Mandarin in north-east China summer '07 - help!

[bec&jan]

Hello,

My boyfriend and I have 7 months beginning this July and are planning to spend most of it travelling around China. We plan to spend the first month studying Mandarin, we will be beginners so we would like to do an intensive course with a homestay if possible.

Could anyone give us any advice on language courses in Dalian or Qingdao (we are interested in the north east as we have heard this is better for spoken mandarin)?

We would prefer small groups/private tuition and would like a town where there is enough to keep us occupied at the weekends

There is so much info on the internet so any help would be much appreciated.

Thank you!

[kdavid]

I would recommend looking into Harbin Institute of Technology's (HIT) month-long intensive course over the summer.

Though I've yet to meet anyone from Qingdao or Dalian, I hear that, though they do speak Mandarin, they're accent isn't quite as standard as you'll find here in Harbin.

The other side to that coin is that if you're only studying for one month you probably won't pick up much of an accent (with only a month's worth of study you'll most likely carry more of a foreign accent than a Chinese one), and anywhere you study will (ideally) teach you "standard putonghua", or Mandarin. I'd only focus on finding the "right environment" if you plan on living and studying long term.

Hope this helps.