Mandarin immersion - activities near Shi-DA

Hi.

Any ideas of possible morning/noon activities near Shi-Da where one would be immersed in Mandarin? I’d pretty much go for anything.

You could listen to a class at the university. If you want to speak too, and you’ll really try anything, you could go to church.

That’s not such a bad a idea – attending a class. Assuming it’s allowed.
I tried doing martial arts at Shi-Da, once, unfortunetly they someone speaking english who was too eager to translate for everyone :slight_smile:

Take a class at one of those little art studios that are sprinkled around the area. They don’t care anything about English, most of them!

Continuing education or extension ed classes are another possibility. I believe Shi-Da students are supposed to be able to audit (sit in on) any regular class they like in the university, but that may not be true anymore. Continuing ed classes aren’t that expensive and they’re likely to be in Mandarin.

The problem with all these things is that unless your Mandarin is pretty good, you are not likely to really “pick up” that much as it will be far over your head. It would be nice if someone or some organization would think about this and start some activities for learners of Chinese that would be done all in SIMPLE Chinese so that people could enjoy the activity AND the language at the same time. I’m not saying people don’t learn from immersion but “random immersion” can be frustrating and lead, as you pointed out, to people translating for you whether you want it or not, because you obviously are behind the curve.

Beware too of the Mandarin of young people – after years in Taiwan and “supposedly” speaking Mandarin, college student Mandarin as they speak it to one another is still completely confusing at times!! :noway:

You can go to the cafeteria under the dormitories for the students (opposite the MTC). Many students gather there for breakfast, lunch or dinner. It’s pretty easy to start a Chinese conversation with some of these students. Besides that, you can play ping pong there, pool (20 NT dollar an hour), get a haircut (100 NT dollar an hour), …
Many students are easy-going and speak a fair amount of English as well. Even if your Chinese is not that good, they will be more than happy to talk to you, provided that you are nice and friendly to them. That shouldn’t be too difficult.

My 2 cents.