The 2023 Aims and Objectives

[黄有光]

A bit more than halfway through 活着 now. Saving most of my thoughts until the end, but just wanted to say, wow, 富贵 is a really shitty father. Like I really just want to slap this man.

[zenzero]

Hi all - long-time lurker here.

 

I achieved HSK 5 a few years back and have tried to maintain it alongside a career, but I can feel it slipping. My main aim for this year is to channel more of my 'non-mandatory English time' into being time spent either actively or passively using Chinese.

 

I would like to come up with a plan to achieve HSK 6 over the next year, but know that realistically that won't be feasible by the end of this year. I do think it would be feasible by the end of 2024 though, and as such intend to draw up a plan to work towards that.

[dakonglong]

I am still continuing with my stated 2023 goals of (1) creating a Chinese-language travel blog (already filmed, now I just need to edit it and record a voice-over) and (2) translating a novel into Chinese, though I switched from Sphere by Michael Crichton to The Beach by Alex Garland to avoid all of the sci-fi language - I am still on p1, but hey, at least I started! Anyway, I have also continued with my previous reading/listening in parallel, and in the process I discovered a couple of new materials that I thought others might enjoy!

 

(1) [TV] God Troubles Me on Netflix is actually pretty good! The episodes are short and I find them really easy to understand. I would definitely recommend this show to anyone looking for easier, yet still engaging native listening materials. I started watching it on a whim, and now I'm addicted (note: it's an anime-style cartoon, so you kind of have to be into that).

 

(2) [Nonfiction] 置身事内 this is a nonfiction book that describes how the government manages economic expansion. I am only 30p into it so far, but I have found it absolutely fascinating. This is the first nonfiction book I have attempted and I am absorbing a bunch of new, super-useful business, government and economic terms. At the end of my last fiction book I was probably encountering 1-2 new words per page. Now I'm back up to 8-10, but oddly enough I almost missed the rush of new vocabulary. This one was easy to purchase in hard copy on Amazon.

[黄有光]

I just finished reading 活着. @Woodford I wept when the main character called out the names of the imaginary cows at the end. I am still crying. Fuck.

[Woodford]

On 4/27/2023 at 7:56 AM, 黄有光 said:

 I wept when the main character called out the names of the imaginary cows at the end.

I felt like the book was extraordinarily sad on many levels. Yu Hua has a pretty relentlessly dark and cruel outlook on the world in general! But out of all the books I've read, it's probably the one that I remember the most vividly.

[Woodford]

On 4/25/2023 at 11:20 PM, dakonglong said:

(2) [Nonfiction] 置身事内 this is a nonfiction book that describes how the government manages economic expansion. I am only 30p into it so far, but I have found it absolutely fascinating.

How's that going so far? I'm chipping away at that book, myself. Vocabulary hasn't been a big issue for me, but the sentence structure is a little difficult. To give an exaggerated example, it's almost as if it reads this way:

By 1994, the principle estimate of the core index of the central bureau of educational development fell short of the 1990 estimates put forth by the vice chief of the federal labor allocation department, leading to inflationary pressures in the bilateral-vertical interactions between the latent property crisis produced by the shortage in secondary budget appropriations that stifled investment in the agricultural land reform initiative proposed by the third session of the twenty-fifth general people's annual congress that was ratified by the three-fourths committee put together in the budgetary ordinance initiative in 2003, greatly expanding the ratio of national GDP to intake of discretionary means gain tax.....

Is it literally like that? Well, no. But it feels like that at times. It leaves my head spinning. I do think I understand the central ideas, though.

