Hello everyone, I am a US citizen interested in studying for a master's degree in China starting Fall 2025. I am most interested in either Computational Linguistics or Computer Science.    As for my background, I graduated from a U.S. university with a bachelor's degree in Business Management and a minor in China Studies. I am a huge language nerd and have been studying Mandarin and Korean for the past couple of years, and recently I have added Japanese and Arabic into the study mix. I am very interested in pursuing a career in computer science and I thought why not try to specialize in the language aspect of computers. So I think computational linguistics might be the best for me. In addition with the rise of AI, I think following this career path might be lucrative in the coming years.    Mandarin is my strongest foreign language and I am currently preparing for the HSK 6 exam. I love being in China and I would love to study there with a scholarship. I am worried however of the potential of being rejected due to my lack of experience in CS. I have taken some beginner courses during my undergraduate years in Java, Python, and some Javascript. I will also be taking more undergrad CS courses during this upcoming Spring semester (also in part to pause my student debt lol) as a second bachelor's computer science student. If I want I can stay and finish the 2nd bachelors however I really want to go to China to study. So my plan is to apply for the Fall 2025 programs now and perhaps say in my statement of purpose that I am taking undergrad CS courses in the Spring to prepare myself for the masters.   Does anyone here have experience getting accepted into a CS or CL master's program in China without a formal background in it? I am interested in applying to Tsinghua, Peking, Zhejiang, and Nanjing University. Also what is your opinion on getting a CS degree vs a CL degree? Which would be more of a challenge to complete? And which degree do you think is more worthwhile to obtain?

I am considering being a subject teacher in China, and have already had a couple of interviews. I have a very unique problem, though. Basically my situation is as follows: I am originally from EU country A. I moved to EU country B a few years ago. I was working a university job for a while, but had to quit due to health reasons. I was out of work, started freelancing without knowing how to manage it. I ended up getting an accountant to take care of my local taxes, which I took care of in an organized manner. However, I forgot to inform my home country about some of the income. I thought I was only being taxed in the country of residence, but apparently I was subject to double taxation. I was accused of tax evasion, received a hefty fine and a 4 month suspended sentence. It sucked, as it really was an honest mistake, and I wasn't purposely trying to hide my income.   Otherwise, my record is clean, but I am worried that this will greatly impact being able to get a teaching visa to China. Is there anything I could do?

I'm interested in purchasing Chinese Zero to Hero, but one thing isn't very clear is how its distributed to the customers. Once one purchases, does one get a download link to access all the materials? Or does one have to access all on-line? Is it all a nice Zip file or on YouTube? My concern is I usually go to China for parts of the year, and I'd like to have complete access on my iPad, regardless of what Internet access I have.

I'm recently starting my journey to HSK5 after discovering that I vastly underestimated my Chinese level 😆. I'm scoring around 50% on the mock tests I find online, which ain't bad considering I started to pursue it out of nowhere, but also isn't enough to actually pass the test. I can understand most casual content (social media, daily life, modern novels, manhua etc) without many issues, which was a surprise to me because every person with an HSK5 that I've seen complained about still not being able to understand even some kids books, which hasn't been my experience at all. But I want to apply for university which requires an HSK5, and after getting a reality check I started to actively study for the HSK. I'm really more focused on the test itself for now, learning the language alongside is a nice side effect   I'm currently using the HSK5 Standard Course books, which are fine, but since this is my first time self-studying for something I don't really know how to use it... 🫠. Currently I preview the words of a new unit and add them into anki, then after a while (usually like 2 days) I read the text and solve the exercises on the textbook and the workbook. But I feel like this isn't really optimal, I struggle quite a bit with grammar and I feel like I'm not using the full potential of the book as I'm basically just cramming vocabulary. As for the test itself, the parts I struggle the most right now is 1) Listening 2) Part 1 of reading (fill in the gaps) 3) Part 1 of writing (reorder a phrase). I don't think there's much to do about improving listening other than to practice and listen more and more, but as for the other two I'm really lost. The fill in the gaps I find pretty hard because the options are usually words with similar meanings or grammar structures that I don't remember or mix up all the time (like the thousands of ways to use 从). Writing the essay is no issue, but I do struggle with the ordering exercise lol, I don't really know what to study there and I realized that my comprehension of chinese structure really sucks 😜   Any tips are welcome! Be it study tips, HSK tips or chinese tips. I'm interested in knowing if there's any way to adapt grammar studies and word usage (idk how to word it haha, the 词语搭配 and 词语辨析 sections of the textbook) into flashcards. I really like them cuz they're convenient, words wonders and I'm a big numbers nerd, so I love looking at my stats heh. Places to source practice exams are welcome too! I got the official 汉语水平考试真题集 book, but I feel like i'll run though the 5 exams quite quick. I know there's HSK Mock but 75元 per exam feels a bit expensive for my poor student pocket 🤧. I'm aiming to pass the test before April (which is when uni applications close), I think it's quite doable.... I hope 😄    

Hi all,   I think we are advanced enough as humans to realise learning foreign language will need the learner to undergo challenges greater than translating word by word. Duh, right.? Well what I'm getting at problem-wise is that I've got the Hanban textbooks for HSK study, and they're kinda great, except that the work (asides from composing occasional sentences incorporating a newly learned term/structure) it gets you to do is highly *funnel down to a multiple choice answer* which doesn't exactly foster my creative ability. And, because I'm understimulated, I go about thinking about all the words I don't know, and either fall into the translation trap or just get unhappy.   It essentially means I feel sick of opening my textbooks. I want something that requires me to make maybe a dozen or so two-sentence answers, having reflected on/understood a passage.   So, I want to know what exists in the way of CLIL for a Chinese learner? English is full of CLIL. Like, in an English learning book, there might be a dialogue about someone cooking something, then there's an ingredients problem, or argument, then there's a resolution. Or there might be a piece on the gold seekers in San Fran in 1949 and the people who screwed them over by charging the thirsty miners $100 for water.   TLDR: Do you know any good CLIL books for a Chinese learner of approx HSK4 level?

