Small, warm city in China (maybe near the coast)?

[David Ma]

Hi all,

 

I will be traveling to China sometime this year to study the language (most likely at a university). I plan on applying to the CSC scholarship as well as a few other options and am looking at difference places in China to study. I'd also love to learn a lot more about Taoism (both the martial arts systems and the meditative aspects).

 

As the title says, I'm looking for a smaller city. I'm not a big fan of being in super-populated noisy areas (though they are nice to visit every once in a while). Living right outside of a big city wouldn't be bad either...

 

So...

- Warm all-year-round (is this too much to ask?)

- Mostly Mandarin speakers (not Cantonese or another dialect)

- Able to visit other parts of China easily (so maybe a central province?)

- Has Daoist schools for internal martial arts and meditation

 

So far, Taiwan, Hainan, and Dalian have been fairly promising in terms of weather. Any other suggestions?

[Ruben von Zwack]

I think, 1.) Mandarin/no other Dialect or language + 2.) warm all year round = indeed too much to ask ;)

Not even bringing in "able to visit other parts of China easily". That plus 1.) + 2.) seem impossible.

 

I'd love to be proven wrong though!

 

Isn't Shandong the core land of Taoism? I've been around there recently, and people speak nice clear putonghua, and there are many pleasant small(ish) towns. Just overall, very nice.

[roddy]

How did Dalian (avg temp sub zero for three months of the year) make it on to a 'warm all year round' list?

 

Xiamen, Qingdao, maybe Kunming. 

[anonymoose]

There aren't many places on the mainland that are warm all year round. Xishuangbanna is nice, but I guess there aren't any universities there.

 

Xiamen is probably your best choice. Reasonably warm most of the time. Also by the coast. They speak dialect there, but really, I don't think that would be too much of a problem for you. Mandarin speakers are also common there.

[abcdefg]

Warm all-year-round (is this too much to ask?)

 

 

It snowed in Kunming last month.

[skylee]

I think it snows in Qingdao, no?

[David Ma]

I thought maybe I had set myself up to fail with this one, but...I figure it can't hurt to ask. It seems like warm = south = dialects and even then, as everyone has already pointed out, even Kunming gets snow.

 

Dalian only made it because it is on the coast and I've seen it pop up quite a bit on the forums.

 

I do think Shandong is the birthplace or a very important place for Taoism and its in central China. I will take a look.

[gato]

Taipei would qualify as a small, warm city. Its population of less than 3 million is smaller than many small cities on the mainland.

[roddy]

Qingdao would be the obvious choice in Shandong - maybe have a look at Ocean University, we have quite a few people there who seem to be happy. 

[Lu]

I'd recommend Taipei. Not sure if several million people is small by your standards, but it certainly feels like a small city while still having many of the big-city advantages. Nice weather year round, from hot in summer to winter evenings that can be a bit chilly at worst. Taiwanese is understood by most people, but mostly you hear a lot of Mandarin. NTNU's Mandarin Training Center offers excellent classes of Chinese for foreigners, as do numerous other schools and universities. In addition, the people are nice and the food is great. Travel to mainland China is of course less easy, what with the water in between, but you can consider travelling there after your classes have ended. Daoist practices are very much alive there, but I'm afraid I know little of meditation centers and such, you'll have to look into that.

 

The Taiwanese Ministry of Education has scholarships that you might want to look into.

[OneEye]

Taipei is really nice, if you're OK with being outside of China. There's a fair bit of Taiwanese Minnan in Taipei, but most people under 50 or so (don't quote me on that number) are native Mandarin speakers. There's more of it in cities other than Taipei, though of course pretty much everyone also speaks Mandarin. There will just be more of an accent.

[David Ma]

What's the consensus on Hainan? Is Mandarin spoken widely there? The climate seems warm all year round, though its pretty far away from other parts of China.

 

Do we have any on the forums who have stayed there?

[David Ma]

And...I've been to Taipei and it was really nice, clean, and open. A really nice city overall. I am looking at the HES scholarships as well.

 

Many thanks to everyone who has chimed in so far!

[abcdefg]

There are, or were, a few forum members who live in Hainan. 

 

I've visited there a couple times. Once was in late March/early April, and it was not at all balmy in Haikou (needed a light coat in the evenings and it rained in the daytime.) But it was warm and sunny in Sanya. (Sanya is on the southern tip of the island, Haikou is on its northern tip.) Both cities have universities, the one in Haikou is better known.