--The introduction of the book talks about how different districts are drawn within China, at the levels of city, county, province, etc. While there are many exceptions, the territories are drawn such that the most people can benefit from shared public services that are funded by their taxes. When services are rendered on a big scale, they become cheaper and more efficient. It's difficult to adequately render services to small, rural towns on the outskirts of provinces. There's a discussion of the proper domain of local and central governments. In matters that don't cross borders into other jurisdictions (and remain strictly local), the central government doesn't want to get too involved. 
--The book speaks of the importance of "information." In order to govern effectively, a government needs to have an accurate picture of what's actually going on.
--The central government set up certain deals with the provinces. Each jurisdiction had a certain quota of tax to pay to the central government, and then they could keep the extra money. The taxation system evolved over time, and the local governments found clever ways to keep more of their income to themselves. As China's economy exploded, the local governments become much richer than the central government, which left the central government powerless to govern the country, and inflation was out of control. So reforms were made, such that local governments had to pay more tax.
--The local governments were now becoming poorer and needed new ways of making money, so the central government allowed them to own the land and let it out for money, so that people could occupy the land, build on it, farm on it, etc. Because construction and industry were the big money-makers and attracted the most foreign investment, the cities prioritized that kind of development instead of farming and housing. And the more productive such industry was, the more tax it could generate. So that sent land prices skyrocketing.

And that's where I left off. But I think I understand that. 

[dakonglong]

I totally agree, parts are easy to understand, others seem super complex. I guess what helps me is that my reading goal has never been to understand 100% of what I read, instead I aim to: (1) finish the book a better reader than when I started it, and (2) come away with some interesting ideas (nonfiction) or effected by the story (fiction). So when I come across a complicated section I will read it a few times and if I still don't understand it I just move on. Similarly when I come across super specific names (in this book mostly meeting names, or names of specific government bodies) I'm content to just recognize them in case I see them again vs understand specifically what they mean. For the hypothetical section you quoted:

 

On 5/8/2023 at 7:49 PM, Woodford said:

By 1994, the principle estimate of the core index of the central bureau of educational development fell short of the 1990 estimates put forth by the vice chief of the federal labor allocation department, leading to inflationary pressures in the bilateral-vertical interactions between the latent property crisis produced by the shortage in secondary budget appropriations that stifled investment in the agricultural land reform initiative proposed by the third session of the twenty-fifth general people's annual congress that was ratified by the three-fourths committee put together in the budgetary ordinance initiative in 2003, greatly expanding the ratio of national GDP to intake of discretionary means gain tax.....

 

My understanding is more like:

 

By 1994, the principle estimate of the [XXX] fell short of the 1990 estimates put forth by the [XXX], leading to inflationary pressures in the bilateral-vertical interactions between the latent property crisis produced by the shortage in secondary budget appropriations that stifled investment in the agricultural land reform initiative proposed by the [XXX] that was ratified by the three-fourths committee put together in the [XXX], greatly expanding the ratio of national GDP to intake of discretionary means gain tax.....

 

I still understand what's being described, I'm just missing some of the (in my opinion, non-critical) details. However, this style makes my reading much more enjoyable and I'm absorbing more useful information/vocabulary per hour of reading than if I tried to figure out what all of those obscure terms mean.

 

So far, I have tons of new words I can use (just a few examples: 激励机制，飙升，and my personal favorite 文山会海) and some really cool insights about the government particularly related to how the different levels of government interact and how asymmetric information is a major factor in terms of who wields actual power/influence.

 

[alantin]

On 3/19/2023 at 10:43 AM, Jan Finster said:

On 12/19/2022 at 10:18 PM, alantin said:

I booked a month studying Chinese with LTL in Taipei in the spring and living with a host family

 

Any updates?

Here goes. Sorry for taking so long! ?

 

I spent four weeks in Taipei in March to brush up my Chinese. I had studied for about four years when I went there and had weekly free talk lessons with online teachers for at least two years, but the problems that I set out to fix with this trip were my tendency to switch over to English when I hit a wall and can’t think of a way to explain around the world I don’t know and to get more used to speaking Mandarin and improve my fluency.

 

School and Teachers

 

The school was in really good place near Taipei 101 building and pretty much in the middle of everything. There were convenience stores and lots of different kinds of restaurants nearby including a really local small shop, a hakka restaurant, Japanese kaiten sushi, etc. The school itself was compact, but it had several classrooms that could fit between 2 to 10 people. There was also a common area where you could get coffee and use the fridge etc. and they used it to also arrange stuff like making dumplings together playing mahjong in that common area.

