My boss is Taiwaness and live in NZ for few years.
He would like to help foreigns living in Taiwan.
We have a chat time in our office 17:00~18:00 every Tuesdays.
We supply free coffee and tea.
If you have problem of learning Chinese or living or travel or religion,join us.
Our office address is "7F., No.6-1, Ln. 39, Sec. 2, Jhongshan N. Rd., Jhongshan District, Taipei City 104, Taiwan(台北市中山北路二段39巷6-1號7樓) ".
We are travel agency,but we don’t sale product in the chat time,Don’t worry~
If you would like to join us,email to me before you come.
My email is sunny@joyful.com.tw
[color=#FF0040]PS.When you come to our office,take your Chinese book and your questions please.
We don’t teach Chinese class,We tell you answer of questions or let you know who can solve the problem.[/color]
Sorry, you mentioned religion so I have to ask:
Is this somekind of Religious organization (or) will religion be a ‘re-occuring’ theme?
Just need to make sure that it’s nothing related to the Mormans or any other religion/cult.
Yeah I’d have to say my first reaction is the same… what’s the angle? 
Free tea and coffee for you soul muu-huu-whaa-haa-haa!
I wonder, is it real ground coffee-bean coffee or just the 3-in-1 stuff?
The assumption is probably that most of the interaction will happen in English. A couple of cups of tea is cheaper than hiring a teacher to come to the office.
Ah… that’s quite clever. Well, if the people going had very basic leve Chinese.
After studying for 3 years at Wen-Hua I decided to find my own private tutor (because Wen-Hua charge about 600NT per hour for 1 on 1 classes). Before I met my current tutor (who I’m happy with), I went through quite a few odd Mandarin tutors who had alterior motives or just assumed it would be ok to use English half the time or when teaching new vocab would say the Chinese then the English, I kept telling them that they really didn’t need to. Normally after 1 or 2 classes I would be ‘too busy’ to continue.
Oh, there was this one really scary Tai-qi/Qi-gong guy who has been stalking me on the net ever since the one lesson we had! He nearly fell off his seat in tears of rage when I said that usually I don’t sleep until 3am, he also stood up in starbucks, got into some kind of horse stance Qi-gong position with his hands one foot apart ~ and he asked me to put my hand intbeteen his and ‘feel his qi’!!! It’s not as easy as you think to find a ‘normal’ Mandarin tutor who doesn’t have a hidden agenda, I’ve had tutors that:
- Have wanted me to help them with their real-etsate business! He asked me to help him communicate with foreign buyers (after the 1st class)!
- 2 female tutors treating the class as if it were a date… flirting and generally making me feel uncomfortable (I’m married and don’t mess around). :no-no:
- 1 guy with politics in mind, wanted me to wave a flag around for his uncle’s election campaign.
- The Tai-Qi nut. :loco:
- Most of them and other used far too much English!
- One guy advertising himself on the net as ‘the best Mandarin/Chinese teacher in Taiwan’ ~ who’s actually a part-time Taiwanese actor, I stipulated I wanted a conversation class only, he brought piles and piles of classic poems and 文言文 which just wasn’t what I asked for (he still insisted that we plough through them) - he only lasted one lesson!
I really don’t get it… what’s wrong with these people posing as Mandarin tutors? 
In that case this could be treated as an LE ad.
My boss is a Christian,but I’m not.I have no religion.
When I travel,I know many people learn English using Bible.
What I mean questions of religion is if you learn Chinese using Bible or Buddhist,some word you didn’t understand,you can ask us,we can tell you how to explain it.
[quote=“Dr Jellyfish”]Sorry, you mentioned religion so I have to ask:
Is this somekind of Religious organization (or) will religion be a ‘re-occuring’ theme?
Just need to make sure that it’s nothing related to the Mormans or any other religion/cult.[/quote]
sorry about that.
We are not for 營利.
We have no real ground coffee-bean nor 3-in-1 stuff.
We have common coffee bag.
If you have high level coffee,take your coffee,sugar and milk,that’s better.
Or you can have in Cafe.
Free tea and coffee for you soul muu-huu-whaa-haa-haa!
I wonder, is it real ground coffee-bean coffee or just the 3-in-1 stuff?[/quote]
[quote=“Sunny14”]sorry about that.
We are not for 營利.
We have no real ground coffee-bean nor 3-in-1 stuff.
We have common coffee bag.
If you have high level coffee,take your coffee,sugar and milk,that’s better.
Or you can have in Cafe.
Free tea and coffee for you soul muu-huu-whaa-haa-haa!
I wonder, is it real ground coffee-bean coffee or just the 3-in-1 stuff?[/quote][/quote]
Sorry, my soul is worth much more than 3 in 1 powder coffee… at the very least it’s worth a city-cafe coffee…
Do you or your boss have any Chinese teaching experience or qualifications?
