Child in Chinese School - Resource Help, Please

[Theodora]

My 12-year-old son is currently in Chinese school in Harbin, a project we embarked on with close to zero knowledge of the language, characters and its difficulty.

Please don't monster me for this: it's understandable, I think, to mistake being able to read a couple of pages of CFL hanzi and being comprehensible in simple Chinese conversations in "laowai Chinese" with being able to speak and read the language.

Less understandable is mistaking pinyin input literacy for literacy, and retrospectively delusional is my idea that he could perhaps do his writing on a computer rather than by hand. I now recognise these as classic early intermediate mistakes, and I have a horrible feeling that the information I'm requesting may also be an early intermediate "keys to the kingdom please" request. So... please be kind.

For the record, my son's actually doggy-paddling not sinking, and the school is phenomenally supportive：he spends his afternoons in intensive CFL with older Korean learners at the attached 学院。

What we're trying to do is work out ways to give him the jump on immersion, find keys that link with immersion to produce aha/d'oh moments, if that makes sense. Please excuse the long post and new thread, but I think ours is a relatively unusual situation, and I want him to accelerate the immersion if at all possible.

Things we've tried:

School vocab - that's fine.

Maths vocab and characters. This is working. There's a lot of them, but deciphering the true-false word problems about theories really helps with syntax, and he's gone from "not a fucking clue" to "completing 95% of a hanzi-heavy worksheet" in three weeks.

iPhone with Pleco - for learning not cheating. He wants to learn radicals so he can use radical input, which is quicker than drawing characters and far quicker than the visual recogniser. I found the Pleco recommendation on Benny Lewis (ahem), and the dictionary we have seems rather scanty for his purposes. He is handwriting, and I think doing so correctly -- so three questions here.

Is Pleco the best iPhone app out there? And is it worth him putting in the hours to get his radicals down even though identifying the relevant radical can be difficult and it's easy to miscount your strokes, or would he be better off drawing the characters at this stage and putting his energy into something else? What dictionary would you use with your preferred iPhone app?

Basic sentence patterns and word keys. We've done sentences with comparatives and different types of time clause, some "ba" sentences (prepositional), "de"s although not their distinctions (parking this as too difficult to write right now) and tense keys like 会真想要啦完. I guess we need to do passives? Or what would you recommend?

We need more word keys. I'm sorry I don't know the grammatical name for what I'm after. But these are the words and word sets you hear a lot, buried in a sentence, that utterly transform its meaning.

We also need a character list or word list. I'm leaning towards high frequency characters, but I think these need to be high frequency in native speaker Chinese not CFL Chinese, AKA not HSK (he likes his HSK classes in CFL because "they're easy", and finds his other CFL textbooks harder). We have the Chinese primary school character list, but this is north of 2000 and not all of them are wordy.

Why I think characters rather than words is that he's doing Chinese language with Chinese peers, so improving his character recognition in the texts (he's only just beginning to decipher the Chinese teacher's beautiful calligraphy/"bad handwriting") will be a huge boost to his confidence and make, I think, the words come quicker. But I could be wrong.

What we've been doing, which has worked, but is time-consuming, is that our Chinese teacher and I plough through text and chunk it into characters and words that he can then learn: this is why the maths vocab is working, because you have a set of characters that make a set of words. We've only done it with maths. And it's been like pulling teeth.

Is there a list of high frequency characters with the words that you make from these, so that he's increasing his character recognition AND word recognition at the same time? You have a good list of suffixes under grammar. That's the sort of thing I think I'm looking for: transformative characters that add a tonne of vocab, that suddenly click with the words he's hearing and seeing regularly, that enable him to go "电话的话“, for example.

Because of the immersion, when he makes Chinese sentences they feel Chinese (mine are firmly "Any Westerner Speaking Chinese"). So I think we'd hit paydirt if we could get him spending time with our teacher learning high-frequency characters that make reasonably-high-frequency words by turning them into common Chinese sentence structures, and then that will click with the immersion.

What is different from the standard CFL approach is that he is immersed, so he's hearing and reading the difficult compressed clausate sentences, so he doesn't seem to struggle to make them. And that's also why, I think, it doesn't matter if the sentences aren't the kind of thing you'd naturally say in a CFL dialogue: I'd like to get the vocab in by drilling in good Chinese sentence patterns that he's already heard with our teacher and learning the new characters/words at the same time, if that makes sense at all?

