Best place to study Chinese Outside China

[天峰]

I am looking to fins a good school to attend next year to finish my degree. I intend on doing a double major in Japanese and Chinese with an Asian history minor. Many people get on me for not going back to China to study Chinese. I personally think that educational environment China is not conducive to having open discussions on popular issues. In many cases the government has put up huge amounts of money to fund Chinese learning in order to promote its values. I have many friends who studied in Beijing and the ones who challenged the professors were never rewarded with good marks. No matter how intelligent their arguments were. I tend to believe that there is more to learning about a culture and its language than an authoritarian government can provide. I am currently looking at the University of Alberta, which says they have the best program in Canada and one of the best programs in the world for Asian studies. I was wondering about the West coast schools in U.S. and maybe some of the schools in Australia. Are there any suggestions?

[atitarev]

IMHO, learn Chinese in China (or another Chinese speaking country - Taiwan, Singapore), French in France, German in Germany, etc. If you don't like the way they teach in mainland China, go to Taiwan, Hong Kong or Singapore.

[Song You Shen]

San Francisco State University (SFSU) claims to have the best Chinese Program in the US. That is where I will be going in a year or so. The school is near the China Town in San Francisco, which I read was the largest ChinaTown in the world (obviously outside of China).

Youshen

[天峰]

It all depends what you are looking for I want the history and political aspect too and I don't think, even in Taiwan, they will be able to be open to both sides of a topic. As far as the language courses there I think that they are all pretty much the same and that it is just reading out of a text book. You will only get what you put in and the advantage of being in China and having it around you all the time. If, however, you work just as hard and use the massive amounts of people in North America who are native Chinese speaker to help you further your knowledge you will do just as well. If you have lived in China before, you might also have the ability to take the information to compare and contrast your own culture and history. Take Pearl S. Buck she did some of her best writing on China only after she came back to North America and began to discover her own culture. I guess it is just opinion but I choose not to have the Chinese government pushing their jaded views and corrupted history upon me. I have seen how it wrecks great creative minds. If you don't think they do that in these classes you would be sorely mistaken.

[agentzi]

Song Youshen, Actually SFSU & old Chinatown are almost on diagonally opposite sides of town (but SF has at least 3 Chinatowns) and since SF is so small (49sq. or 7x7 miles ), they are not that far apart (20min on the Bay Area Rapid Transit, BART). 我也住在中国城. 欢迎欢迎来到旧金山。

善明

[lindseyohcheer]

Middlebury College Chinese language school (it's only for the summers though)

While I was there, my Chinese improved by leaps and bounds. My Chinese professor at Notre Dame recommended it saying that it was better than going to China. It was, at least better than the semester I spent studying at Peking University. It costs a heaping amount of money but Midd gives out some aid. If it means anything to you (and I'm not at all a fan of the CIA or anything) Midd was visited by several branches of US intelligence recruiting for foreign language students especially in Arabic and Chinese. I did hear that the Japanese program (which is relatively new, I think) is not good but the Chinese program is great. My prof says that only Princeton in Beijing compares (I think Johns Hopkins Nanjing program is very very good too as I had a classmate in Peking U who did that). I really want to go back to Midd. It's that good!

[Harvey]

http://www.middlebury.edu/academics/ls/chinese/

This place looks awesome. I did something similar during a summer while I was a student in Indiana University, it was called EASLI, but the program ended about 4 years ago.

This looks really nice... I am seriously considering doing this in the summer, before going to china to start something in September...

[lindseyohcheer]

Harvey,

it is awesome and I hope you do go to Midd! The school is very strict with the "No English" pledge but it s absolutely worth it

[Harvey]

After giving it more thought, I can't really justify going to Midd due to the cost.

I went through a smilar "no english pledge" program at Indiana Unviersity about 6 years ago, called EASLI (east asian summer lanage institute) for Japanese. It really was awesome. I would say I learned how to speak Japanese there, and then made it a habit in Japan.

Though, since I am working now, I don't think I would be able to get any significant financial aid from Midd for their beginning Chinese program. Are there scholarships available for this?

I think if I was still a poor student with a case for financial aid, I would do it. But, I could study in China for a year for literally half the cost... Even if the school in China is technically nto as good... I could still really try to kick butt myself, and a difference of $3000 dollars would be a good motivation

[Desmond]

Hey,

Well if you're considering studying Japanese and/or Chinese at the University of Alberta, then feel free to talk to me if you have any specific questions. I'm currently studying Chinese here, and I have friends in my classes that are also studying Japanese here (doing double majors, etc)

Desmond