Taipei or Shanghai to learn Mandarin

[bathingape888]

Hi People,

Newbie here I am sure this question may have been asked before in some form or another and I have checked the previous threads but still need help!!!

Found this forum recently and guessed it seems like a great place to air my questions which have left me slightly confused recently.

I am male British born Chinese 23 years old and am looking to improve my Chinese in either Shanghai or Taipei , I am a city kinda person, love the hustle and bustle of places like Hong Kong etc and would guess that these two cities would make the best choices.

I just quit recently from an oil company in which I was earning a quite enviable sum considering I only recently graduated, however the job was just boring and intolerable and I was working with no one even close to my age which really basically got tedious after a while and after hearing stories of other friends studying Chinese in Beijing, I felt an inner calling to do the same.

My current level of Mandarin is about 700 words conversational, I can read perhaps 400-500 simplified characters and can hold SIMPLE conversations, I am however quite a fluent Cantonese speaker and also a fluent Hokkien speaker ( I can pretty much understand Taiwanese I hear on TV to about 80%) which puts me in the unusual position of being able to understand Taiwanese before Mandarin LOL. My Mandarin learning is more about picking up vocab and accent refinment (I have been told i sound like a HK person when i speak Mandarin!) rather than learning the grammar which I am already quite familar with

Ok so my choices at the moment are basically Shi-Da (sic) in Taipei and Fudan /JiaoTong in Shanghai, I would like to go to a Uni that is multicultural with people from all over the world and also with many of my age group if possible, I would also preferably like accomodation on campus which as I understand most uni's in Taiwan cannot offer but those in Shanghai can, I have nightmares of basically renting a room in Taipei by myself and after class not socialising with anyone! I am basically looking for the place which can offer the best lifestyle as a student which I miss oh so much from my own uni days. This is probably my last chance to study anything formally so would like to make the best of it!!

Can Anyone help me????????

[Lu]

Never been to Shanghai, but I did study in Shida, the students there make the most international community you can imagine. In Beijing most of the students learning Chinese would be either Japanese or Korean, in Taipei I had friends from literary all over the world.

As to the age of people there, most people there are in their twenties, some are maybe a bit younger, some are older. If you're 23 you'll fit right in.

It's true that you can't live on campus on Shida, you have to rent a room off campus. But this does not have to mean you have no social life, there is plenty of socializing at the school itself. And one thing almost all foreign students have in common is that they hardly know a soul in their new city, so everybody will be eager to make friends.

Shida has classes running from absulote beginner to reading the Hongloumeng. You have to take a test when you get there, they put you in a class, if that class is not the right level for you, you can change classes in the first week. They have some very good teachers (and also a few not-so-great ones, in which case you change class).

Taipei has a great night life (night markets, discos), although it doesn't feel like a big city to me.

I hope this helps, if you have any more questions about Taipei or Shida, do not hesitate to ask.

[bathingape888]

Many thanks for the reply, will keep your name in mind should I have any further questions.!

[ala]

Shanghai has a lot of foreigners (much more than Taipei) and feels like a big city.

Shanghai is also a lot cheaper after exchange rate (subway fare 0.35 USD, bus fare 0.25 USD). Cheap is always good for students.

I would think Fudan University is more prestigious than Shida. Fudan's main campus is in a residential area of the city (Yangpu district), but I think the international language study campus is in Xujiahui, which is right by or at "downtown."

In Shanghai, you might land yourself some great business opportunities and connections.

There are 500,000 Taiwanese businessmen in Shanghai.

[parmarossa]

Fudan's International Campus is not in XuJiaHui...i dont know where u got that from!!

Fudan's international students are in Yang Pu (Wu dong Lu) by Wu Jiao Chang...i cant tell u much, but there is some general info on this website set up by some students in fudan.... www.foreignstudent.cn ......