Have you studied Chinese in (mainland) China?

Hi all,

I’ve been asked by an inflight magazine (SILKROAD, published by Dragonair) to write an article on studying Chinese. I know plenty of people who do so or have done so here in Taiwan, but not so many who’ve studied in (mainland) China.

If you do or have, and are willing to answer a few questions by e-mail, pm, or telephone, please send me a pm or e-mail.

Best wishes,

Steven Crook
yushan (at) gmx (dot) net

Steven

I have just forwarded your note to a friend who studied in Nanjing. Am fairly sure she will get back to you. Is there not a Chinese equivalent of F.com that you could post on?

Mainland schools (e.g. TLI Beijing) charge Westerners 10x more(because you are foreign) and the lack of civilized life(even less than here) makes concentrated study botheresome.

But most people have to go and try(and then come back to TW).

I studied in in Beijing, but probably not long enough to be able to answer most of your questions.

I suggest you post at chinese-forums.com/ , which is mainly for people studying in Mainland China.

[quote=“austin”]Mainland schools (e.g. TLI Beijing) charge Westerners 10x more(because you are foreign) and the lack of civilized life(even less than here) makes concentrated study botheresome.

But most people have to go and try(and then come back to TW).[/quote]

You’ve gotta lay off the pipe, man! Beijing is far more internationalized than Taiwan is, and there are also far more westerners studying Chinese just in Beijing city than all of Taiwan combined. Where do you get these ideas!?

Cost of studying and rate of progress is the point of my response to the original post.

I called schools in Beijing before going there. I recall TLI Beijing being incredibly expensive - for no other reason than that foreigners should be charged more.

I agree with everything you said about Beijing.

My experience is limited and I’d like to hear other people’s experience.

I do notice alot of advanced people leave Mainland to study here. Before I went to Beijing, I asked an ICLP student(Valerie Levan from Pennsylvania, Blakemore fellow) - who said she’d studied over 10 years - why she’d chosen Taipei over Beijing or Shanghai. She replied “If you’d ever been to Mainland you’d never have asked that question.”

I did three years at Beijing Languages Institute (now University) and one year at Beijing Normal University. PM me and I will try to answer your questions in a few days’ time.