Learning Chinese in China or Taiwan?

[Chiquita]

Hi!

I want to go to China next year and learn Chinese. I'm a Cantonese speaker, and have taken two college level courses in Mandarin. However, I want to get to an academic level as soon as possible. People have told me that the best places to learn Chinese are in either China (Beijing) or Taiwan. What do you think is the best place to go? Also, can you recommend good places in either places? I've thought about going to BLCU, but I'm not too enthusiastic about the large class sizes and large population of foreigners - I want to be able to meet some local friends. If you have any information, I would very much appreciate it. Thanks.

Chiquita

[Tsunku]

Hi Chiquita

Sorry I can't recommend any specific schools. I can try and give you some advice in general though --

I guess I've probably said it here before, but I don't think there's any one "best" place to study Chinese. Beijing and Taiwan are completely different places, but I'm quite sure you can learn satisfactory Chinese at either place. Actually, studying in China is often more about what you make of it yourself than what school you choose. The methods the teachers use are very different from what you're used to in the west, and it may or may not suit you. The best thing about studying in China is that you're in China, and you have unlimited opportunity to take initiative on your own. I studied in Kunming for a relatively short time, only one semester, but ended up with two semesters worth of college credit for it. My school and the teaching there was nothing special, I improved my Chinese mostly through my own efforts. I would focus less on finding the perfect school and the "best" place to learn Mandarin, and go to a place that interests you, which you are drawn to. If you like the place you're living in, you're going to be more motivated to get out there and talk to people and get hands on practice.

As for a place without many foreigners. Well, unless you want to study in the sticks, there will be a population of foreigners in any big city, and this goes especially for the big metropolises on the East Coast. I would not take this factor into consideration too much. Honestly, once you're there, you'll be grateful to have other westerners available to hang out with when you're burned out on China. Just don't hang around them to the exclusion of all others. It's easy to strike a balance, don't worry about it too much.

A couple of other things to consider: do you write traditional or simplified? Are you willing to learn a new system?

Do you want to travel around China? This will be cheaper and easier to do from the Mainland than from Taiwan.

Do you want to live in a relatively developed nation (Taiwan)? Or a Developing nation (PRC)?

If you're really wanting a place without a big laowai population, neither Beijing NOR Taiwan will fit the bill. You might want to check around elsewhere in China.

Anyhow, sorry to write so much, I hated to see your question go totally unanswered, I wish I could have been more specific. My main point is that there's no clear cut "best" place to study in China or Taiwan, most of it comes down to personal preference, and unfortunately lots of the time you really just won't know what suits you and what doesn't until you get there and see for yourself. Good luck!

[senor boogie woogie]

Hola!

I think that it does not matter inside the classroom where you learn the language, whether in Taipei or Beijing. What counts is when you leave the classroom doors. Northern Chinese speak Putonghua. Southerners speak dialect.

In Beijing, you will hear Putonghua. No dialect speakers so to speak. In Taiwan, amny people speak the local dialects (Hakka is a common one, so is Fujianese). I met someone from Israel who will not go to Taiwan because he cannot hear the mother langauge fluently on the island.

I feel to really learn a language, one learns it in a classroom setting, plus the opportunity to hear it on the streets and be able to converse it well enough thereof. Of course this is much better accomplished in Beijing. Also, pinyin is used in the PRC, not so in Taiwan. Taiwanese use Wade-Giles, to be different from the mainland.

I would not rule out Taiwan though because many English students pay their way through school through teaching English to locals. Lnguage instruction pays better in Taiwan than the PRC. 60,000 New Taiwan Dollars ( a standard salary) pays better than 10,000 Chinese RMB a month (which is hard to get, plus more hours in Beijing), so if one has to support themselves, Taipei is better than Beijing. Politics aside, they are about equal. I lived in both places, so I know.

SENOR

[elisabeth_rb]

Hey Chiquita!

I studied in Taipei for a year and I would recommend it to anyone. What the others have said is largely true that your study abroad is what you make of it but there are some things to say for Taiwan.