And... What else do you think we should be doing?

I studied two dead languages at uni, so if anyone can recommend a good Chinese grammar that will provide the names for the terms I'm grappling with, that would be helpful. He can't do what an adult learner might do and write a shit-tonne of characters every evening because what he has in school and homework is enough for him: I'm after the AHA/D'OH moments that can accelerate immersion, if that makes sense.

I'll give you an example of where immersion can slow things "Did you know 什么 can mean ‘anything’?" "Wha'? NO?!" "Yeah, when our Chinese teacher's talking she says 'shenme, shenme, shenme' to mean 'whatever whatever'“。Then we hit the various meaning of 还是。

Please excuse the epic post. I'm sure I'm being optimistic in what I'm asking for, here. But perhaps there's some direction someone can offer? Or, even, any "Oh god, d'oh!" moments that transformed Chinese for you?

[roddy]

You're unlikely to find any Pleco critics on here. What dictionaries have you purchased? You want at least the Professional Bundle, I think. I don't think radical input will be quicker once his handwriting is up to speed, and it sounds like that'll be happening sharpish. That said, an understanding of radicals is useful anyway and isn't that hard - you're only looking at a couple of hundred, in the context of the overall endeavour it's marginal.

You seem to be looking for some magic vocabulary bullet. You could maybe look at the HSK vocab lists. But to be honest it sounds like your son has enough on his plate, and as all the input he's getting is already favouring high-frequency vocab and characters (just because), I might let him just keep up with what the school's throwing at him. If he's interested and engaged, he'll pull out the ah-ha moments all on his own.

I don't normally encourage 12-year-olds to sign up, but we'd love to hear your son's version of this tale.

Good luck, and keep us up to date....

[imron]

I agree that the radical input will be far slower than handwriting on a phone. It's important to have an understanding of radicals (especially the common ones), but it's a lousy way to have to look up words (and I say that as someone who relied soley on a paper dictionary with radical lookups for the first 6 years of my studies).

I second Roddy's question about the dictionary. The free one is nowhere near as good as the ABC one. I also like the Guifan Chinese-Chinese dictionary, which in my opinion will be more useful once your son is comfortable using only Chinese.

Does your son use any flashcard software for word learning? Pleco's flashcard addon is a great way to revise vocab. Everytime you look up a word just click '+' and then go back later to revise all the words you've looked up. There are other free programs such as Anki that provide the same sort of features, however more work is required to create the cards.

The other thing I'd like to know is what Chinese level your son had before going to a Chinese school, how long he's been there for, and how long you plan for him to stay? Learning Chinese takes time (years), and you just have to keep plugging away at it.

Also, where possible, prefer chunkings texts into words rather than characters. You can then learn the meaning of the individual characters when learning the word, but put the focus on learning words because that's how people use the language.

[imron]

And finally,

And... What else do you think we should be doing?

You didn't mention it in your original post, so, have him hang out and play with kids his own age after school/on weekends.

[Theodora]

Thanks so much, everyone.

What dictionaries have you purchased? You want at least the Professional Bundle, I think.

Roddy, we've been using the cheap dictionary, ABC, and I think you're right we need to upgrade to the Professional Bundle. Thank you.

Does your son use any flashcard software for word learning?

Imron, thank you for the Flashcard tip: that will help immensely.

have him hang out and play with kids his own age after school/on weekends.

Socialising is a problem, TBH. We're doing as much as we can within the constraints of mainland Chinese middle schoolers' schedule of classes -- children don't do anything but homework after school, and typically have a full schedule of extra classes on Saturday and Sunday, so he's been swimming once with a peer, and will go again the weekend after next (we're out of town this weekend).

The other thing I'd like to know is what Chinese level your son had before going to a Chinese school, how long he's been there for, and how long you plan for him to stay?

As to his Chinese level... He was very unwilling to speak Chinese at all when we started. We did a month's intensive with a teacher in Kunming in 2011, which was Intensive Spoken Chinese, at the end of which we could have simple conversations. I used my Chinese a lot more than he did in travelling China, because there really aren't a lot of Chinese kids his age to be seen outside of the schools.

Subsequently we've completed the New Practical Chinese Reader Vol 1., along with a few of the key characters from a primary word list. He could write little essays on his computer, using pinyin input, and he'd been learning his characters/words by handwriting them, but some also by using pinyin input with a teacher on Skype.