 

As far as I can tell there are basically two types of staff at the school. The administrative staff has a few local people who keep the daily stuff running and the top management and the marketing people come and go visiting the different schools LTL has. The teachers seemed to have full-time and part-time arrangements. They were all nice people and ready to help you with any problems you had. Taiwan opened up for foreign travelers in the latter part of 2022 and apparently the school went from virtually no students to a lot of students in a very short time so the number of staff apparently grew rapidly as well. They had also another space nearby that they had rented, because the space at the school wasn’t enough, but I didn’t see it. I heard some other students talk about problems earlier with the teaching arrangements etc. that I attributed to this quick ramp-up of the business, but when I was there in March 2023, I felt that they had ironed out the problems and everything went very smoothly for me. The staff seemed a bit busy, but they always had time for me when I needed them.

 

I didn’t get to know there curriculum very well. From the start they recommended 1-on-1 classes for me as my Chinese was quite advanced already and some time before flying to Taipei, I had a meeting with the school to talk about my goals and what kinds of classes I preferred and they had picked a business Chinese book for me when I got there, but in the end we ended up not using it. The teachers and the school were very attentive to what I wanted from the experience, which basically was to practice communicating in Chinese as much as possible. I told them that I didn’t want to spend the precious time there doing textbook exercises or homework assignments. The classes ended up being discussions entirely in Chinese with my two teachers about pretty much anything for 6 hours every weekday.

The teachers’ personalities were in many ways polar opposites of each other, but both were both awesome and went out of their way to find interesting material for me to study. One was very interested in history, literature, etc., she taught me a lot about Chinese and Taiwanese history, Japanese occupation, the aftermath, how Taiwanese people think about current political issues, the development of freedom of speech, etc. and also about classical Chinese poetry and literary Chinese used in the news. The second teacher took me out around town to see different places. One day I told her that I wanted to buy a translator pen and we first spent an hour on Chinese shopping sites looking for options and then we headed out to the local “Akihabara” and spent hours asking shopkeepers to introduce the pens they had and comparing them. She was also phenomenal striking up conversations with random people and then making me chat with them.

 

Other students and activities

 

A lot of the other students were a lot younger than me, for example spending a gap year, but there was also for example an American doctor who had just graduated and come to reconnect with his Taiwanese roots, a couple that was travelling and spending two weeks at a time in different locations in Asia, and grandfather who had started studying Chinese after retiring. I myself didn’t socialize a lot with the other students, though I did join making dumplings at the school once and I went to see Jiufen one weekend with the group. Other than that, I didn’t see other students much as my lunch hour was at a different time than the other students. I’m guessing that was intentional by the school, since before going I had told them that I didn’t want to break out of a Chinese immersion environment and didn’t want to socialize with the other students too much.

 

The host family

 

There were some problems finding a host family for me, which I guess were also partly due to the fast growth and demand. I was expecting a traditional family of two adults and a kid or two, but I ended up living with an older single guy, who was actually a former teacher at LTL too. Maybe I am a bit disappointed at myself since after a couple of first days, I ended up talking to him in English and he switched to English too, but he was an awesome guy, we had long talks about work and life, and I learned a lot about the people and their lives from him. He was a really good cook too and very strict about making breakfast and dinner for me, so I had to get back home by 7:30pm every day. It gave me good structure. ?

I heard a story of how a host family hadn’t worked out for someone, but the school was quick to react to that too and they found a new family pretty quickly.

 

The City

 

I spent a lot of time roaming the city every day either by myself, with the teacher or the host dad. I really liked Taipei and it really easy to get around in there. The metro system is very effective, clean, safe, and inexpensive, though it does get packed during the rush hours. I missed the train one morning and decided to take a taxi instead, expecting it to be faster, only to find out that actually the metro was the best bet to be in time during the rush hour. The U-Bikes complement the public transport system very nicely, they available at all metro stations and they have lots of stations around town where you can leave them. The weather was really nice the whole time in March, but the locals kept telling me how hot it would get during the summer. Someone calling Japan a “cool country” really drove that message home for me…

 

Reflection

 

I really could feel improvement after two weeks in Taipei spending 6 hours every day discussing with the teachers and then spending a couple hours every day roaming the city and interacting with people around the town. The one setback was that I ended up using English with the host dad after a few days and I couldn’t fix it anymore later just because of my own laziness, but he was pretty much the only person I used English with during the whole trip and other than that I was very strict to only use Chinese with the locals. I was able to do any changes and other business with the local school staff in Chinese too. It was also flattering when a few times store owners etc. asked me how long I had lived in Taipei, expecting me to have lived there for years already.

