Which cities are recommended for learning chinese?

[forumschinese]

Hello everybody,

I am thinking about learning Chinese for 2-3 months in China. As far as I know there are a bunch of dialects in China which are not mutually intelligible.

I am looking for a city which offers the folowing:

1. A dialect close to the Standard Mandarin is spoken (e.g. Chengde and Shijiazhuang. Are they recommended?)

2. Offers a decent variety of affordable language schools (Someone who has been living in China for 5 years told me that you can find decent school for less than 150 dollars a month.)

3. Has a decent cultural life/nightlife and possibly universities (just a generally good vibe)

I am planning to organize my stay on site when I get there as the language programs offered here in Germany take excessive fees.

[Yezze]

There are a lot of posts about this topic floating around this forum I believe. You could try searching the site or looking at some of the city forums.

[kdavid]

Run a search here on the forums about Harbin. In fact, Harbin has it's own sub-forum.

[Chinadoog]

Any big cities in the northern half of China should be fine. I live in Yantai, and I hear more people speaking putonghua (most of which is with the beijing erhua） than the local dialect. Everyone here can speak very clear putonghua. My gf is from weihai, and she even speaks putonghua with most of her friends who are also from this province. You don't need to go to beijing or dongbei

[Lu]

The really obvious choice would be Beijing. I hear good things about Harbin and Dalian on the forums. Anyway it's a good idea to read around on the forums a bit. Pretty much any city of decent size has a university, and many of them have a course of Chinese for foreigners, although quality of course varies.

[Meng Lelan]

I feel most major cities in China are fine for learning putonghua. The problem with Beijing is the air pollution and the dry air has given me pneumonia and bronchitis every time I go there. I'm not thinking I want to go to Beijing again anytime soon. Anyway many posters in here are liking Kunming, Harbin, and Hangzhou for pollution-free putonghua. Well maybe less pulmonary stress than Beijing I guess.