So... not a high level. Obviously, it felt like quite a high level to me, given he could read whole pages of CFL text with no pinyin (ahem), and write little essays, but it's basically nowhere. He's been in for three weeks now.

As to how long he's in for -- the original plan was to do a semester, which didn't happen because of visa issues initially. This clearly isn't going to be long enough in terms of his Chinese learning. At the moment, we're committed to here until the end of May. And I'll see how he feels about continuing beyond that in a month's time. I'd personally like him to continue but it's an extremely long school day, so it really is his call.

I do recognise that's not going to be long enough. Learning Chinese is a lifetime project, TBH. I'd hugely underestimated the difficulty of the language... However, he's committed to continuing learning going forward, so we shall see.

[imron]

Socialising is a problem, TBH. We're doing as much as we can within the constraints of mainland Chinese middle schoolers' schedule of classes -- children don't do anything but homework after school, and typically have a full schedule of extra classes on Saturday and Sunday,

And I'm sure extra English classes are part of that, so you just need to convince the Chinese parents that their children hanging out with your son is effectively an English lesson - and with far more authentic English than what they'll find in the classroom.

If you haven't done so already, I'd speak to the teachers at the school and see if there is some way to arrange some sort of language exchange/buddy system with other children his age.

[gato]

Does your son have any interest in music? Piano lessons, for example, aren't too expensive in China. You could consider it as a way for your son to practice Chinese with the music teacher while also learning some music. I think a key for kids is to keep it fun. Don't stress too much about it. If you stress, your son will feel it, too, and might start resenting it.

EDIT: On second thought, once a week piano lessons might not do much for language practice. Imron's buddy idea is probably more practical.

[imron]

Or if the buddy idea doesn't work out, enrol him in classes for some sort of team sport, or activity that will involve communication with others - basketball, badminton, table tennis, kungfu/wushu whatever.

I've personally found the best "AHA" moments when learning a language come through actual usage, so if you place your son in a position where he needs to use the language he has learnt to communicate with others to perform some ordinary everyday thing, then the "AHA" moments will come thick and fast.

It's much harder to get "AHA" moments from a text book.

[russmeier]

Hi. When I started learning Chinese years back I practiced everyday multiple times with these memory games from yellowbridge.com. As an adult learner outside an immersion environment, they were a helpful way to get tons of vocabulary beyond what my class textbook provided. Some of them might prove useful and fun for him - especially because he likely hears huge numbers of the words in these lists every day in his school immersion environment.

http://www.yellowbridge.com/chinese/chinese-memory.php

[ChTTay]

Could ask around in expat circles to see if anyone is in a Chinese/Westerner relationship with a child / children roughly the same age. The children will most likely be bilingual. I guess, overall, having the option to speak English might not be a good thing... But it would probably be a lot more fun/interesting.

P.s. ive been following your site for about two years! :-)

[Theodora]

Thanks, all, for these great suggestions. I think you're right that the key thing he needs is natural friendships with local kids his own age. The question is how to achieve that.

The first problem with classes is that he's on a truncated mainland Chinese school day -- on the bus at 6.30am, starts class at 7.15am, bus home at 4.40, not 5.40, but still not in the door until much before 6, and then homework -- so I'm intrinsically unwilling to overload his weekends.

As it is he's doing pretty much 70 hours a week in or around school. While that's a lot less than his Chinese peers, most of whom are doing extra maths, English, plus sports or creative stuff at weekends, it's still a hell of a lot for a Western child: he gets up before 6 Monday to Friday.

Next, I really can't overstate how very much harder Chinese maths is than Western maths. Obviously I was aware it was tougher, but I'd thought in first year middle school he'd be doing something similar to what the top 15/16 year olds do in the UK. In fact, first year middle school kids cover stuff that we don't do in the UK until Maths, sometimes Further Maths, A-level.

Chuck in the characters, vocab, measurements, thinking in 万 and 亿, no commas between big numbers, learning the names of operational rules, answering questions about operational rules in Chinese, that any child can tell you how many mm in a km because, well, they learned it years ago, along with how many dm in a km, and it's... well, it's tough. The school hasn't had an Anglo learner before, so I don't think they understand how much of a step change it is for him.

That said, we do have one set of Chinese friends we go swimming with on weekends: the mother's a teacher at the institute, and her daughter is Zac's age. That's a friendship we're nurturing.