 

After I got back from Taipei, I had online lessons with my long-time teachers, and they told me they could see noticeable improvement. One told me that I didn’t try to change to English anymore, and she could feel my speaking had become a lot more fluent and natural with less trying to find words.

 

Overall, the experience was exactly what I hoped it to be and in addition to reaching the goals I set for myself, it was an awesome experience! I also made it to their Youtube channel talking about my experiences. ?

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Phv8WEmtYtc

 

[Jan Finster]

On 5/15/2023 at 12:03 AM, alantin said:

I told them that I didn’t want to spend the precious time there doing textbook exercises or homework assignments. The classes ended up being discussions entirely in Chinese with my two teachers about pretty much anything for 6 hours every weekday

 

Awesome report. I am so glad you had a great time.

 

I still have some questions?

1) were your teachers speaking in TW or mainland accents? If they had TW accents, how did this affect your own accent?

2) did you bother learning traditional characters or did you ignore them all together?

3) Did you find 6 hours of conversation just right, or too long? What was the ratio of you speaking vs teacher speaking?

4) How did you keep up with new expressions or words? Were you allowed to record some sessions? Did you memorise new words ahead of the lessons (e.g. about history, politics) and, if not, how did you cope with the new vocabulary? 

5) Looking back, was the decision to stay with a host "family" right for you, or would you "next time" rather stay in a hotel or apartment all by yourself?

6) Since you went freestyle anyway and did not follow a curriculum, was it worth doing it with a professional company rather than meeting in person with freelancers in Taipei?

7) When are you doing this again? ?

 

 

 

[Ledu]

**Daily Flashcarding, (in order until each deck is completed):

HSK 4 Deck (Pleco- Multiple Choice) [Currently here...almost done perhaps a week or two more]

HSK 4 Deck (Pleco- Tone Practice)

HSK 4 Deck (Pleco- Self Graded)

HSK 4 Deck (Pleco- Fill-in-the-blanks but probably not testing Writing)

 

**Writing HSK 4 Vocabulary about 10 words , 10x per day. 

 

**Texts (in order):

1)Writing Books: I have 3 small writing books I want to complete at the HSK 3 level.[Currently here]

2) Extensive Reading:

All remaining Mandarin Companion books at Level 1 & 2 [9 left of 17 I bought, paperbacks]. Read one graded reader a week 4 times or more.

3) HSK 3 Mock test book

4) HSK 4 Standard Textbook along with Zero 2 Hero course.

 

I can’t really juggle textbooks and graded readers. I prefer one thing at a time as I feel a greater sense of completion and thus focus. The more time I spend on Chinese, the greater the fire builds.  I think maybe I can get to starting the HSK 4 standard textbook by the end of 2023. 

 

 

[Lu]

On 5/15/2023 at 12:03 AM, alantin said:

Here goes.

Thanks for that write-up, that is really helpful and informative! Good to read that you had such a good time there. (And now I miss Taipei again.)

[abcdefg]

Very nice, @alantin -- Very similar to my approach in Kunming, most of the time. Had lots of "freestyle lessons" (including being out and about) instead of all textbook-centric learning in the classroom. Tried to strike a balance in which practical communication skills were just as important as formal linguistics. 

 

A few times I ran into bilingual Chinese who really wanted to practice their English., such as your host family. I generally had a frank conversation with them about how that did not meet my goals. This sometimes resulted in a loss of the friendship, a parting of the ways. In retrospect, I'm not sure whether or not it was necessary for me to be so "hard core" on that issue. 

 

Congratulations on undertaking the project and seeing it through! I'm sure it was a blast, as well as being productive. As I sit here today, in Texas, I wish I could do all of it over again, starting tomorrow. Requires energy and enthusiasm, and a willingness to go out on a limb. Sounds like you had those qualities! Well done!

[alantin]

On 5/15/2023 at 11:11 AM, Jan Finster said:

Awesome report. I am so glad you had a great time.

 

I still have some questions?