 

China is just not a tropical country, period. Granted there are some semi-tropical parts (such as Xishuangbanna in far-south Yunnan.) If warm climate and a seashore are non-negotiables, you need to move to Thailand.

 

There is a Hainan dialect, but most people I met there could speak Putonghua. My advice would be to cross the dialect issue off your list and forget about it. If you insist on standard Putonghua 标准普通话 as a part of your "where to live and study" package, it will leave you with only a few possibilies, and those will all be in Dongbei.

 

Time to start prioritizing the items on your wish list. Need to rank order them. What are you willing to give up and what are you not?

 

Somewhere on the forum, the moderators constructed a decision matrix that took the major variables into account. It showed you how to navigate the decision making process. I can't find it now, but someone else will point you to it. A very helpful tool.

 

BTW, clean air would be on my short list of desirable features. Degree of air pollution is something worth at least considering.

[David Ma]

"China is just not a tropical country, period."

I'm kinda getting that. That seems kinda weird since portions of Mainland China are below countries like Taiwan that are warm all year round.

 

"My advice would be to cross the dialect issue off your list and forget about it."

I'd just like to be able to have a good number of putonghua speakers nearby. If 30% of the city speaks cantonese, that's fine but if that number is like 80%, then maybe not so much. And as I mentioned before, warm seems to equal non-putonghua speakers.

 

I think the title says it all. I guess a small, warm city (as warm as it gets in China) is most important along with having lots of people to practice putonghua with. Everything else is sort of a wishlist of things.

[hudongpin]

Maybe Wenzhou,in the Southeastern China,near the East China sea(you can google it where it is )

 

1.Warm all-year-round+Wenzhou,its Chinese is 温州，which mean warm city.

2. Mostly Mandarin speakers +we don't speak Cantonese,most people there speak Mandarin(students,busissmen)

3.Able to visit other parts of China easily (so maybe a central province?)+it is on the line of high speed train,it is easier to travel north China and South China with the high speed train

4.Has Daoist schools for internal martial arts and meditation+there are some Daoist temples in this city,there is even a man called yilong（一龙）who learned Daoist martial arts in the city

[anonymoose]

I'd just like to be able to have a good number of putonghua speakers nearby. If 30% of the city speaks cantonese, that's fine but if that number is like 80%, then maybe not so much. And as I mentioned before, warm seems to equal non-putonghua speakers.

 

Speaking mandarin and dialect are not mutually exclusive. If 80% speak cantonese, it doesn't mean that only 20% will be able to speak mandarin. In fact, I'd bet that 98% of mainlanders under 50 who speak any dialect also speak decent mandarin (even if with an accent).

 

I think people worry too much about dialect interfering with their ability to learn mandarin. Firstly, unless you are going to be principally dealing with old people, or country folk perhaps, practically anyone you are likely to have cause to communicate with will speak mandarin.

 

Some people like to be able to overhear conversations on the bus or in shops and learn that way. But with the influx of outsiders into the major cities, there will be no shortage of opportunities to hear mandarin even if you are in dialectal areas. And let's face it, how much can you really learn that way anyway? I lived in Dalian when I was still at the intermediate stages of learning, and even there it was almost impossible to understand locals speaking to each other. Had I lived in the south, it wouldn't have made any difference.

 

If I had to choose between pleasant/warm environment and "mandarin speaking areas", environment would win every time as far as I'm concerned.

[abcdefg]

If I had to choose between pleasant/warm environment and "mandarin speaking areas", environment would win every time as far as I'm concerned.

 

Agree 100%. Also agree with @Anonymoose about the dialect issue. At an early level, it just doesn't matter as much as newcomers tend to think. The importance of a "standard Mandarin environment" seems to be mainly emphasized by people running schools in the north as a marketing point.

 

Besides, (and I live in a heavy dialect area) it's nice to have a handy excuse when I don't understand something in daily conversation. I can tell myself the other person was speaking a mishmash of Putonghua and Kunming Dialect or that their accent was absolutely terrible. No way could the communication breakdown have been my own fault.

[skylee]

Somewhere on the forum, the moderators constructed a decision matrix that took the major variables into account. It showed you how to navigate the decision making process.

 

 

This?

[abcdefg]

Yes, that's it.