Reviews of the Chinese Language Institute (CLI) and Guilin in general?

[MilesM]

Hey, guys!

 

I'm an American undergraduate student who used to live in Shanghai for about half a year to study Chinese. I'm planning to return to China around September 2015 and this time I will stay in China for one entire year. I'm debating among several programs including private language schools and some universities with language programs. I'm really interested in the CLI in Guilin so I was hoping to get some feedback from you guys on both the Institute and the city of Guilin!

 

As I stated, I lived in Shanghai before, so I had a plethora of amazing shopping malls and other mindless entertainment (haha). I'm wondering if Guilin is somewhere a foreigner could live in for one year without running out of things to do. I enjoy going to the movies, going to bars and nightclubs, exploring, and things such as those. I know Guilin is tiny compared to Shanghai so I hope there are still plenty of things to do. I know Guilin is absolutely beautiful so there's no need to sell me on that!

 

Also, about the Chinese Language Institute if you attended or know people who did: how is the quality of the education? What is the accommodation like? (I'm planning to stay in the CLI private room so hopefully someone can attest to the quality of the living conditions there). And any other important things you could mention that I forgot to ask here would be great! Essentially, I would like to know if the CLI in Guilin is preferable to other language programs in China. Others I am interested in are Keats in Kunming, ECNU in Shanghai (which is where I went last time), and PKU in Beijing. Also, money is not an option when it comes to a program because I will be going on a pretty hefty scholarship.

 

Thank you so much for your help!

[James3]

I filled out their inquiry form on 2 separate occasions and never got a reply.  Who knows if that's an indication of their attentiveness to your needs or not, but it didn't leave me with a favorable opinion. (I'm pretty diligent about checking my spam folder, and never saw anything in there.)

[michaelS]

The same thing happened to me - but then I emailed them, and have been in contact a lot with them in the last few weeks. The customer service seems super friendly and helpful to me - I think the only issue is that the Inquiry page isn't working properly.

[michaelS]

OK, here goes...

 

I studied at CLI for four weeks this winter holiday (I'm a university teacher in the north of China, so had seven weeks to make use of...). I would pretty much unreservedly recommend the place, I had a great time and thought the teaching was superb. Any questions about it I'll be happy to answer. I've seen some great reviews posted up by other members, so will do my best to give a lot of detail here and hopefully help others.

 

Accommodation

 

I began in a homestay, thinking that this would be great for immersion etc. I hadn't really thought this through, I wasn't really ready to be in a house with two very young kids (Chinese or otherwise). I asked to move to the school, and they said that was totally fine, I could do so immediately (maybe I should point out that, as it's currently the low season, there were plenty of empty rooms - I might have not been so lucky in the summer).

 

The rooms in the school had a double bed, desk, en-suite, air-con. It's pretty cold in the winter south of the 长江, I've discovered (I'd heard but doubted it...). The rooms don't have central heating, the windows are single-glazed, the curtains are thin. I've just got back to 东北 and it feels much warmer here The teachers almost all live in the school as well, so you see them and socialise with them a lot. They were all honestly really lovely people, I'm really pleased to have had a chance to meet them and talk with them such a lot.

 

The school building has five floors and a roof terrace. The first two floors are all the teaching rooms, a dining room, the teachers' offices, a kitchen, and a common room. The common room has a table tennis table and a Mahjong table, which was great. The building in general has a nice feel to it, lots of lanterns, photos, areas for sitting, magazines, a decent library.

 

You could also live in a private apartment, as some did. Advantages - own kitchen, own washing machine, more space, etc. Disadvantages - more expensive. Finally I think for longer-term students you can share an apartment with Chinese students - I saw an example of this apartment and it was really nice, and the two Chinese students were really lovely guys.

 

The local area and Guilin

 

The school is down quite a little alley, but very near to Guangxi Normal University, which I believe it's loosely affiliated to. On the other side are a couple of little mountains (Guilin's natural landscape is incredibly strange, tonnes of sudden mountains is the only way I can describe it), a park, a very poor village & market area, and lots of all-weather football pitches.

 

The neighbouring area is fairly relaxed but also has banks, restaurants, cafes, etc. Most nights I ate out, and the school also organised lots of activities like badminton, KTV, saunas, volleyball. This was all pretty nearby.

 

The city felt pretty lively when I was walking around it - there are lots of scooters, for example, and also the pollution is still noticeable. But it was when I was driving to the airport on the last day that I realised how quiet a city it really is - 6am and the streets were absolutely deserted! The airport is also pretty titchy and quiet.

