My English name is Fiona, my mother gave it to me, it doesn’t have any special meaning. My Chinese name is Yao Xinyu. Xin has the meaning of happiness, and Yu （jade）is the meaning of treasure, because in ancient times, jade is very valuable. So my parents want me to be a happy person. When I was young, I felt embarrassed about my name, because many times, my classmates and teachers would call my name wrong, because Chinese characters are easy to be confused, so every time I would write my name in big letters, so that they could see clearly, so as not to make mistakes. I live in Shanghai, so a lot of times my parents and some of my elders speak Shanghainese, but in my generation, Mandarin is becoming popular in schools, so Shanghainese is not used much anymore. I remember very clearly that when I was in primary school, my accent was actually more Shanghainese than Mandarin, and when I read the text, other students would laugh at me for not having the standard pronunciation, which made me feel very embarrassed. At home, we still insist on speaking Shanghainese, which is sometimes more convenient than Mandarin to communicate with our elders. Now few people can speak authentic Shanghainese, so many people say that Shanghainese will be lost from our generation, so now a lot of primary schools start to teach Shanghainese.