1) were your teachers speaking in TW or mainland accents? If they had TW accents, how did this affect your own accent?

2) did you bother learning traditional characters or did you ignore them all together?

3) Did you find 6 hours of conversation just right, or too long? What was the ratio of you speaking vs teacher speaking?

4) How did you keep up with new expressions or words? Were you allowed to record some sessions? Did you memorise new words ahead of the lessons (e.g. about history, politics) and, if not, how did you cope with the new vocabulary? 

5) Looking back, was the decision to stay with a host "family" right for you, or would you "next time" rather stay in a hotel or apartment all by yourself?

6) Since you went freestyle anyway and did not follow a curriculum, was it worth doing it with a professional company rather than meeting in person with freelancers in Taipei?

7) When are you doing this again? ?

 

Good questions!

 

1. were your teachers speaking in TW or mainland accents? If they had TW accents, how did this affect your own accent?

 

The accent is something that a couple of my mainland teachers worried a lot about. One especially has helped me a lot with my pronunciation and when I asked her why she seemed so worried about it, she told me that she thought that while I make some mistakes and some initials could be clearer, she thought my accent was pretty good and standard and she was afraid the Taiwanese accent being so different, could affect it. I wasn't worried about that because I think my accent is already quite set so a month won't change it. Apparently the mainlanders think the Taiwanese accent sounds funny. Though this teacher is too polite to say it that way directly. ?

The teachers (and everyone else too), I interacted with, were Taiwanese, but frankly I couldn't really tell much difference between the Taiwanese and many mainlanders accents. As far as I'm concerned, they all are all over the place anyway. While everyone says that their accent is 标准... There seems to be a lot of different 标准's out there... The prominent things I noticed were the different words for things like 捷运 instead of 地铁 and 影片 instead of 视频. Sometimes I would notice tone and pronunciation differences too like 影片 for example sounded much more like yīnpiàn to me than yǐngpiàn. I used the the Taiwanese words when ever I knew them and the teachers would often tell me that some word was a mainland word and teach me the Taiwanese version too. I mostly viewed this the same way I view different English accents. UK, Australian, US accents are different and there are some different words, but it doesn't really matter and my accent will never be a native English accent and neither will my Chinese accent be. As long as it is clear enough for people to understand, I'm happy. The different words can cause confusion so it is good to know them though. In Taiwan some people asked me if I had lived in Beijing... Go figure. Most of my teachers have been southerners and I loathe the 儿化音...

 

After I got back, my mainland teacher told me she was relieved my accent hadn't changed... ?

 

 

2) did you bother learning traditional characters or did you ignore them all together?

 

I didn't have much trouble with the traditional characters. I changed my Pleco in the settings to use the traditional characters some time before my trip and read some graded readers using traditional to get familiar with them. The teachers wrote everything for me in traditional characters too. I talked about the characters with some people and they were surprised to hear that there are only about 800 simplified characters, so it isn't such a big deal to learn them. I also visited the book stores a lot of times and carried home at-least a dozen books and a calligraphy training set.

 

3) Did you find 6 hours of conversation just right, or too long? What was the ratio of you speaking vs teacher speaking?

I think six hours a day was pretty good. We started at 9am every day, there was a one hour lunch break and ended at 4PM after which I had a couple of hours before dinner at home. Some times it felt a bit exhausting, especially in the beginning with jet lag and all, but I got used to it and a routine it was pretty good too. Kind of like going to the office every morning. I didn't really think about the ratio, but sometime I would try to explain something like how elections work in Finland (the parliamentary elections were held while I was in Taipei and it was 15 minutes bike ride from the school to the Business Finland office where I could vote) and the teacher would help with the unknown words, and some times the teacher would explain something like how you use the pieces of wood in the temples to ask questions from the gods. But the rest would be discussing various things so I would say that it was close to 50/50 ratio. About the same as with my online teachers.


4) How did you keep up with new expressions or words? Were you allowed to record some sessions? Did you memorise new words ahead of the lessons (e.g. about history, politics) and, if not, how did you cope with the new vocabulary?