 

There were trips organised each weekend - I went on two, one a day trip and one overnight to a hot springs area in the very north of Guangxi. All the people I met told me I had come to Guilin at the wrong time of year, and that there would be a lot more to do and see in spring, summer, autumn - just not winter... On all these activities there were teachers participating, and it was easy to mostly speak Chinese, depending on your level I guess.

 

What I wanted

 

My Chinese is fairly good - not amazing, just solid - and I haven't really done classes before. The teaching at CLI is all one-to-one by the way. I was pretty adamant that I didn't want to use a textbook - even if I wasn't a language teacher by profession, I still think I would find using textbooks a dull way to study. I wanted to improve my listening and speaking especially (doesn't everyone?). I think I read Chinese pretty well these days, and that seemed like a slight waste of a one-to-one class. I also use Chinese quite a bit at work, so I wanted to work on that.

 

Classes

 

I had three teachers, which is the norm, including one main teacher once a day.

 

My teachers were from Harbin, Guilin, and rural Guangxi. The teachers there were from all over, and spoke very standard Mandarin with students (before anyone starts getting antsy). You have four hours of class a day, and the timetable seems fairly flexible. I was happy with mine so didn't change it. Three days a week, I started at 10.30 and finished at 4.00, with lunch in the middle. Twice a week, I started at 2.00 and finished at 6.10, which quite exhausting if I'm honest.

 

I think generally the teachers divide up the different skills between them and focus on different areas in different classes. I didn't want any particular skills-based teaching, so every teacher did a bit of everything, mostly conversation, and we divided it up by topic instead.

 

With my main teacher, we settled into a rhythm of using videos and online clips as the basis for listening/ reading practice and discussion. The guy really searched around for an incredibly wide variety of material - we did lots of shorter and longer news items, but also watch discussion shows (对话) and documentaries (新闻 1+1), kids' TV (灌篮高手), travel guides, bits of films and drama (高考1977， 血色浪漫), sketch shows (屌丝男士，小明和他的小伙伴), talent shows (青年中国说), photo journalism (http://photo.cntv.cn), animation (小报告), and other very good online TV (好奇实验室).

 

The latter two in particular were very interesting, and I will start some threads introducing a few episodes (here is the first one: 小报告 episode 8)

 

We would watch something together, stop it, discuss it and understand it, then I would watch it again for homework and give a summary or short presentation about it at the beginning of the next class. We just kind of settled into the routine, but I think it worked very well - especially having some stuff to watch made the classes slightly easier going; if all the classes had been non-stop discussion, I think I'd have collapsed.

 

With my morning teacher, we just had two-hour conversations every morning. We talked about a huge range of stuff, but of particular interest was marriage and women's rights in China, life in rural Guangxi, food in China, films (especially those by 周星驰), and Chinese medicine. Outside of school holidays, she was a lecturer at Guangxi Normal University, so we also spent a lot of time talking about teaching and university politics.

 

The final teacher I only saw twice a week, which was a shame because she was really good - slightly stricter in terms of errors, and placing a bit more emphasis on retaining vocabulary. She also prepared a huge amount for our classes, especially when it was about Fashion, Graphic Design, and Marketing (which is what the students at my university mostly study, so I wanted to be able to better understand it in Chinese). Outside of this, the topics tended to be a bit more weighty - e.g. we talked a lot about a documentary called 北漂, a series of interviews with young people living in Beijing either quite aimlessly or without much hope for the future.

 

I said it before, but I'll just repeat that all three teachers (and from what I saw and heard, the others as well) were really, really great. They were very open about any topic I cared to bring up, talked a lot about their own lives, and I think - most importantly for a teacher, maybe - they actually all happened to be interesting people in their own right.

 

Next steps

 

I recorded all my classes, which I think you would be mad not to do, personally. Now the four next things I can do are:

 

1) Vocabulary

 

Listen again to my lessons and be a lot more thorough about recording vocabulary and making notes of errors. The reason this will be particularly valuable, say compared to just finding word lists online or in books, is that the majority of words and phrases are all things that I want to be able to say, things I struggled to express, or things closely related to topics I am deeply interested in.

 

2) Editing

 

Edit the mp3s with Audacity and isolate useful parts for drilling, in-depth listening practice, etc. I will hopefully make some long mp3s, with spaces for repetition, for each of the main topics I studied (e.g. one with lots of words and especially sentences related to university teaching). This will mostly be the teacher speaking, though some will come from the videos listened to in class. I think this will be a bit more meaningful than drill material that comes from elsewhere.