Hi everyone, I’m currently pursuing a master’s degree in China Studies at Ocean University of China, focusing on Chinese history. My thesis explores Spanish-language sources from the 16th century related to China, so my research doesn’t require extensive use of Chinese. Spanish is my native language. I’m considering continuing my studies with a PhD in history, preferably in Chinese history or global history, at a university in China. I’m particularly interested in English-taught programs, as my master’s is also in English and this is the language I primarily use for research. I would love to hear from anyone who has insights or experiences regarding PhD programs in history in China, especially those taught in English. Could you share information about the application process, the structure of the programs, and any recommendations for universities? Thank you in advance for any advice or details about programs that you can share!  Best regards.

Hello! I had a go at translating this phrase: Selfies in Paris with Li = 与李一起在巴黎自拍 It is for a video title where “Li” is the name of the subject of the video. The goal is for the title to fade from English to Chinese for a dual audience. My understanding is that the first two characters before the dash “与李一” mean “with Li”.  For the Chinese version to read correctly, would two characters “with Li” need to come before everything else or could it read like this: 起在巴黎自拍 与李 so that it matches the English syntax structure: Selfies in Paris with Li And I also would like to make sure the translation itself is clear and makes sense to native speakers. 谢谢

I've had a really great Chinese professor the last two semesters, but this will likely be the last class I'll take with her. I'd like to know a good way to say goodbye. I asked my Chinese coworker and she said it would be weird to say “我会想你", which makes sense as it would be weird to say to a professor in English as well. She then suggested I could say "If the opportunity to take another class comes up, I will take it" or "I learned a lot from this semester's class." However, she said these in Chinese but I can only really remember the English translation. Does anyone know how to say these two things in Chinese I remember that last one was something like "在这个学期课我受很多的.“ Or, what would you suggest saying in this situation?

Quizlet's gravity typing game was world-widely popular. However, it's retired. People are urging Quizlet to recover it:Petition for Gravity https://chng.it/2HM6mm6wXF Failed! Gravity is gone. Anyone know of an alternative? [Quizlet Gravity Alternative ] assiduousnes I wrote up a small tool to use till I find a better alternative: https://dleiferives.github.io/gravity.html. Only works for csv like"die Zeit,Timedas Jahr,Yearder Tag, Dayder Mann,Mandas Kind,Child" PM me if you have any problems.   1 visit https://dleiferives.github.io/gravity.html  2 upload CSV file 3. SET THE Spawn Time 4START   5 REPORT YOUR SCORE AND LEVEL  

Hey all! A few months ago I made a post about living in Beijing studying at Tsinghua and how it was kinda disappointing (damn, it feels like ages ago!). I said i planned to move to Chengdu, and well... I did! I've been here for around 3 months more or less studying at 川大, and damn, I super love it!! It seems like my problem was Beijing after all 😂  😂   Life here just feels so much nicer in pretty much all aspects: the people, the city, the noise, the ambient, the price xD hahaha. I found Chengdu to be an insanely well-planned city, much more than Beijing, everything feels like it was built with a purpose and there isn't a single wasted space in the city. Not that Beijing isn't well planned, but Chengdu clearly learned from decades of Chinese urbanism and it shows. Everything is green (y'all ever seen the 2nd elevated ring road?), there's parks, squares, open gyms, leisure spots and such scattered everywhere. And the city is SUPER dense, you can get everywhere very quickly, "the other side of the city" is like 10km away hahahaha, very different than living in Haidian. There's a little Mahjong bar on my 小区, and since I learned a tad bit of Sichuanese the old men inside absolutely LOVE me 😂 every night where I'm coming back from somewhere they invite me to play   As for the uni, it's pretty great! Leaps and bounds better than the Tsinghua course, who would've thought heh. We have classes every morning (at least in my schedule) and a bunch of electives in the afternoon if you want. We also have a class that I think it's pretty damn fun, we gather the classes and go to touristic spots together around the city and interview locals, we even did a presentation at a 中学! Hahahaha. There's electives about Ba-Shu culture, sichuanese dialect, even japanese as a second language lol! The teachers are really nice and don't really pressure you much, which is a welcome breath of fresh air   My chinese also improved greatly! I suppose that after a level you don't really notice your improvements much and may underestimate yourself a lot (good ol' impostor effect). I left China before classes started for a while and ended up being placed in Beginner II, which I thought was OK. But when classes started... so damn easy!! I was afraid of the Boya Intermediate books because they say you need 3000 words haha, but it ended up being surprisingly easily! One day out of boredom I thought of doing some HSK4 practice out of boredom to see how I was (that was the level I thought I was) and to my surprise I smoked that test 😄. I also took some HSK5 practice exams and got around 50%, which isn't enough, but I think it's quite good for the guy who thought he would need to learn HSK3 material 😆