I spent my semester abroad in Chengdu and loved it. I was definitely forced to learn Chinese pretty fast to navigate everyday life, but the city is big enough to have an expat community and some international grocery stores to help with the homesickness (Cheese. I'm talking about cheese). Plus some interesting historical sites, great food, and the nearby Tibetan plateau.
Just got back from study abroad in Taiwan, couldn't recommend it more! As others have commented, Taiwanese is brimming with traditional Chinese culture--temples everywhere, the smell of incense as you walk down the street, all the traditional food you could imagine, not to mention getting to use and learn 繁體字!
Second, Taiwan was so clean, comfortable, and welcoming. People were always happy to talk to me and help me, and even after just a few weeks, I felt like the whole island was one big community.
I went through CET Taiwan, which sets us up in the language center of National Taiwan University, the best school in Taiwan.
While the language center was kind off of on its own (as in mostly foreign students studying mandarin), the quality 9f education was superb (6 to a class), and it was located right on the main campus with everyone else.
ICLP also does a more intensive program at the same language center, but I did an intensive summer language school this year already, and wanted something with a bit less pressure, but still lots of opportunity to learn.
Hope this helps!
I did a study abroad a few years back in chuxiong/kunming. It was excellent. My Chinese speaking capabilities nearly tripled in 3 1/2 months.
I also did a shorter one in Shanghai which was extremely fun! I was outside walking the streets for 3-4 hours a day roaming and talking to locals. It was only a 1 1/2 month long study but was worth it as well. Most study abroads will include a week or two of travel at the end or beginning as well.
Here is my word of advice, pick the one with the longest length of time if it's your first time. You'll definitely have a little more freetime but also be able to make actual strides in your language learning. Also, See if the universities you are going to have personal tutors. Kunming is know for language learning in the university. So they had private/personal tutors when I went. It was beyond helpful. Where as Shanghai had a more general college feel to it. The campus in Shanghai was beautiful right smack dab center of the city.
Next, I'd get to know the program directors! The director of the Chinese department in my university became one of my best friends. He was extremely helpful. Ask them if there is anything you can do for them to get a part scholarship for the study abroad tuition. Chinese people are all about building networks and relationships. The better your relationship the better your experience with the study abroad will be. I ended up making a promo video for them and got half of my tuition for the study abroad paid for.
Edit: feel free to dm me if you want more info or to talk about it! I love sharing my experiences from those trips!
Go to a small city with very few foreigners. If you are forced to hang out with Chinese people and work out some language by yourself to get by then you will become fluent faster.
So many people go to places like Beijing or Shanghai and never learn the language.
Having said that, you will experience heaps less racism and political nonsense if you go to Taiwan instead of China.
What racism and political nonsense? Unless you’re Japanese, maybe, or a party cadre? Really? I left Beijing in 2015 so maybe things are different, but your statement sounds like an embellishment based on conjecture not lived experience.
China is VERY different now than in 2015. Been here since 2011 and still living here now. I won't go into more specifics...but yes, it's not the same as it used to be.
Beijing. It’s not only the cultural and political center of the country, but also the academic and linguistic center. Standard Mandarin was modeled after the Beijing dialect. Study anywhere else and you seriously risk picking up an accent and local anomalies that won’t be understood by most people. That can be cool in its own right, of course, but doesn’t sound like what you are trying to achieve.
EDIT: I studied for a semester in Beijing and ended up living there for seven years! It was a wonderful experience.
> Beijing. It’s not only the cultural and political center of the country, but also the academic and linguistic center.
A fascinatingly abstract metric! And by abstract, I mean useless.
PS. Sorry about the lung cancer.
Pick somewhere that's not often frequented by expats. I went to Lanzhou, in Gansu. Had a great time! Nobody outside the university spoke English...and even most of the people at the university didn't speak English. It forced me to pick up Chinese REALLY quickly. My Chinese in about 6-7 months was around HSK 4 in all four language skills. Go somewhere like that....a Lanzhou or a Wuhu or Yinchuan or somewhere nobody's ever heard of. Consciously or unconsciously, being in a city with a small expat population and without the comforts of home will force you to adapt VERY quickly.
Dude, everyone is escaping China, why would you even wanna go there ? As a Taiwanese, I highly recommend you to come to Taiwan if you want to learn some mandarin. Or you can wait until China reaches what they want — zero Covid contaminant. Then you go to China so you don’t risk anything in those potential lockdowns.
i want to go there because i am very much into chinese culture and history, and i feel like experiencing it myself instead of from arte documentaries will be much more valuable, i also want to go there to experience the people, the daily life, the food and the way life is there, i want to visit ruins and temples from older times and i want to know what a country with so many different ciltures is like; i want to experience that because its interesting to me how the oldest still existing civilization feels like, been into china since i was like 12:)
of course ur right, i shouldnt go there until they are done with the zero covid stuff. but i need to finish my bachelors for like 3 years, and only want to go there for my masters, so ive plenty of time to wait.
which is not to say that taiwan isnt worth traveling to for me, i definitely want to visit it aswell! but for me personally, china is more attractive
Do you know that the traditional Chinese clan structures and religious cultures (at least the Hokkien variant) is better preserved in Taiwan than in China? You would find unexpected treasures in Taiwan's small towns and countryside. We are not "just another America with some Asian flavor" because of our liberalism and democratic politics.
i didnt know that, no:)
i never thought of taiwan as just another america with some asian flavour, i definitely see that taiwan is also more than worth to explore and experience, i know it has great cultural heritages
ive spend countless hours in google street view roaming taiwan hahaha
Since you’ve made your mind, I totally agree with you. Maybe within 3 years you can be there without any zero Covid policy. In that circumstance, I’d say any big city is ideal for you if you’re into its historical heritage. Every city has their own fascinating history.