 

3) Flashcards

 

I may then put these words and mp3s into flashcards and start doing this a bit more. If I'm honest, I'm a bit lazy when it comes to this kind of thing. What I would do would be to find a key sentence or word, search some online sources for other example uses of this word or structure, and then make lots of flashcards with CLOZE deletion.

 

4) This forum

 

As I said above, I'm going to try and produce threads for many of the most interesting things I studied, especially things that were recommended to me and may well be unfamiliar to users here. This will again help to remember it better, and will hopefully encourage me to keep watching all these various shows.

 

----------------------------

 

OK, I've been going on for ages. Probably more will occur to me at some stage. Disadvantages? Not really - OK maybe one. The students there including some from Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Spain, Holland, Belgium, Brazil, Germany - but it still felt pretty American, especially in the second half of my stay. It would have been nicer to have a bit more variety, and to have less students who not only share a mother tongue but who also have so much in common in terms of pop culture, interests, personality (?) that it's very easy for them just to carry on as if they were in the States. No offence to anyone at all, honestly, the students were all very nice, it was more of an overall effect.

 

So, in conclusion, a great school. I'd definitely go back there in the future, rather than trying any of the other ones I saw advertised in different parts of China. The reason I went there was that I wanted to go to Guilin and also have a bit of fresh air. But now I'd go back to meet the people at the school again, to have more great-quality classes, and also to see more of Guangxi.

[ZhuoMing]

@michaelS Great review, I am considering CLI but am worried about the local dialect of the people in Guilin.  When talking to the local taxi drivers and noodle restaurant owners, or other similar occupations, what is their accent like when they speak putonghua?  Furthermore, is the local dialect at all intelligible?  You said you are living in dongbei, how does the experience talking to local people compare to talking to the local people in dongbei?

[Flickserve]

4 hours ago, ZhuoMing said:

When talking to the local taxi drivers and noodle restaurant owners, or other similar occupations, what is their accent like when they speak putonghua? 

 

Just like every place in the world, every person will have an accent. Some stronger than others. The school teachers should have standard Mandarin. It's important that you get enough time each day training your speech with them.

 

 

It is a reality of life that in the real world, many people do not speak standard putonghua. If you can get used to listening to putonghua in the local accent, your overall listening skills will actually be at a higher level. That's because you have trained your ear to attune to the differences. But that doesn't mean you copy their accent when you speak.

 

I went to Qingdao in dongbei for a few days. I spoke with three taxi drivers who all came from North China: One from inner Mongolia, one from heilongjiang, one from Qingdao itself. At my intermediate level, the hardest one to understand was the Qingdao native. It was a good test of listening skills. They all understood my Mandarin.

[Tomsima]

7 hours ago, ZhuoMing said:

the local dialect at all intelligible?

 I studied at CLI for a year, the teachers accents are very standard. When you are on the street you will hear 桂林話、狀語、客家話、廣西 variant of 粵語 which the locals call 白話. In general people will speak to you in 普通話 in their local accent. As you may know, this is true of all smaller cities in China, so it's not a problem: in fact I loved it, it's a very easy way to make friends with locals, as they love talking about all the local variants between the languages, and if you can learn a few local words or phrases you'll feel really positive about your Chinese. highly recommend guilin and cli as a great and interesting way to improve your Chinese. Let us know what you decide on in the end, there are many great choices

[ZhuoMing]

Thanks for the replies!  @Tomsima, since you have studied at CLI could you talk a bit about the school, and living in Guilin in general?  I have only lived in Chengdu in the past and I am worried it might be a boring city. I have also heard that the city is overrun with tourism, so how much would you say the tourism affects the city itself?  I have been to Zhangjiajie city which I imagine is a similar situation - a smallish city near a very popular scenic tourism destination - and I found the city to be incredibly boring, yet hardly affected by the tourism aside from the very crowded bus station.That said I am interested in spending time in a tier 3 city as they have their own charm and I have never done it before.  I will only be there for 2-3 months so I should be able to survive. 

[Tomsima]

The city itself is almost a separate entity to the 'guilin' tourism trade, which seems to go on more outside the city itself. Even the lake in the city centre doesnt feel that touristy, even if there are a few spots with tourists dressing up as minorities and singing songs on huge speakers (i mean where doesnt that happen to be honest).

Regarding the city:
 

Pros: the city is bustling and not boring. It might not be Shanghai-level 活動-packed city, but I really enjoyed how 'real' it feels. Anyone thats familiar with Kunming will be at home here, its very much like a mini version, chill, has cultural areas, but also kind of rundown, locals very friendly. 

