Staying on chinese students campus

[marty1979]

Im starting a 1 year course in september at the Shanghai university of finance and economics, and have to book the accommodation in a couple of weeks and ive got 2 options, to stay with the international students or the main campus which will be mostly chinese students, im thinking if i stay on the main campus ill make more chinese friends and thus improve my chinese, has anyone done this before? any opinions would be great!!

[muyongshi]

I would go for the main campus or off campus. I personally don't like living on campus as in my opinion you get hunted for teaching people english and therefore have a better chance of making friends that only speak Chinese, or at least aren't pestering you to teach them English, off campus. In my city it is also about twice as cheap to live off campus for conditions that are 5x better. But I don't know how that would be in Shanghai.

If you do go with the main campus, be prepared for unexpected differences in living conditions. It will be a cultural experience!

[yonglin]

What kind of accommodation are you looking at for the main campus? You may want to check whether you'll actually be staying in a dorm for Chinese students, or in a building for foreign students on the main campus (where most students are Chinese).

I always wanted to stay in a dorm for Chinese students when I studied in China (for improving my Chinese), but very few schools actually allow this. If this particular school does, you may want to seriously consider it (for your Chinese), but only if you don't have much of a need for privacy: most Chinese dorms tend to have 6-8 people to a room, in bunk beds (I think this is what muyongshi calls a "cultural experience"...)

[Xiwang]

If you're allowed to live with the Chinese students, you might make some good long-term contacts that might help you in your career. You'd be living the life of those few Western students who preceded us in the 1970s and 1980s (before we all got soft).

Nonetheless, you may want to have someone who has been (or, ideally, lived) there describe the conditions for you.

1. Are there Western-style toilets? Is there air conditioning? How many internet connections are there in each room? If you plan to cook, what are the kitchen facilities like?

2. Are there showers? (At Peking University, the international students had free showers on each floor. On the other hand, the on-campus Chinese student showers were a few buildings away from where they lived, which is not a fun experience during the wintertime. Also, they had to pay for their showers by the minute.)

3. Is there a curfew? What time do they turn off the power to the lights, if at all? (When I lived next to the Beijing Forestry University dorms, you could see students turning on their flashlights every night after the building-wide lights-out time.)

4. How much do the guards hassle guests who would want to visit you? Do you plan to have any overnight guests?

Final note: Carrefour sells a package containing an eyeshade and two ear plugs for about 10 RMB. If you're going to be living with five or seven other guys, you may want to pick one up.

[marty1979]

Thanks for the replys guys, i think i will be sharing with one other person so not really like a dorm situation, which is a bit of a shame because i think it would greatly improve my chinese. but still want to go on the main campus