Imron, he has actually been buddied up with a child at school, and is getting normal playground type interaction -- playing tag &c. Not much interaction in the classroom, due to the nature of the school day, but he gets the lunch and playground stuff and enjoys it, and his peers seem really fond of him, if a tad bewildered by him.

I'll see how he feels about doing a sports class, but he's pretty resistant to any scheduling on weekends, due to the sheer demands of school, I think a regular class would be a tonne to add to his plate, and we also want to get a bit more skiing in before the season ends -- again, sadly, very few kids of his age on the ski slopes. He has close to zero interest in music. He likes art but flatly refused a weekend class when I floated that.

In terms of sport, he likes minigolf, scuba, surfing/windsurfing and skiing, none of them team games: in any team game, he'll be lightyears behind any Chinese peer who has been doing that every weekend as their sport since time immemorial, and both sides will be well aware of that, and it will matter. It's a competitive culture.

I've suggested he exchange phone numbers with his buddy (who's into basketball, which he has played, though not for a while) and try and set something up, but at the moment he's not ready to do that, and I get the impression that middle-class mainland Chinese 12-year-olds don't manage their own social lives in the way that, say, British or American kids that age do, because they're very highly scheduled.

What he really needs is a mate to hang out and do fun stuff with, ideally play computer games: a few hours in front of a screen yelling "Watch that Creeper!"in Chinese would bring his speech on an absolute mile, as you suggest. But, unfortunately, computer games seem to be socially frowned on here. This is odd, as in Kunming a trip to the arcade was an acceptable Friday night activity -- it could be to do with the particular school, it could be a cultural north-south thing. If anyone has light to shed on this, it would be welcome.

To clarify a bit more, school gates interaction doesn't happen in the way it does in the West, or at primary school level in most countries: kids are bussed in, and many board. There's no one in his year group on the bus he takes in the morning, and he takes a separate, university, bus back because of the split day. It also doesn't seem a very social affair, the bus: a lot of the kids are so tired. The bus home may be different, especially on Fridays, but he's not on that bus, he's riding with professors from the institute. So he can't make school-bus friends and I can't make school-gates friends, if that makes sense, because there are no mums/dads/grandparents at the school gates: it's all about the bus.

Further, geography's difficult. We're in the centre. The school isn't. Kids are bussed in from all over town, pretty much: there's tens of buses covering different routes, and quite a few boarders.

Imron, your suggestion of asking the school to assist with friendships is a good idea. But... I don't want to push social stuff with the school, because their focus is very much on getting him integrated and up to speed on the schoolwork stuff, which is, after all, what school is all about in China. They were insistent, for example, that I ride the school bus with him for his first week: I suggested that might be a little 不好意思 for a child that age, which got very short shrift indeed.

I strongly suspect that if I asked about buddies they might recommend that he spent the time working on his Chinese, or, for that matter, his maths... I'd do this in almost any country in the world without a second thought, but in China it just feels wrong. If people think I'm off here, I'd love to know.

However... We came here rather than Beijing precisely because there isn't the kind of expat scene, so we'd need to use Chinese. And, of course, we've been throwing ourselves on passing laowai like drowning people: I do get the impression, though I could be wrong, that there are not many Western children in Harbin.

We've met one Western-Chinese couple, and we're going to have dinner with them, but their son's much younger and first-language English.

We're having dinner with a couple tomorrow who live near us, and I happen to know that they have a 12-year-old Chinese male neighbour, who's keen to improve his English, so I think I'll ask them to effect an introduction: that would be a friend within easy walking distance, and of the same gender, which would be pretty much paydirt as far as I'm concerned.

What I'd really like for him is a buddy he can ring up, text, QQ, whatever, pop to the local arcade, or go to the cinema with once in a while, or even -- and I know this is a longshot in China -- have round his house to play computer games. This is probably unrealistic as it's not the Chinese way of doing things, but, hell, I'm not suggesting sleepovers, which I know Chinese kids don't do...

Again, this has rambled on for a while. My apologies.

But some further questions...

Does anyone know what MMRPG/PC/phone games Chinese kids of that sort of age play, IF they do? His feedback from school is that the kids there don't, but switching over to Chinese gaming in his few leisure hours might help as a last resort.

Any ideas of the types of places we might find working class Chinese kids of his age hanging out with parents, who'll be less scheduled than middle-class kids and probably allowed to play games &c?

