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[waiguoren]

Hello everyone,

I have been studying Mandarin for 2.4 years and I am planning a first trip to China from May-August of this year. I have developed a strong 北京口音 through emulation of audio recordings and through conversation with my (carefully selected) Beijing friends. For a long time I've been set on going to Beijing to perhaps graduate to kindergarten-level Mandarin. We all know 普通话 is based on 北京话, right? And don't forget, 大山 went to 北大 to study!

On a more serious note, as I spend more time thinking about it, I wonder if Beijing is really the right city to go to. Important considerations are:

a) I am broke.

B) I care a lot about my health and hence about the quality of air I breathe.

c) I want to learn the best (damn) Mandarin I can, and I want to be immersed.

d) I want to find a quiet Chinese girl who is into math, philosophy, science, engineering, or computer science.

e) I don't care about drinking, partying, clubs, restaurants, etc.

Many of these criteria seem contradictory; a) and B) seem to point away from Beijing, while c) seems to point toward Beijing and d) in particular seems to point toward 清华 and the surrounding area (五道口, I believe).

People say Kunming and Chengdu have good Mandarin, are much better in terms of pollution and are much cheaper to live in. But other people (e.g., at least one of my Beijing friends) say the Mandarin in these places is heavily accented and many older folks can't speak 普通话 at all. This leads me to look for a smaller, cheaper, and cleaner city than Beijing in NE China with very standard Mandarin. But my impression is that pretty much all of the significant NE cities are very dirty.

After many hours spent searching and thinking, I am stuck. I would greatly appreciate some wisdom from the experienced people here. Thanks!

Edited March 16, 2009 at 07:43 AM by waiguoren
Ambiguity

[roddy]

If you can handle the generally higher school fees and rent of Beijing, then you can live here pretty much as cheaply as you want, particularly if the nightlife doesn't appeal. Air quality isn't as bad as it used to be, and while you won't want to bottle it and send it home for relatives to experience, I wouldn't make a decision in 2009 based on pre-2008 reports of air pollution.

I wouldn't obsess about the quality of the Mandarin, and to be honest I think you're giving it too much weight, unless you plan a career on CCTV. You could arrive in Beijing and end up with a roommate from Anhui, friends from Jiangsu and a girlfriend from Chengdu. Stick to the relatively young and relatively educated people of any large city and I think they'll be standard enough for most reasonable purposes - and the range of exposure will give you much more robust listening skills.

I wouldn't rule out Beijing. Maybe also take a look at coastal cities, Dalian, Qingdao, for better air quality. They'll also be cheaper than Beijing.

Quiet Chinese girls abound, although good luck finding one into both philosophy and Counter Strike

[waiguoren]

Thanks so much roddy. Actually the 'CS' I was referring to was 'computer science'. As a former CS (counter-strike) player, I should have seen that one coming! Also the '/' were meant to represent 'OR'

I won't be attending a school, so the main concern is higher housing/food expenses.

It seems you're saying the efforts to improve air quality pre-olympics were successful--for some reason I had the opposite impression. Good to know! I've read a bunch of older blog posts from expats living in BJ that had me terrified of the air there.

Any other thoughts?

[cui ruide]

I second roddy on everything. Wherever you enroll for classes, your teachers will probably not be from Beijing but they will have crystal clear, CCTV-standard, Party-approved Mandarin. As soon as you step out of the classroom, however, you will probably hear something completely different most everywhere you go. In Beijing, the majority of people you will deal with--servers, bus drivers, ticket-sellers, a'yis, noodle-shop bosses--they're all from everywhere outside of Beijing, and generally my understanding is: the cheaper the food, the more country the accent.

I would say this is all unimportant, though, as I'm of the opinion that encountering non-standard Chinese only makes my Chinese ear better--and after significant time spent in Beijing, Hangzhou, and Kunming, my putonghua is still pretty putong, though I now have the ability to imitate accents and understand servers when my Beijing laowai friends can't.

But yeah, stick to educated and young---though you might find the noodle bosses more fun sometimes, hehe.

For a look at Beijing air quality check out "Room with a View": http://www.asiasociety.org/beijingair/

[roddy]

My impression is that the air is better than it used to be. That's not to say there can't be bad days, and the colder months are generally better anyway, so we'll see what summer brings.

When you say you're on a budget, do you actually have figures in mind?

[waiguoren]

Thanks roddy and cui ruide.

