Study chinese in a nice little city

[Cristinaannibale]

大家好！ i would like to study chinese in China but in a smaller city than beijing or Shanghai where there are too many foreigners and i'll practise only my english and not chinese! I would like a city wiithout foreigners (or not so many) in which i can study in a university, maybe near the sea...

I think also that maybe city in South of China are not so good for the language... I hope you can give my some advices!

Someone said me Qingdao how is it? Huangdao? Tianjin, nanjing?

Harbin? Now i'm in Dalian but there are too many italians here.. I would like to go to a new city..can you give me some ideas?

Thank you so much

[roddy]

Dalian's already perfect. Stand up and walk away from the Italians.

What are you doing in Dalian?

[Cristinaannibale]

I know that i have to walk away from the italians ahahha it's my fault! I won a scolarship here in liaoning normal university for 6 months, the place is quite good, i have a work and it's perfect, but i would like to change city...too many foreigners in our dorm and the class has too many people, we don't speak so much chinese

Maybe another choice is to change university but stay here....

Do you know other good cities to study chinese not too much big?

[roddy]

Maybe you could answer the questions here and that'd give us a better idea... But to be honest, it sounds like you should stay where you are, move out of dorms, and maybe skip some classes and work with a tutor?

 

And we'd be incredibly grateful if you could tell us a little about studying at Liaoning Normal University. 

 

Maybe Yanshan University - it's small, the people there seem to like it, and it's not far from Dalian so the climate won't be too different. 

 

Welcome to the site!

[Lanchong]

If you're studying Chinese as a Foreign Language at university they you can't avoid having other foreigners around. It comes with the terrain. But if a city has very few non-Chinese nationals, I imagine its university won't offer any CFL courses.

I'm not sure the city is the problem anyway. It's what you spend your time doing. Heck, I imagine one could find an anonymous, shabby residential yard in suburban Beijing and not meet any other English speakers for years. Just countless days full of congee and mahjong and meat buns.

So, as roddy says, it might be a good idea to try to change your routine and surroundings in Dalian. Rather than move city.

[MarsBlackman]

I studied at Liaoning Normal University in 2011 for the exact same reasons you did. As Roddy said, Dalian is already perfect. If you change to one of the cities you mentioned, you'll probably have similar problems. There are foreigners, even Italians, everywhere.

 

With your scholarship, you're probably stuck in the dorms. So my advice is to spend as little time on 兰玉街 as possible. Its easy to get stuck there always eating lunch and dinner with your foreign classmates speaking English. Yes, its good to know your classmates, but you're there to study Chinese. Simply getting off campus for meals will serve you well. There are plenty of Chinese students at the university willing to help/tutor you. Find the students whose major is teaching Chinese to foreigners. If you're having difficulty making Chinese friends using only Chinese, I would gravitate more towards your Korean and Japanese classmates. When I was there, very few could speak English. There's also the supermarket around the corner and those shop owners are always willing to chat.

[BigMax]

You know, there are a lot of Chinese in Beijing and Shanghai... But if you wanted a beautiful, small, modern and historic city, I'd recommend Wuxi, in Jiangsu Province (江苏无锡）I have a few friends who studied Chinese at the local university there,Jiangnan University ( 江南大学 ). Try it, and I'll promise you'll like it 

[abcdefg]

Do you know other good cities to study chinese not too much big?

Someone said me Qingdao how is it?

 

One place that might be suitable is 烟台 Yantai, not too  far away from Qingdao. It's on the waterfront.

[Lu]

Seems that Dalian can be a good fit really, if you try to stay away from the foreigners. If you do want to move: have you considered Taipei? Various very good Chinese programs, that of course come with foreign classmates, but the Taiwanese are generally nice people and often very willing to make friends with foreigners (just make sure you speak Chinese with them). The accent is of course not entirely the same as Dongbei-Mandarin, but teachers tend to have very good standard pronunciation and what you learn there will be understood anywhere in China (provided the listener understands Mandarin of course).

[Vandalaar]

What about going to Chengde? No foreigners, good Mandarin - no sea though, but if you consider Harbin, then that should not be much of a problem. A lot of mountains.

[roddy]

Cristina, have you decided where you're going to go?

[michaelS]

I missed this thread first time around, and doubt the OP will come back, but I'll chip in now.

Dalian doesn't seem to me especially jam-packed with foreigners (and I've never come across these hordes of Italians mentioned). And the point above about the high number of korean and japanese students is a good one - my girlfriend is about to start a Chinese course at Dalian Polytechnic University, and I know for a fact there is not a single European or American student there.

So I don't know what the quality of teaching will be like, but she'll have to use Chinese if she wants to speak to other students (they're almost all Korean, plus a few Mongolian and Japanese)

I'll ask her to post some information when she starts her course.

[Cristinaannibale]

I'm now in qinhuangdao!!! I've just arrived here and i don't know how is the city yet, the courses begin in march, but it's the situati in that i reale wanted!!! No foreigners, there are waiguoren but not too many, and there are not italians! I started to know many chinese people and i'm happy to talk every day only chinese and never italian or english! It's also my choice, because i go out of the campus and i want to know only chinese people and that's why i speak chinese all day long! Here it,s cold but i like very much the seaside, ( in summer they told me there are many russians) i like the city center and also the campus, it's very big and wiith a bus inside, you can go to the city center wiith a bus just near the entrance of the campus! It's about 20 minutes.. There are many places to visit but not in winter it's too cold! I found what i want:)