[gato]

kids are bussed in, and many board. There's no one in his year group on the bus he takes in the morning, and he takes a separate, university, bus back because of the split day.

Further, geography's difficult. We're in the centre. The school isn't. Kids are bussed in from all over town, pretty much: there's tens of buses covering different routes, and quite a few boarders.

It sounds like your son is attending an academic elite school that attracts students from all over Harbin. Most average kids still attend schools close to home. That might explain why the students are so far ahead, though they would be ahead in math in a regular school, too.

[roddy]

What kind of place are you living? Are there families with similar age children about, and are there communal areas you could happen to run into them?

[skylee]

While that's a lot less than his Chinese peers, most of whom are doing extra maths, English, plus sports or creative stuff at weekends, it's still a hell of a lot for a Western child: he gets up before 6 Monday to Friday.

I find the discussion of this thread strange. It seems that the kid is in a situation that is difficult for western kids (but not for Chinese kids) that the parents have subjected him to in the first place. But if it is so difficult, why don't the parents just pull him out?

[imron]

I'm guessing because even though it's difficult, the long term benefits outweigh the short term difficulties. Sure you could pull the child out and home school him or whatever, however that won't be nearly as good for his Chinese language ability, which is presumably the main aim of the OP.

[Theodora]

What kind of place are you living? Are there families with similar age children about, and are there communal areas you could happen to run into them?

Roddy: We're in a typical northern Chinese 60s or 70s walk-up block in the centre -- communal heating &c. We went for this when we arrived because it was near to Zhongyang Dajie. But it doesn't have the communal areas that the big highrises do have: it's just a stairwell plus flats. We see lots of pre-school kids in local shaokaos and noodle shops, but no school-age ones, even primary age: see primary age in supermarkets, malls &c at weekends but really very few middle/high-school age. Any thoughts on places where you do typically see tween Chinese kids on evenings and weekends would be very welcome, particularly now the weather's beginning to warm up -- hadn't factored in the climate when it came to the social side of things at all, I must say.

It sounds like your son is attending an academic elite school that attracts students from all over Harbin.

Gato, I think you're right, and thank you for clarifying that for me. The backstory is: originally planned to get to Harbin, find a spot we liked and attend A.N. Other local school within walking distance. Our landlord's son was definite that he shouldn't go to our local middle school because there was "lots of smoking and fighting".

We tried for one 中学 that turned out to be a 高中 (16-18), and to have moved from near us anyway, and was anyway an academic elite school as it happens。A second one we tried, despite the fact that our landlord AND our Chinese teacher understood it to be a 初中, was for ages 14-16, and the guy who ran the 初中 was evidently very unkeen on taking a foreigner from the end of the phone conversation that I heard: that was walking distance, but also an academic elite school.

At that one, my son felt rather panicked by the stares from everyone, so we decided to see if we could find Chinese-style bilingual -- AKA they do their English lessons in English, for those of you who aren't familiar with the mainland education system -- which might be easier and more foreigner-friendly.

This one was bilingual and was keen to take him, had the language support, would put him in his age group (many Chinese schools will put Western children into kindy/primary 1/primary 2 regardless of age based on literacy, which would have been socially catastrophic for a bright, mature, tallish 12yo), and there are also two non-Chinese (Korean) students in the school, so they are familiar with CFL to a degree, so it seemed by far our best option. Can't emphasise enough how warm and nice the head seemed, and that she actually wanted him in the school. That seemed really important to both of us, and we had a good feeling about the school: his class teacher and CFL teachers also seem really warm and supportive, which is by no means a given in China.

What I didn't fully internalise, which should perhaps have been obvious, as they do get kids into Beijing Tsinghua and Shanghai Jiao Tong, was that it was also an academic elite school, and that explains the maths: they have what appears to be a gov't issue textbook, which is to the level of the typical British bright 15/16year-old (GCSE top set for maths, although with some stuff we don't do until A-level, such as absolute value), but the workbooks they're doing are beyond that level. This probably also explains the general disapproval of leisure activities such as playing computer games. So, thank you. That makes things a lot clearer. He thinks it's "quite a posh academic boarding school that's hard to get into", so he noticed the academic elite element before the penny dropped for me.

If it is so difficult, why don't the parents just pull him out?