Firstly, although I was in Taipei and, yes there are lots of foreigners there, you still stand out in the crowd. There aren't so many that people don't still stare!!!=) Also, what was said about Mandarin not being spoken fluently much in Taiwan is untrue from my experience. Sure, you would hear other languages too, but mostly from older people and in rural areas. In Taipei, I heard Mandarin almost constantly and was only ever once spoken to in Taiwanese. If you were somewhere out in the sticks, esp. where the minorities/native Taiwanese live, you'll hear a different balance.

The textbooks used in just about every school in Taiwan are excellent. Yes, they use standard characters, but simplified ones are given in the vocab lists at the back and it makes learning simplified characters a lot easier if you've spent some time with standard! I was there on a compulsory study year abroad as part of my university course and most of my classmates went to the mainland. Whereas they had to go to 4 hours of relatively dull classes, we had only 2 hours per day of lively, interesting material with great teachers. I was at the Language Centre at National Chengchi Uni. (www.nccu.edu.tw - I think!). The prices are higher at the unis than the other language schools, but uni credit may be available.=) The most popular place and consequently the one the most awash with waiguoren, is the Mandarin Training Center at Taiwan Normal uni. The NCCU centre only takes about 100 students per session and even arranges events where you can meet up with TW students who are learning English .

Taiwan is considerably more expensive than the mainland and that starts with the flights which are often twice as much as to China. If money's not an object, this needn't be a problem and, as someone else rightly said, you can easily earn money teaching English. If you go there and are interested in this kind of work, get the English newspapers and look at the ads in there. Those are probably the best jobs. I worked for Joy school which was pretty good.

Hope there's something useful in there!

Jiayou!

Elisabeth=)

[Guest jjcox]

Hi Chiquita and fellow mandarin learners.

I began studying last March at BLCU as a total beginner and I have to say that at BLCU you will be surrounded by Americans, Brits, Japanese etc. Consequently I'd say that in this environment, particularly as a beginner it is very easy not to speak any chinese at all!

Having said that, it sounds Chiquita that you are already at quite an advanced level, and I know that in higher level classes at BLCU (mostly full of Korean and Japanese students) they spoke mandarin constantly so there wouldn't be the same problem.

My classes at BLCU were cancelled after just two months in April because of SARS. I travelled south to Yunnan with 2 western and 2 chinese friends and spent a further two months studying in Dali with personal tutors every day. I have to say that my chinese came on leaps and bounds this way, with far faster (and cheaper!) progress than whilst studying at BLCU. And this was in Yunnan, not a place where you'd expect the putonghua to be of a high quality!

All in all, I don't recommend BLCU for beginners unless you are incredibly disciplined, but if you already speak conversational chinese at a high level the advantage of BLCU is that they have structured courses in say business chinese that is pretty hard to pick up yourself through self study.

Finally, with regards to Taiwan... I now have a language partner in the UK from Taiwan and she speaks standard Mandarin, and has told me that the vast majority of Taiwanese do to these days. So I don't think you'd be any worse going there - although I do think the Taiwanese accent is a bit girly!!

Just one more thing... anyone thinking of going to BLCU through one of those organisations such as AccessMandarin.com or Educasion DO NOT!!!!!!! I REPEAT... DO NOT!!!! This is far more expensive than applying directly to the university and sorting your own accomodation out when you arrive.

If you have any specific questions about BLCU whack them up on this board and I'd be happy to answer.

Jon

[Guest LittleBuddhaTW]

I've studied Mandarin in both mainland China and Taiwan. Both have advantages and disadvantages. The problem I had with the classes in Taiwan is that they are way too large. For successful second language acquisition, class sizes shouldn't be any larger than 5 students. At the largest Mandarin Training Center in Taipei, at National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU), the class sizes are usually a minimum of 10, and sometimes up to 20 students. As for the dialect problem in Taiwan, you'll hear mostly Mandarin in Taipei, but outside of Taipei middle-aged and older people speak mostly Taiwanese, and in the south, almost everyone speaks Taiwanese (they can speak Mandarin because public education here is all in Mandarin, so if you speak to them in Mandarin they will speak back to you in Mandarin ... so communication isn't a problem).

However, I preferred studying in China. I was at Shaanxi Normal University in Xi'an back in 1998 for a semester, and it was a great experience. The class sizes were small, tuition was cheap, there weren't many foreigners (so you had to speak Chinese), and Xi'an was the cultural center of China for hundreds and hundreds of years ... so many cool places to go visit (maybe even better than Beijing!).