Rejection of Cantonese in this situation is technically wrong (Cantonese is a Chinese language), but I would apply some nuance. If the intention was to test someone's Mandarin Chinese abilities (e.g. a room with mixed Chinese and non-Chinese foreigners), then a non-mandarin language would be inappropriate. Mind you, if this happened in Hong Kong and the request was to sing a Chinese song but the request was spoken in Cantonese, I wouldn't expect someone to stand up and sing something in mandarin, either.

It definitely wasn't about testing Mandarin abilities. This was a sales activity, promoting something (I forget what) to Chinese people.

Promoting something to Chinese people? So there were lots of non-Chinese people around?

No, there weren't. This was in an ordinary Chinese city, I was the only non-Chinese, and I only happened to be there by chance.

In that case, I think that the specific request itself ("sing a song in Chinese") is weird. If you make such a request in the public space in any country around the world, you really shouldn't need to additionally qualify it with, please also sing the song in the language I'm speaking to you in right now.

@dROOOze Yes I know. I can't think why they said that. It does seem a bit redundant.

Someone voted to close this question because it is "opinion-based" But the definite answer to the question is "YES" and the reason is logic-based.

I thought it could be illuminating: this is a different way to define what is "Chinese" and what is not, that would never have occurred to me. So I wondered if this is a normal Chinese viewpoint or not. Not so much a language question, but a kind of culture question.

Previous discussions: chinese.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1880/…, chinese.stackexchange.com/questions/9831/…

Mandarin speakers can't deny Cantonese is a Chinese language, they can only deny Cantonese is Mandarin (the national language)

The guy had a grudge against 粤语! Maybe his woman was 广东人 and she left him! Portuguese has a word: mandar, from Latin mandāre: command. The "mandarins" were the commanders, appointed by the Emperor and representing him. They learnt this "mandarin" standard form of Chinese before they were sent to the ends of the Empire. Most Chinese today are at least bilingual: They speak their own 方言 and, well, or less well, 普通话!

@Pedroski he wishes he was, but unfortunately not.

Hi. I suggest editing your question to put more emphasis on the Chinese words that you translated as "Chinese" and "Chinese language" in your question. 中文， 汉语， 中国话，even 普通话 are all often translated as "Chinese" in English, and the situation you described happened specifically because one person was using one of these words with a particular (political) interpretation of that word, and another person understood it with another (political) interpretation of that word. This is not a matter of reading a definition in a dictionary, it's a matter of choosing a definition for a political reason.

It was probably just a joke (or a jokey excuse to not give the guy the freebies). Every speaker of a Chinese language agrees that "中文" includes Cantonese.

@dROOOze: the specific request itself ("sing a song in Chinese") is weird. Maybe they wanted to try to exclude OP.

@user103496 to be honest I think it was because I was present. I believe they were thinking, if I can get this foreign guy to come up and croak something out in Chinese, or near enough, then it's sure to draw a crowd. It wouldn't make sense to tell a bunch of Chinese people in China to sing in Chinese. Unfortunately I didn't quite have the nerve to do it :-)

Every linguistic authority agrees that cantonese is a different language while almost every mainland person will tell you (incorrectly) that cantonese is a dialect of chinese. Some people who answered assume that Zhengzhou speaks mandarin and the local speech as 中文, which is probably not true, at least in parts of China I have lived in for 14 years. They will generally have some way to reference the local language in opposition to 中文, possibly 河南话 but in smaller localities its obscure dialect by even more obscure names: see zh.wikipedia.org/zh-cn

"Every linguistic authority agrees that cantonese is a different language..." I can see why. On a group tour of a small village in China, our group of ethnic Chinese were asked by the locals, who were singing in Mandarin, to sing some songs, without specifying the language. Probably it was understood to be in Mandarin. Those before me sang in Mandarin. When my turn came I asked to sing in Cantonese, (though I could sing in Mandarin) Not sure why I needed to ask permission. Perhaps subconsciously I was thinking Cantonese was somehow not appropriate in that situation. But it was well received.

@WayneCheah but did you win a prize?