Hong Kong And Shenzhen Or....

[wushijiao]

Including a nice southern accent, which I wouldn't mind really, because I dislike these 儿 sounds.

Shenzhen is actually a pretty good place, accent-wise. Everybody is from somewhere else (rural Guangdong, Hunan, Sichuan, Jiangxi, Henan...etc), and you find that you'll bump into all sorts of accents and everybody has pretty good Mandarin (and I would argue that they have a slightly higher socio-linguistic awareness in Shenzhen compared to other places). In some ways, as far as accents, it's not too different from Denver (my home town) in that everybody has moved there in the last generation or two, and so overall it tends to be very "accent neutral". If you think about it, the places with the best and most "standard" Putongua in China are the places where large migrations of people have happened in the last few generations (ie. Dongbei's cities, Xinjiang, Shenzhen).

Also, I think the average level of English in Shenzhen is pretty low. In supermarkets and restaurants, the employees often speak to you (a foreigner) in Chinese, often without trying their English. For all of these reasons, Shenzhen is probably an underrated places to learn Chinese. Many people simply feel that it's a dump, a cultural wasteland, or crime ridden, which is all true to a limited extent, but beneath there surface the are some good things.

As far as getting to Shenzhen, it used to take me an hour and a half from my door in TST to getting outside the border in Luowu. Now that I live on Lantau, the whole process takes close to three hours. In other words, you might want to live in Kowloon or the New Territories, probably near the KCR line.

[Erbse]

Thanks for all the advice. I'll think about it. Still have a few weeks before I have to decide.

[skylee]

In other words, you might want to live in Kowloon or the New Territories, probably near the KCR line.

There is no KCR now. They are all MTR lines. ;) The original (very first) KCR line has become the East Rail Line.

[didar]

If you cannot live without Hot pot, you better come to shenzhen, coz Hot pot here is more original than Hong Kong. People speak Mandarin here, you will learn it fast.