I didn't ask if I could record them, but I guess it depends on if the teacher is comfortable with it or not. For a group lesson they probably would say no. I don't record words or phrases anymore or do any kind of rote memorization. Nowadays my approach is that what sticks sticks what doesn't doesn't. I find that especially in a complete immersion environment the important stuff comes up so often that it sticks pretty quickly, and what doesn't stick, is usually what you don't need anyway. And I think spending time, that I could be communicating and exploring the city, on reviewing vocabulary would have been counter productive. I also have enough passive understanding at this point that I could understand what people were telling me, even if I couldn't use the same vocabulary actively myself. And if I didn't, I just asked. The teachers would write vocabulary on the walls in the classroom and would use them as memory cues while we were talking (it was actually very helpful!), but I didn't take notes as I know that don't get back to them anyway and taking notes hasn't ever been something that helps my learning anyway. It rather takes my focus away from the teacher and prevents me from participating in the discussion, which was the whole point. I very much can only do one thing at a time.

 

 

5) Looking back, was the decision to stay with a host "family" right for you, or would you "next time" rather stay in a hotel or apartment all by yourself?

 

Host family was a really good choice and I very much would like to do it again, but this time have a family that couldn't speak any English! I wouldn't have learned about how people actually live (everything that the host dad told me about his apartment's Feng Shui or what kinds of things he was dealing with at work for example) if I had been living alone. He also took me to the night market and ordered a bunch of strange things I wouldn't ordered if I was alone. And getting back for dinner and talk about how the day had been was fun and gave me a kind of structure I wouldn't have had if I had been living alone. I would have found something else if I had, but I do recommend a the local experience you get with a host family. Even if it is just one guy. It is priceless!

 

6) Since you went freestyle anyway and did not follow a curriculum, was it worth doing it with a professional company rather than meeting in person with freelancers in Taipei?

 

I think it was worth it. The way I see it, I paid premium for the company taking care of all the arrangements and fixing it if something went wrong. I had never been in Taipei and didn't know anyone there, I was extremely busy at work all the way up to my trip and I didn't have time to make arrangements myself. I also had only a month and I wanted to be able to just enjoy my time there without worrying about anything. From that point of view I think I got what I wanted. But maybe the school offers even more value for students who want that international community and making friends at the school, that it also offers.

 

If I go to Taiwan again, I'm probably going to freestyle the whole thing and I would be going with my wife this time, so we would be living in an Airbnb or I would reach out to people I know there to find a place to rent. I also think it would be very easy to find freelancers there who I could meet with at a cafe somewhere.

Altogether I paid about 6000€ to the school for the four weeks which included the 6 hours with the teacher every weekday, housing, two meals a day, a "connection kit" which basically meant that they found a local friend for me to go out with a couple of times, and the pick-up from the airport. The homestay part was about 1600€. The flights were on top of that. I calculated that the cost of the lessons was about 33€/hour. The school also set up cool weekend trips that didn't cost extra, other than your bus ticket and what ever you ate while on the go.

 

I think if I got an Airbnb and scheduled freelancers in Taipei I could get away with half or even a third of the money. Airbnb's in Taipei seem to go for between 600€ and 1600€ per month. I even saw one for 400€/month. In the hindsight I could have gone this route, but as I said, the premium I paid was from my point of view for not having to worry about anything and having the safety net of the school if something went wrong when I didn't know anything about the place and didn't have the time and energy to go looking.

 

 

7) When are you doing this again? ?

 

Well.. This was also a test for me of a new lifestyle.. I work in IT, we are not planning to have kids, and am talking with the company to let me work remotely from abroad 4-6 months a year, so we are definitely going somewhere. The pandemic made me realize that my work is actually the only thing keeping us here at the moment. My wife can also work from anywhere. We are probably going somewhere in Europe or Japan in the autumn. Maybe I'll pick up German, Italian or Spanish next. ? But those I'm going to study while actually there. Not spending 2 hours a day at home in Finland while commuting to the office in the Finnish winter... If we go to Japan, it is easy to fly to visit Taiwan too. The only problem is our dog and the long flights with him... We aren't comfortable putting him in the cargo hold and apparently many Asian airlines don't allow dogs in the cabin.

