Numbers of foreigners in China, pre- and post-pandemic

[Elliott Jones]

On 5/25/2024 at 1:26 PM, Guest realmayo said:

I can imagine a situation where someone comes to China, finds they can have a good and fun life without speaking much Chinese, and figures that they'll only be in the country for a couple of years so why put themselves through all the suffering of studying the language! And then if they remain in China for longer and continue to have a good and fun life without speaking Chinese, then where's the motivation? I think that for most people (myself definitely included) the language is simply too difficult, unless you are particularly motivated.

 

When I first arrived in Taiwan in 2015, I was quite embarrassed that I was claiming to live somewhere but couldn’t speak the language of that place well. At that time I would rather not say anything than to try and convey my message in English to someone who I wasn’t sure could speak English, because I didn’t want to stress them out if they weren’t comfortable speaking in English. Because of this, before I wanted to go do anything, I would first look up related vocabulary and practice what I wanted to say. Turns out that is a fantastic way to learn, and a few years later when I started to date my wife, I would do the same thing for things I wanted to talk to her about before we went out together. Within a year of dating her I went from survival to conversational.

I can’t even imagine living here and not making an effort to learn.

[Jan Finster]

On 12/27/2024 at 9:46 AM, Elliott Jones said:

I can’t even imagine living here and not making an effort to learn.

 

Only really for the sake of argument, I could imagine parents, who work for international companies to have no time or energy for language learning. 

Theoretically, I could imagine an English teacher to struggle learning Chinese if he is surrounded by people who want to practice English with him even outside class. 

As others have said, Chinese is not exactly a low-hanging fruit... 

[hungrybrain]

On 12/26/2024 at 9:52 PM, Jan Finster said:

Maybe I live in a language learning bubble, but it feels as if today way more people especially also from the Anglophone world are learning languages than say 30 years ago.

I think it's separating in both directions. In the past, the learning tools weren't that great but nearly everyone had to learn some of the language of the places they traveled to.

Now, English speakers are more able than ever to travel the world without learning any other language. However, the people who want to learn, have a wealth of resources that didn't exist in the past. As a result, the number of monolingual tourists and expats is increasing, but at the same time, motivated language learners are making more progress more quickly than was possible a generation ago.

[liqi]

On 12/27/2024 at 4:46 PM, Elliott Jones said:

I can’t even imagine living here and not making an effort to learn.

I think I can understand not wanting to get deep into the language like most of us here are interested in, after all, Chinese is hard! Some people are just here for a job and that's ok, they don't want to use their already short free time studying stuff that might not be relevant to them in the future. Buuuuut, on the other hand, I don't understand the people that don't try to do the BARE MINIMUM，as in trying to order food or even just moving around reading signs. You don't need to have deep discussions in chinese about chengyus, but if you've been living here for 5 years and still can't identify basic hanzis like 出口 and 入口, yeah, I'm judging a bit sorry (based on a personal story heh)

 

As for the main question, I'm afraid I don't really have any point of reference as this is my first time in China, but I would say not many foreigners. In Beijing I could easily pass an entire month without seeing another foreigner, but I think that's mostly because of how maaassive Beijing is (and I lived in Haidian, which isn't exactly super exciting to visit lol). Here in Chengdu I see foreigners quite a bit actually, but I think that's mostly due to how dense and compact Chengdu is compared to Beijing, Chengdu's size is pretty deceiving 😂. I don't have many foreigners (none, actually) in my social circle outside of university, so I don't really know what the expat scene is. The only foreigners in Chengdu from my country I know are all gay strippers living illegally, so it's not really easy to relate 😅 (and god are they insufferable!)