The point about BJ being an immigrant city is important and something I hadn't considered seriously. It makes me wonder--are there cities in Hebei with better air, a lower cost of living, and just as good (or better, on average) Mandarin vis a vis BJ? How about Chengde, for example?

I need this trip to be self-financing. I dread the idea of teaching English (no teaching experience, don't deal with kids very well), but I can handle one-on-one sessions. Alternatively, I searched the forums for info. about work in translation and it seems that might be a viable option.

Tentative numbers:

Round-trip airfare: $1000 ~ Y 6800

Housing: 3 months * ~Y 1000/month = Y 3000

Food: (no idea how to eat cheaply in China, won't try to estimate)

I don't plan to buy anything other than necessities, but I don't have a good feel for how much many of these necessities will cost me. The tentative plan is to work just as much as is necessary to survive while dedicating the rest of my time to 中文. Suggestions or pointers are welcome.

Thanks again.

[hidden12345]

Go north. Girls are hotter; mandarin is more standard; and the 消费 is much more in line with what you're actually getting.

Beijing is US prices for China (read: third world country) conditions.

If I had more wherewithal to leave behind the other 上班族 sheep stuck in the morning commute, I'd be there in a second.

Edit: just saw your budget; How the hell do you expect to pay RMB 1000 / month in Beijing? Unless you want to live in the boonies (北苑), I'm afraid that is a little naive. I pay RMB 4000 / month just for an 一居, albeit in Beijing proper.

[waiguoren]

hidden, thanks for the great advice.

The rent figure is based on English-language listings I found online. Keep in mind that I can live very, very modestly. The beijinger's classified has listed some respectable rooms for RMB 1200. I read in one of the threads here that if you are willing to room with students, can bargain in Chinese and can read Chinese classifieds, you can find one below RMB 1000. Is that incorrect?

In any case, the comments so far are steering me north..

Edited March 16, 2009 at 05:57 PM by waiguoren
Extra comment added

[eion_padraig]

I've heard that many of the CCTV announcers actually come from Haerbin area. I had a friend in Shanghai who was from Haerbin and she had the most crystal clear accent. It sounded like the tapes I'd practice on without the 儿 ('er) sound. An ex-girlfriend of mine was from Liaoning province and her accent was also quite clear. Granted, it gets pretty darn cold if you're up there in the winter so that may be a consideration.

For liveability, I really like Kunming a lot. Great weather, people are relaxed and not much pollution. There are a lot of Chinese minorities for whom 普通话 is a second language. I also enjoyed Chengdu when I traveled there, but they get lots of grey skies throughout the year.

I learned Chinese in Shanghai and what people say about Beijing is true of Shanghai as well. There were lots of 外地人 as the locals referred to them. These were transplants from other places in China. Often I found the construction/migrant workers to speak fairly good Mandarin. They had often lived in several places in China where they couldn't speak their local dialect so for relatively uneducated folks they had good Mandarin. By comparison, some of the middle income Shanghainese folks almost never spoke Shanghainese because they worked with other Shanghainese folks. They sure as hell didn't socialize with non-Shanghainese people. The main issue in living somewhere like Shanghai to learn Mandarin was that on the bus and subway, I was more likely to hear Shanghainese than Mandarin so it didn't reinforce what I was learning from the tapes.

By the way, there is good money to be made tutoring business people in English. My full time job in Shanghai was teaching at a university, but I had side jobs teaching business folks that paid very well. It's not just kids studying English. And I would say that someone who is going through the process of learning Chinese and who is a native English speaker could have some very transferable skills.

One last thing, to really get deals on living in China, you'll want to work through local real estate agents that don't cater to foreigners. I had a local apartment (re: small and much older) for a quarter what my friends were paying and it was right on Yan'an Zhong Rd in Shanghai. I was the only foreigner in the complex and often taxi drivers didn't believe I lived there.

Good luck.

[waiguoren]

eion,

I also have a friend from Haerbin who speaks incredibly clear Mandarin, but with the 儿话. She studied at 清华, so that might have something to do with it.

I think I've written Kunming off. I've been told that while the Mandarin is too accented there, there are a variety of words whose pronunciation has been altered in the Kunming dialect. A basic example is 什么, which wikipedia says is pronounced nan3yang4 in Kunming. At this stage it seems it would be better for me to learn the most standard Mandarin possible. Do you agree?

You make good points about both tutoring businesspeople and about real estate agencies.

Dalian seems like a viable option. I will go read more about it now.