Any Chinese middle school is going to be difficult for a Western child, because of the hours (7.30-5.30 plus homework) and the language. We'd agreed -- and by "we" here, I mean my son and me, because I'm a single parent, and he's world-schooled, though his dad, who's elsewhere, is also on board -- that he'd do school in China for his Chinese, and settled on Harbin for the putonghua. So far, he's making huge gains linguistically, coping pretty well with the maths and not doing badly on the social front (AKA socialising at lunch and playtime), setting his own alarm to get up at 5.45, trotting off to school in the mornings in a pretty positive frame of mind and finding the contrasts between Chinese and Western education interesting.

Obviously, if he were drowning not waving, which I honestly thought on the first day that he would be, given he had close to zero clue what was going on, I'd pull him out. The nature of our family life is such that if he did decide "I can't do this, this is making me miserable, it's not working for me", it would be his call -- but I'm on the forums to find out if there's any way to make things easier, from the right Pleco dictionary and flashcards through to, well, places to find Chinese kids his own age, optimally ones whose parents allow them to play computer games and watch movies, and who don't have a full schedule of classes at weekends.

[gato]

Have you looked into moving somewhere closer to your son's school? It sounds like the school is very supportive and does provide a good environment for your son.

If your apartment building was built in the 1960s, it's probably lived in mostly by lower-middle class families who don't have other options, new graduates in their first jobs, and senior citizens who don't want to move to the suburbs. It's not too surprising that the only kids you see around are under 10. Many families with teenager kids probably have enough resources to try to move to better housing.

However, buildings in China deteriorate very quickly. So what may look to be built in the 1960s could be much newer.

[HedgePig]

It seems to me that the original poster and her son are doing just fine. If her son has only been in the school a few weeks or months and is doggy-paddling, not drowning (or screaming that he's going under) that is already a major achievement. He's already getting a huge amount of exposure to Chinese and seems to be trying hard to catch up - so perhaps nothing more is needed except time. If he's anywhere close to having caught up after just year, I think he will have done done extremely well.

The OP pointed out that the school is very supportive and I think that's a huge plus and rather unusual. My impression (from very limited experience) is that schools generally don't have any idea about how to integrate a foreigner with limited Chinese and don't provide any real support.

Kudos to the OP and her son - I'm very impressed indeed!

[Theodora]

Thanks, Gato. I have thought about that, and I think if we were to commit to a longer stay in China then we would definitely move, despite that leaving us out of the centre, which we like because we can walk to Zhongyang Dajie. Further, of course, as a laowai I can't rent a car and it's not an ebike-friendly climate (nor is the school on an ebike-friendly road). This was 1970s, I recall from our landlord, which was when they razed the hutongs here, and, yes, you're on the nail with the demographics.

We landed up here because we could only find one broker on ganji who was prepared to entertain the notion of a short lease to laowai this close to the centre, and at the time it was -30 and below in the evenings which meant the one flat viewing that involved waiting for a bus put us off the notion of being anywhere we'd have to take a bus to town, despite the fact that the accommodation would have been better, and more like the apartment we had in Kunming, eg.

Also... in Harbin, which is different from our experience in Kunming, and apparently different to most of southern China, as well as, obv, Beijing and Shanghai, flats are typically paid 6-months rent upfront, 6-months halfway through the year's lease -- as far as I'm aware, there isn't the laowai flat set-up here that we landed on in Kunming. So moving would be a big project, and a big commitment.

I'd need my son to be confident that what he wants is a *longer* stint in this school than he originally signed up for, and he's not at that stage right now. It's pretty clear to me now that to get the full language gain (AKA reasonable fluency, reasonable literacy) he'd need 2 full school years, and I'm absolutely definite that's not what he'd want right now, and I'm not sure that that's what I want for him right now either, because of the hours and the pressure: if he got out of CFL in the afternoons and went fully into his year group, he'd be on the full daytime and homework schedule of a Chinese academic elite middle-schooler, which is brutal.

[gato]

This thread might be interesting for you, though it's more about looking for an international school:

http://www.chinese-f...ion-in-beijing/

Bilingual Secondary Education in Beijing

in Harbin, which is different from our experience in Kunming, and apparently different to most of southern China, as well as, obv, Beijing and Shanghai, flats are typically paid 6-months rent upfront, 6-months halfway through the year's lease -- as far as I'm aware

This sounds unusual and might just be a story your landlord or agent made up. You might ask kdavid on this forum about that. He's lived in Harbin for many years.