What materials do you use besides the bible?
Maybe just a way to tap into the foreigner travel market. Sounds like a good way for this business and person to network. Asking for qualifications? Give me a break :s
Sorry ~ but you can give yourself a break, I’m serious about studying Chinese, have quit my job and am pretty much studying everyday. I wanted to make sure whether the focus was actually on Chinese or something else… I had a suspicion that it was probably something else, so I just wanted to find out before I turn up.
Besides my 1 on 1 private classes, I sometimes attend study groupes and have free lessons from teachers in training (my old school sets the classes up for me on the very fair condition that I give an evaluation). Like I mentioned before, I’ve had some not so good experiences with so called tutors and study groups, I feel that I’m more than entitled to ask a question or two.
They lost me at the 3 in 1 coffee anyway.
I dunno; sounds like he’s on the level. If he’s been in NZ for awhile, it’s possible that he’s relieving his own culture shock and helping others suffering from the same.
If I were new and/or in Taipei, I’d take him up on it.
Sounds to me like he has the best of intentions and just wants to help… if it gets him some guanxi in the process, good on him!
[quote=“Dr Jellyfish”]
Sorry ~ but you can give yourself a break, I’m serious about studying Chinese…They lost me at the 3 in 1 coffee anyway.[/quote]
Dude, you get what you pay for. It’s an offer of free help; I understand the skepticism about motives, but must we be so hostile?
I’m with Ironlady. Bloke runs a travel agency. Wants his staff to have better English but doesn’t want to splash out on teachers. Fair enough, but he should say so up front. Nothing wrong with doing so. Free coffee in return for English lessons.
It could work, it COULD.
[quote=“Dragonbones”][quote=“Dr Jellyfish”]
Sorry ~ but you can give yourself a break, I’m serious about studying Chinese…They lost me at the 3 in 1 coffee anyway.[/quote]
Dude, you get what you pay for. It’s an offer of free help; I understand the skepticism about motives, but must we be so hostile?[/quote]
Fair enough, I guess not.
If this was my first year in Taiwan, then I may have actually attended without any doubts. Like I mentioned - I’ve had some less than ideal ‘Mandarin classes’ and have grown to be a little bit wary. The add seemed a bit vague, then again one can go on about how a lot of things in Taiwan are just so.
I guess I really just am too skeptical, the notion of competely free Chinese classes is difficult for me to believe. If someone attends then perhaps they can let us know?
[quote=“Sunny14”]My boss is a Christian,but I’m not.I have no religion.
When I travel,I know many people learn English using Bible.
[/quote]
I call that learning the Bible with English. Seriously.
This is obviously a ploy to get free English lessons. Don’t mean to sound synical, but come on.
This is, at best, a language exchange which are also crap. The value of an hour of English teaching is at least five times the value as an hour of Chinese.
When I was looking for a Chinese tutor I just posted an ad (in Chinese) asking for a Chinese tutor, no experience necessary, NT$150 / hour. I had a ton of replies and only chose people that didn’t try to sneak in English when I met with them (my personal pet peeve). I provided the materials and told them exactly what I needed them to do.
The point is, there are for more efficient ways to get Chinese instruction than whatever this guy is proposing.
[quote=“mpallard”]This is obviously a ploy to get free English lessons. Don’t mean to sound synical, but come on.
This is, at best, a language exchange which are also crap. The value of an hour of English teaching is at least five times the value as an hour of Chinese.
When I was looking for a Chinese tutor I just posted an ad (in Chinese) asking for a Chinese tutor, no experience necessary, NT$150 / hour. I had a ton of replies and only chose people that didn’t try to sneak in English when I met with them (my personal pet peeve). I provided the materials and told them exactly what I needed them to do.
The point is, there are for more efficient ways to get Chinese instruction than whatever this guy is proposing.[/quote]
I paid mine 600NT a hour but she made all her own materials and was brilliant. 150 an hour’s pretty cheap; you should expect them to try and get something out of it for themselves…
It sounds like the guy is trying to be nice and trying to make friends and expand his business a little. What’s wrong with that? He’s not claiming to be a Chinese teacher, just to help people out. That might be just what some people want. if it’s not, there’s no reason to publically slate the guy.
Now I’m back in the UK, I’m a total Chinese stalker. I virtually walk around the colleges with a sign on my head saying ‘Will edit for huoguo’.
You paid $600/hour. That’s ridiculous. Virtually any Taiwanese person can do the job, you just need to tell them what they need to do.
I’m willing to debate whether $150 is too low (I don’t think it is, all my tutors were making far less then that at their other jobs), but paying $600 is showing a complete lack of understanding of the economic realities.