Universities closed from Jan 6th till March?

[Maqqie]

Hey guys. During my university end of year break (which spans from early late November to 1st of March) I was planning on going to China to study Chinese for 3 months. I just gave the university I was planning to study with (SISU or Shanghai International Studies University) a call to enquire about studying with them and they told me that all educational institutions would be closed from January 6th to early March to celebrate chinese new year. I am actually pretty disappointed because I was hoping to really catapult my Chinese language abilities forward during this holiday.

Does anyone know of any where else in China I can study Chinese for the full 3 months? What about in Hong Kong or Taiwan? I know these places teach traditional Chinese but do they have any institutions teaching simplified? (I would really like to just learn simplified unless I really had no other choice).

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks so much.

Maqqie

[leeyah]

Time around Chinese New Year can be pretty awkward for making study plans, but new year 2010 is supposed to be in mid-February, so I suppose winter holidays should span from late January to beginning of March. Anyway, to my knowledge, short term summer/winter courses usually last from one to four weeks & most major universities in China should have them. Perhaps there was some misunderstanding with SISU because January is exam-time & holiday time in most universities in China, which does not exclude short term courses before or even during the holidays.

If you meant to attend a three month course that's approximately the same as one semester, held in the regular autumn/spring time. But if you're interested in one month- short courses (I know Qingdao Unis had them, the only problem may be that these are usually low level courses) but anyway you can inquire with other universities through links provided in www.gov.cn website (Colleges&Universities) or perhaps you could try some private Chinese language schools, here are some in China:

http://www.mandarinhouse.cn/ .

http://www.mandarinrise.com/

http://www.redcarpetmandarin.com/mandarin.php