At company briefings, Larry Yung, chairman of Hong Kong-listed Citic Pacific, and Henry Fan, his managing director, would sometimes confer sotto voce in Shanghainese, a Chinese dialect incomprehensible to local journalists.
The scion of a powerful Shanghai family, Mr Yung occasionally attempted to answer questions in Cantonese, the Chinese dialect most prevalent in Hong Kong.
But it was a struggle for him, and journalists hoping for a comprehensible answer often asked him questions in Mandarin, China's national language.
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