Edited March 16, 2009 at 07:18 PM by waiguoren
Failure to use search function properly

[evasiege]

I was really considering Dalian for awhile as the best place to study in the North, but the fact that the city has absolutely no traditional culture kinda turns me off(temples, historical sights etc.)

[waiguoren]

All my BJ friends say, "Dalian?! That's in Dongbei! People from there don't speak well! Trust me, there are plenty of them here in Beijing!"

I'm inclined to think they are a bit biased, but they might have a point. I saw an older thread in which roddy recommends finding a town in Northern China that no one has ever heard of, and being the only English speaker there. I think this is a fantastic idea, but I am having great difficulty even figuring out how to look for such places while I'm here in the US.

By the way, I looked into Qinhuangdao (秦皇岛) a bit. It seems like the Mandarin and the air would be great there but since it's such a beautiful place I expect it would be difficult to be immersed..

[easMonstret]

but I am having great difficulty even figuring out how to look for such places while I'm here in the US

How about this: Opening Google Maps. Randomly zoom in on 东北. Here's your city.

[imron]

I lived in Qinhuangdao (or actually a town just outside of Qinhuangdao) for 3 years. It's a nice place and I regularly go back to visit friends there, but to be honest, the air quality still isn't all that great. In fact, the last few times I've been back it seems that at times the air quality is worse than Beijing. If you are living in the Qinhuangdao city proper, bear in mind it's a big port city. Beautiful is not the word I would use to describe it, even though there are parts of it that are nice.

The Chinese is reasonably standard, but does have an accent, but then everywhere has an accent (in fact despite what your Beijing friends might tell you, the Beijing accent is far from standard also).

I will also add that difficulty in immersion comes down almost entirely to the person, and not the location. Some places might make it easier to have a less immersive experience if you so choose, but anywhere you go you can have immersion if you want it. I currently live near Dongzhimen in Beijing, which for Beijing has a reasonably high concentration of foreigners. That being said, all my neighbours are Chinese, the staff at the supermarkets/shops I frequent are Chinese, most of my co-workers are Chinese and I have plenty of Chinese friends.

[roddy]

It's a nice place and I regularly go back to visit friends there, but to be honest, the air quality still isn't all that great. In fact, the last few times I've been back it seems that at times the air quality is worse than Beijing

Yep, when it comes to air quality and peaceful living, it's a big mistake to assume that a smaller place will be any better - what you may well find is that you're actually closer to big industry, and it's less well supervised, plus you don't have the rules you do in Beijing about, ie, lorries within the X ring road at certain hours.

Accommodation for 1000Y a month in Beijing isn't impossible, but you're going to need to share (and not even share a high-end place) or take somewhere very run down, or far out of the center. That may suit, it may not. Even in mid-tier cities I'm not sure it's much of a budget, and if you're only looking for three months you're not going to have people falling over themselves to get you to sign up.

[renzhe]

All my BJ friends say, "Dalian?! That's in Dongbei! People from there don't speak well! Trust me, there are plenty of them here in Beijing!"

Actually, that's what BJ people say about everyone.

[hidden12345]

I agree with imron and renzhe; OP, blindly listening to your Beijing friends gives away your China newbie-ness. Beijing people love to hate on everyone who isn't from Beijing because they're insecure about their place in the world and feel that being born in Beijing automatically gives them some sort of 地位 in the microcosm that is China.

Standard putonghua is a construct, an artificial language created by the government to unite and rule the Chinese, a people that speak x number of dialects. Its similar to Arabic in that the Koran sets one standard, albeit in written language, to connect all Muslims, regardless of dialect and local culture.

Every place in China has a local accent. Don't obsess on it, unless you plan on going in broadcasting. My advice is to go when the girls are hot, the food is tasty, and prices are cheap. That means Sichuan from Nov-March and Dongbei from April-Oct.

God, now if only I could follow my own advice.

[leigao]

If you like northern Chinese food, then perhaps you should look in to 天津. It's close to 北京, and it's food is great. If culture is your big thing, then 武汉 is your quintessential modern China.

I don't know why you're restricting yourself to 中原 since standard mandarin is almost standard in most big cities. Where I'm from, 长春, we speak very standard mandarin with slight 东北 accents, but that's just subtleties that's apparent to a native speaker. A great example is when a Chinese grad student go to school in Boston, s/he does not pick a Boston accent at all.

If you're really an adventurous person, I would advice you to look into 西安. It's very much inland, but all the history behind the city would be great for anyone with a passing interest in Chinese history.