Abstract
As China’s economy continues to grow, making it the largest economy in the world, there’s a noticeable boost in its outbound tourism. As a result, the importance of Mandarin Chinese as a lingua franca is growing in many tourism contexts around the world. The number of and need for multilingual tourism workers who can speak Chinese is growing. In this article, I discuss ideologies of the Chinese language in the context of Nepal’s tourism and related businesses. I present findings from interviews with learners and users of Chinese in Nepal who come from multiple domains of language work such as tour guides, hoteliers, vendors, and business people. I complement the analysis with ethnographic observations of public linguistic signage from major tourist destinations in Kathmandu. I organize the findings into three key themes: (1) the commodity value of Chinese for Nepalis in order to achieve economic gains, (2) the increasing symbolic power of the Chinese language as an international lingua franca, and (3) the value of the Chinese language for intercultural understanding between the people of these two countries. While articulating these complex language ideologies, Nepalis portray Chinese as non-English speakers and, by the same token, position themselves as competent speakers of the English language. The findings as a whole highlight the power, prestige and commodity value of Chinese in Nepal, regimenting another lingua franca alongside English in international tourism contexts.