recent years. Many musicians going to the mountain villiage to record these folk songs which just pass by mouth and singing with dialect,that's pretty meaningful . :)

so that is another communist's mistake now ? and we have less than 300 hundreds of dialects actually. discover said so . is there really somebody would learn the name of divinities? well, i never know a normal person would really want to know that . what you pointed out happening in china, is happening everywhere , because we share the same internet, and that is part of globalization. personally, i think a lot of regional slangs got hot all over the country because some tvshow or interenet spreading. that is good, but also we are losing thing too . but somehow , i feel like after we reach one extreme , than we would turn back to reach the opposite one . 否极泰来， which means, when we feel like everybody saying the same thing, of course, some of us will feel boring and try to be special. non mainstream or back to tranditional . 人生在于折腾。 well, seems i did not really answer your questions, that was just some ideas in my mind when seeing your question.

The whole world is "converging", isnt it? Any reason China would be heading the opposite direction?

oui tu as raison. il y a une expression que dit :“ 樹林子大了！ 什么鳥都有” ca veut dire : quand la foret est de plus en plus grande, on y trouve toutes les races d'oiseau qui existe Ca n'existe pas seulement en Chine, mais aussi dans de grands pays comme les Etats Unis, l'Inde........... C'est un melting pot, voila. Et faire en sorte que la population parle une seule langue c'est bien pour controler politiquement le pays.

well both. in different aspects of course. for converging, i think every nation is becoming similar to each other because of globalization. and so is china itself. it doesnt matter who is in control and what's the policy, it will converge coz it's the trend of the time. as for diverging, some distinct parts are preserved. it's good that you mention dialects, coz you might think the mandarin thing kinda ruins the dialect culture. but we really need mandarin to understand each other. and i dont think anyone can speak perfect mandarin except those news reporters perhaps. coz their dialects will affect their mandarin, more or less, which is why we have "sichuan-mandarin" and so on. gee. i'm not good at explaining things. hope some of my point make sense#_#