 

 

@abcdefg, our approaches seem very similar! Though I'm a little bit more forgiving about using English. But maybe that's why I tried to find people who don't speak it well. To force myself to use it naturally rather than artificially. There are no hard feelings that way either. ?

[Jan Finster]

On 5/16/2023 at 12:30 PM, alantin said:

Altogether I paid about 6000€ to the school for the four weeks which included the 6 hours with the teacher every weekday, housing, two meals a day, a "connection kit" which basically meant that they found a local friend for me to go out with a couple of times, and the pick-up from the airport. The homestay part was about 1600€. The flights were on top of that. I calculated that the cost of the lessons was about 33€/hour

 

Holy moly. This is obviously a luxury...

I just checked Keats school in Kunming and 6 hours of 1:1 for 4 weeks are about 3000€ which I believe includes 3 meals and a bedroom....Obviously TP has more to offer than Kunming, but Yunnan must be great.

 

On 5/16/2023 at 12:30 PM, alantin said:

irbnb's in Taipei seem to go for between 600€ and 1600€ per month. I even saw one for 400€/month

 

In my experience, the 400€/month must be a cockroach-infested cellar room without windows since even hotels around 50€/night often do not have windows in TP.?

However, I read on Reddit that people do not recommend Airbnb for TW as the prices are too high and geared at tourists. Apparently, there are sites in Mandarin or FB pages with better deals.

 

Looking forward to hearing about your future adventures.

 

 

 

 

[alantin]

On 5/16/2023 at 8:55 PM, Jan Finster said:

Holy moly. This is obviously a luxury...

yeah… and the floghts on top of that including upgrade to business on my flight back… And I burned enough money while there too… I Kunming and Taipei may be comparing apples and oranges… It wasn’t A cheap trip and Singapore would have been even crazier I understand.

 

I‘ll definitely be more frugal in the future. If we go to Germany or Italy, I”m packing our stuff, my wife and dog in the car and driving…

[Jan Finster]

On 5/16/2023 at 8:43 PM, alantin said:

yeah… and the floghts on top of that including upgrade to business on my flight back… And I burned enough money while there too… I Kunming and Taipei may be comparing apples and oranges… It wasn’t A cheap trip and Singapore would have been even crazier I understand.

 

I‘ll definitely be more frugal in the future. If we go to Germany or Italy, I”m packing our stuff, my wife and dog in the car and driving…

 

Yolo!

 

Yes, Kunming and TP are different worlds and Singapore would have been even more luxurious for sure. Your accomodation was actually really reasonable, esp. if you got food. I spent tons of money on food in TP. The food is just too tempting and I did not want to do deep fried streetfood all the time. So, I easily spent 3x more on food than I would here in Europe.

[abcdefg]

On 5/16/2023 at 12:55 PM, Jan Finster said:

I just checked Keats school in Kunming and 6 hours of 1:1 for 4 weeks are about 3000€ which I believe includes 3 meals and a bedroom....Obviously TP has more to offer than Kunming, but Yunnan must be great.

While living in Kunming, I made several trips to Taipei as a tourist. Always enjoyed it, but found it significantly more expensive than "back home" in Mainland China. That applied to food and lodging of course, but also to goods and services. It wasn't as expensive as Japan or Singapore. About like Korea. (This is all wild extrapolation from limited personal data. Many grains of salt recommended.)

 

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Obviously TP has more to offer than Kunming, but Yunnan must be great.  

 

Yes, Yunnan has a lot to offer. Kunming does too, if you know where to look. It just doesn't present itself well to tourists. Not really a "tourism city."

[matteo]

thanks heaps @alantin for sharing your experience, it's one of the first really good traveling reports we get after pandemic and a major reason for me to visit this forum!

 

wife (gf actually) and I will be going to CLI Guilin in September for 3 weeks, I can't wait. 

Objective is to practice real life conversation as much as we can and have an as immersive as possible experience... it's going to be a bit tricky since it's two of us to start with, I'm curious to see how that'll go.

 

 

[Tomsima]

@matteo Sure you'll have a great time, ask if any of them remember me (司马腾), its been quite a few years now since I was there!

[matteo]

@Tomsima will do, when were you there, did you stay for long? is there anything in particular that you recommend doing while in 桂林？