 

Cons: this is very much subjective; in my opinion the food in guilin really isnt anything to write home about, that is unless you like 酸菜 (which I don't, im more into 麻辣), so dont be prepared for fine cuisine like neighbouring guangdong, its a very bland affair from my experience. Also, be prepared for people saying 桂林山水甲天下 very, very often: the locals have a pride in their city's reputation that I think I've only seen equalled in tier-1 cities. 

Regarding the school:

First off, shout out to Robbie, one of the brothers that manages the school. He is a friendly guy, has studied Chinese himself to a very high level (as well as speaking perfect Spanish as well, from what I could tell), and whilst I was there was very involved with the workings of the school. I lived upstairs for the first month, then later moved to my own place just across the road. The rooms are well equipped, but of course you never feel at home, or really like you're living in China until you're in your own place, so I'd strongly recommend thinking about that (a lot cheaper too). The food for lunch and dinner is locally bought and freshly prepared by 阿姨們, and is generally standard, good grub, cant recall ever having a bad meal. There is a language pledge at the school, which actually works pretty well depending on your attitude and the time of year. Over the summer it was all US high school/uni students chilling in English, but by autumn the place turned into a pretty serious study area, with many students using chinese to talk with each other. There were 實習生 local chinese students that live at the school for a reduced fee, and in return they will help you practice your spoken chinese. Some are lovely, some are bitchy, some are just straight up looking for a foreign connection, but we humans are just like that anywhere you go I guess. The teaching is fantastic, my teachers were 唐瑛琪 and 葉曉娜 (sorry if I got the characters wrong, going off memory!), and both were so, so outgoing.  

 

Overall, there really arent as many foreigners as you might expect, despite being surrounded when at school. And it was in Guilin that I really got into 功夫茶; there are some really fantastic tea shops to be found, where 老闆 will sit with you chatting away for hours and hours. When I was taking class at CLI I would walk over to the 茶文化街 just up the road, pick a teahouse and just chat away about anything with people there, fantastic practice, challenging (accents!), but most importantly, fun, and /really/ immersed in Chinese language.

Edit: I just reread this, and it reads a bit like a pitch, so I wanted to state: I was not asked/paid to write any of this, I just wanted to write because I really did have a great experience.

[Guest realmayo]

I only spent a couple of weeks in Guilin but would agree 100% with everything Tomsima wrote. I didn't really notice the tourist element. But I imagine it brings in a fair bit of extra prosperity to the place. Also locals didn't seem surprised to see foreigners - 'of course foreigners would want to come to world-famous Guilin', I suppose - but they were very happy to chat. And yes, the food is really boring.

I spent those two weeks studying at CLI, and liked it.

Guilin was probably the 'easiest' place I've spent time in China, and I don't mean that in a bad way at all!

[ZhuoMing]

@Tomsima @realmayo Thanks so much, this information is very helpful.  

2 hours ago, Tomsima said:

I lived upstairs for the first month, then later moved to my own place just across the road. The rooms are well equipped, but of course you never feel at home, or really like you're living in China until you're in your own place, so I'd strongly recommend thinking about that (a lot cheaper too)

Would you recommend finding my own place if I will only be there for a few months? I would definitely prefer to stay elsewhere, but I imagine it is a lot less convenient.

 

[abcdefg]

8 hours ago, Tomsima said:

And it was in Guilin that I really got into 功夫茶; there are some really fantastic tea shops to be found, where 老闆 will sit with you chatting away for hours and hours. When I was taking class at CLI I would walk over to the 茶文化街 just up the road, pick a teahouse and just chat away about anything with people there, fantastic practice, challenging (accents!), but most importantly, fun, and /really/ immersed in Chinese language.

 

This sounds like a big plus, @Tomsima!

 

The Kunming teahouses I've visited (not many) seem to have been pretty well taken over by serious mahjiang 麻将 players, money changing hands. 

[Babs]

@Tomsima + @michaelS Thanks so much for your informative posts!

I'll be studying Mandarin in China for 7 weeks from the end of May to beginning of July this year. I'm considering splitting time between Keats in Kunming and CLI in Guilin. Or just staying the whole time at CLI. (Any thoughts?)

