Hi,
I am interested in a change of scenery and going to a school on the mainland in August. At the moment I have a scholaship in Taiwan, but I won’t have this in China of course.
I would like to go somewhere where most people can’t (and won’t try to!) speak English (my main complaint about Taiwan) and which has a good language program. If it was near a more ‘international’ city (i.e Shanghai or Beijing) that would be good so I could induldge in an occasional ‘escape/bender’ to preserve my sanity.
I will have to teach English to pay for all my living expenses/tuition fees. However, I don’t want to end up working too many hours and never learning any Chinese. Is it feasible to do tutor classes/other teaching for around 15 hours a week and have enough to live on?
Thanks for any help you can give…
Mandarin in China isn’t what the mainlanders in Taiwan tell you it is: it sucks!
But if you go to a major city they speak lovely Chinese.
Even in Xi’an (haven’t been to another major city) people spoke only Chinese with me. I live in a lesser city (lesser in so many ways) and people also speak only ‘Chinese’ with me, but I must put Chinese in quotes like that due to their wonderful pronunciation.
Good luck (you’ll need it).
[quote=“yonglan”]Mandarin in China isn’t what the mainlanders in Taiwan tell you it is: it sucks!
But if you go to a major city they speak lovely Chinese.
Even in Xi’an (haven’t been to another major city) people spoke only Chinese with me. I live in a lesser city (lesser in so many ways) and people also speak only ‘Chinese’ with me, but I must put Chinese in quotes like that due to their wonderful pronunciation.
Good luck (you’ll need it).[/quote]
I’ve heard that schools are very cheap and Beijing is the best place. People say Shanghai is alot more expensive and the locals, although they know Mandarin, they just speak Wu among themselves, so It wouldn’t be wise to go to Shanghai.
I did a two month summer program at Capitol Normal in Beijing in 1996 and that I had a great time, learned a lot, and lived pretty cheaply. It was much simpler to stumble off the main roads and get to places in Beijing where people could not or would not speak English to you. My last trip, as a IP networking instructor, was in 2001, though I stayed at a ‘Western’ hotel and taught a technical course in English, it was still easy for me to find cheap places to eat and areas of the city where I could use nothing but Chinese,
Excluding tuition and rent, teaching five hours of English per week at 100RMB/hour was more than enough for my costs in Beijing five years ago and Nanjing two years ago. Bump it up to ten hours per week and it should pay for everything. Try doing that in Taipei.
Yeah, Beijing is probably the place to study Mandarin, though I’m a fan of Nanjing. But it’s a little bullshit about how Mandarin spoken in Beijing is the “standard.” There’s Beijing-accented Mandarin, which to my southern Chinese ear reminds me of a cute Irish brogue, and then there’s the proper Beijing dialect, which sounds like the guy has had his teeth knocked out and is totally incomprehensible. You’ll definitely encounter the latter when you try to get your bicycle fixed, shoot the shit with many taxi drivers, etc. It’s humbling trying to understand that.
I suggest you go to Beijing Languages and Cultural University, which is the source place of HSK tests.
Beijing is a good city for foreigners and living cost is relatively lower than the major cities in Taiwan.
OP:
People in Taiwan will stop speaking English to you when your Mandarin gets better. Almost everyone who is seriously studying here has that problem for the first two years or so and then it goes away. I suggest you focus on getting to know peoole here and don’t worry about what language they speak to you. It just takes time.
Now if I could just get people to stop speaking Mandarin with me so that I could practice my Taiwanese…Oh, wait, no one wants to speak Taiwanese to me because my Taiwanese sucks. See above.
[quote=“Feiren”]OP:
People in Taiwan will stop speaking English to you when your Mandarin gets better. Almost everyone who is seriously studying here has that problem for the first two years or so and then it goes away. I suggest you focus on getting to know peoole here and don’t worry about what language they speak to you. It just takes time.
.[/quote]
Hi there,
Yeah, I had the same ““problem”” while studying for a year in Taiwan. Naturally, my Chinese still sucks, but now that I’m in China it’s going to get alot better and fast. I speak with everyone in Mandarin. Everywhere.
One day of Chinese usage here, feels like two weeks in Taiwan. Even people that can speak some English are usually happy to speak with me in Mandarin.
There is no doubt; if you’re fluent enough or have a scollership, you might want to go to Taiwan, otherwise pick the mainland. Goodluck!
I had a totally different experience: I have never spoken as much Chinese in mainland during 1 year than in Taiwan during 1 month.
The reason is, that when your Chinese gets better, most people in Taiwan speak to you like you were a native speaker. Opposed to people in Mainland, where even if your Chinese is fluent, they still speak to you as you were a moron, which totally put me off. Also, Taiwanese people are easier to talk with, I hardly find a good subject to talk about with Mainlanders, or maybe that is just me. Anyways, result: My Chinese didn’t improve much in Mainland, but I made a lot of progress in Taiwan and I wish I had known that before! 
I think both Taiwan and the mainland have their advantages. I enjoyed my time studying in Xi’an very much, learned a lot, and got to experience lots of great cultural and historic stuff. I also learned very quickly because English speakers were few and far between. I found the Mandarin spoken there to be quite standard, although I did hear Shaanxi dialect from time to time.
As for Taiwan, I find it easier to have a “normal” conversation with people here and don’t have to worry about getting into some kind of political debate. Being able to have your friends come over and visit you or even make friends with a member of an ethnic minority group and not have to worry about the police paying them a visit later on is also nice. I’ve rarely had the problem of people trying to speak English with me. As soon as they start, I answer back in Chinese and they usually don’t try English again (except of course for the few words they throw in here and there because they think it makes them cool or something). I live with my boyfriend and we speak 100% Mandarin, my co-workers (who all speak good English) hardly ever speak a word of English with me, and none of my professors or classmates has ever uttered a word of English to me … well, there was once where my “Dream of the Red Chamber” teacher said the word “androgyny” (mispronounced it of course) because she didn’t think I would know that word in Chinese … and she was right … but now I do … 雌雄同體 
Just for the experience alone, however, give the mainland a try and see how you like it.