One evening when I was in Bay Area, San Francisco, my wife and I dined at a Chinese food court.  We two sat at one side of a long table, and right at opposite side sat two young ladies about twenty years old.  My wife and I didn't speak to each other while we were eating, so we could clearly listen to the girls' conversation, but we couldn't understand even a single word.  When we were done and preparing to leave, I ventured to ask them what kind of vernaculars they were speaking.  One of them answered me politely in Mandarin that they were speaking the vernaculars of Shijiazhuang, Hebei(河北石家莊). 

Much to my surprise, how can it be that a vernacular spoken by the people not far from Mandarin-speaking Beijing is so obscure that I just can't understand a word?  How many Chinese dialects that being turgid to outsiders are still in use within different provinces and villiages?  Thanks to First Emperor of Qin Dynasty who unified and simplified Chinese characters over 2,000 years ago, and thanks to Mao and Chiang who strenuously promoted Mandarin as the commomly spoken and reading tool in Mainland and Taiwan, respecitvely.  Due to their contribution, China has remained unified as a nation throughout so many years, and 1.4 billion people(including people in Taiwan) who have received preliminary education are basically able to communicate with each other in a common language without much ado.  I always admire that people in a big country like the US are using the same word and speaking only one language.  But let's respect the vernaculars now still being used in Mainland and Taiwan, and let time decide their fates in the long, long term.   

P.S. Some radicals in Taiwan are trying to invent a phonetic alphabet to coin new words pronounced in Fujianese, like Korean and Vietnanese did to cut off the tie between Chinese characters and their spoken language.  Let me tell you guys, that's a totally futile attempt.