 

Can anyone speak to the outdoor recreation opportunities in the Guilin area? I'm an avid mountain biker, hiker and rock climber. I know Yangshuo has quite a bit of rock climbing... but I suspect that's too far to travel to make it a regular thing. What kind of hiking and/or mountain biking is there right in/around the city? I'll be training for a series of triathlons when I return to the states in July... so I was hoping to find Chinese communities that are recreating.

 

Thanks so much for whatever information you can give. Really appreciate your posts above. Definitely has me leaning towards CLI.

 

 

[Tomsima]

it's been a few years since I've been there now, but I remember rock climbing being a regular weekend thing, they have it in guilin as well as yangshuo, so you don't need to worry about travel. While I was there I got out into the mountains all the time, was a great place to be both physically and mentally imo. Just talking about it is making me want to go back...the plan this summer is a trip to Fujian, but perhaps a meandering off to guangxi is on the cards

[matteo]

sorry I'm in a bit of a rush, I'll try to add more info later. 

Went to Guilin recently and it's great, I brought all the climbing gear but ended up not climbing because it is much hotter and humid than I expected (that was September). 

There's heaps to climb in Yangshuo and it is doable over the weekend (about 1h Didi). 

There used to be a crag in 西七公园 but it's closed now. 

I went to an indoor climbing place for shits and giggles and met a local climber who recommended this place to me: 腰鼓山， 广西壮族自治区桂林市七星区。 

See the pictures of the crag below. I didnt try it cause just the thought made me sweaty but the place looks legit. 

 

Various nice little hikes up the various mountains in the area (like 穿山 in Guilin - you can get there by bus from the school, or 月亮山 in yangshuo, highly recommended). 

 

Please let us know how it goes, especially if you go to Kunming. Cheers

 

[abcdefg]

On 3/4/2024 at 10:19 AM, Babs said:

I'm considering splitting time between Keats in Kunming and CLI in Guilin. Or just staying the whole time at CLI. (Any thoughts?)

 

I definitely think you would be better served by spending the entire 7 weeks all in one place. That is not really very long. Go to Guilin this year and Kunming next year. Or the other way around. I lived in Kunming a long time (12 years) and attended several of the language schools. Loved it, but I was not as dedicated to outdoor sports as it sounds like you are. I've only been to Guilin and Yangshuo as tourist, but the scenery was spectacular. Kunming has its charms, but the mountains are much less readily accessible from the city center there. 

[Babs]

Hi everyone! Thanks so much for your thoughtful messages! 

 

I have a small update. I've extended the trip to 10 weeks 😈 

 

@Tomsima That's exactly what I'm looking for, a place that's relatively easy to access green and/or wild spaces. Have you heard of mountainproject.com? I was poking around their maps and didn't see anything directly in/around Guilin - but mountain project is by no means exhaustive.

 

@matteo Ha! I get a little sweaty thinking of it, too. These route maps are super helpful - that's in Guilin? A lot of those routes look stout. Do you remember how it was graded? Sandbagged or soft?

 

@abcdefg I completely agree with you, re: 7 weeks is not a lot of time (nor is my meager extension to 10) and it might be best to choose a place and stay put. I'm excited about Guangxi based on what I know about CLI and the area, generally... And Kunming has the longer-term research prospects (though, technically any of these places could).

 

I think I forgot to mention in my first post - I'm also scouting for a site to return to conduct ethnographic fieldwork with ethnic minorities. So it could be in my interest to stay put and get to know a single community. Conversely, however, to try to bounce around a bit and see what's what. I'm honestly torn. 

 

I got some helpful feedback about CLI from a Chinese language acquisition professional who said that they are an industry leader and a model for language schools (ringing endorsement, ay?). 

 

 

 

 

[abcdefg]

On 3/7/2024 at 4:59 AM, Babs said:

I think I forgot to mention in my first post - I'm also scouting for a site to return to conduct ethnographic fieldwork with ethnic minorities.

Kunming has the Yunnan University of Minority Cultures 云南民族大学, which might be of interest. 

 

I understand being torn between locations. I bounced around a good deal before settling in Kunming. One thing I found, however, was that it takes time to really get to know a place, find a comfortable neighborhood and place to live, get easy with the bus routes, find out where you want to bank, where you want to buy groceries, where to get dental and medical care. I struggled to find a balance between the more adventurous "nomadic" life and the easygoing "settled" life while in China. Finding schools and teachers; finding a job. Once you start to make good friends, then that adds another pull to stay put. There, obviously, is no right or wrong way to do it. I eventually had to prioritize what I valued the most and let some of the other factors slide into the background. 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yunnan_Minzu_University 

https://www.ynni.edu.cn/web/11403/home