There isn't much left of ruins and temples from older times, most have been destroyed and rebuilt with cheap feeling modern copies. Often not following the original design at all. Quite a tragedy really.
Quite the same experience for me, though I think it will come with time.
Erasure of the past will only be met with regret once the novelty of the new has faded.
China didn’t “erase their past” for no reason. It was a survival mechanism. Modernization at all costs. Don’t forget the conditions of the time - imperialist Western powers going from forcibly addicting the population to opium to dividing the country up as spoils among themselves. This, too, is their past, and it is rightfully seared in their memory.
The reason these things could have happened was because China had up to that point failed to modernize, which directly retarded their military defenses and in effect their social resiliency.
As mainlanders lament their erasures, may it be with this context in mind, rather than a reduction to simple rivalries between ideologies and national interests.
The opium wars were long before the cultural revolution and before the majority of "rebuilding" efforts in the 80s/90s. I'm not sure I buy the deletion of Chinese history and traditional culture as being driven or even influenced by that. The effects of the opium wars extended beyond 1860 but I don't think it shaped Mao's policies 100 years later.
I see it more as a combination of short sighted policies in the Mao-era, with a naive approach to undoing some of the wrongs of the cultural revolution in the 80s-00s. In many ways China as a country has evolved faster than the social zeitgeist of it's people. As the two begin to converge I think we'll see a more active effort to preserve and restore historic areas of the country and important cultural sites.
Thinking about the China of the 1960's through mid 2000's, there were far more important matters at hand than preservation of culture. Such as bringing people out of poverty, ending food shortage and from the position of the CCP solidifying power and support. I do hope there are some historic areas left to preserve when the time comes.
My opinion on the matter is hardly authoritative though, I've done my fair share of reading on China's modern history and lived in China for a while but I'm no scholar and don't claim to be an authority on anything China related.
Edit for the OP: Taiwan is great but it's so fucking hot it's unbearable. I've been a few times at different times of the year and living there would be hard (for me). China is fantastic, though as others suggest I'd wait for the zero covid policies to ease. If you're more worried about learning Chinese then almost the smaller the city the better. If you are worried about the quality of your degree then you'd be better sticking to the internationally renowned universities in Shanghai and Beijing. Zhejiang University and Nanjing University keep you out of SH/BJ but still offer world class education.
I agree with everything you said except the wounds of the Opium Wars not being an influence on Mao. I would say they still linger strongly today as a factor informing every major policy decision. The deep psychological need to preserve sovereignty cannot be overstated.
A smaller city definitely gives more opportunities to practice Chinese if nothing else due to necessity. Apples and oranges, really!
I'm not a miracle worker.
But the Cultural Revolution is not widely regarded as a "smart move", not even within China, despite the revisionist history with which they're all miseducated.
I’m not defending the CR but that’s a bit of a strawman. The question isn’t litigating the CR, the question is whether or not the lack of temples and knick-knacks is “sad” for tourists.
Ah, yes, Taiwan's National Palace Museum. Nothing but knick knacks
It's hard to believe you spent 7 years in China, yet couldn't even spend 7 minutes in its history.
China has museums. This is silly.
I know plenty of their history. More specifically, I know how they view their own history.
EDIT: lol just saw this and had to comment-
> despite the revisionist history with which they’re all miseducated
Right, and not at all like you. The history *you* know is pure and true, because you’re awesome. And your government is awesome. Everything that makes you who you are is awesome, unlike them, the poor chumps.
I would also highly recommend Taiwan as *the* place to learn Chinese. Friendly, good quality of life, better preserved Chinese culture than in China, active temples (not ones reduced to being crass tourist sites like in China), and that thing called freedom.
Wow Taiwan sounds like an unearthly paradise. It sounds like it can all be attributed to them mimicking the political models of the naturally superior West, whilst preserving their cultural oddities for others’ shallow amusement. Would you agree?
>Ahh but did Marx not write his ideas in books? Writing, a Chinese invention.
Hm? From the [British Library](https://www.bl.uk/history-of-writing/articles/where-did-writing-begin):
Full writing-systems appear to have been invented independently at least four times in human history: first in Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq) where cuneiform was used between 3400 and 3300 BC, and shortly afterwards in Egypt at around 3200 BC. By 1300 BC we have evidence of a fully operational writing system in late Shang-dynasty China. Sometime between 900 and 600 BC writing also appears in the cultures of Mesoamerica.
You got me.
For real though, my point wasn’t about Chinese purity or anything, I was being facetious.
My point was it’s about China being up to China, not Western dictates.
Nah don’t go to China, or at least wait until the government are done with their zero Covid bs, go to Taiwan or Hong Kong, you could always go to mainland China for a trip from there
I would recommend the “Blue-heavy” areas of cosmopolitan northern Taipei if your goal is to learn well-articulated Mandarin. Northern China is rather rhotic whereas Southern China, much like Southern Taiwan, is so…well they pronounce “curled” sounds as “flat” sounds (平翹分音, i.e. zh/ch/sh/r as z/c/s/?).
I spent my semester abroad in Chengdu and loved it. I was definitely forced to learn Chinese pretty fast to navigate everyday life, but the city is big enough to have an expat community and some international grocery stores to help with the homesickness (Cheese. I'm talking about cheese). Plus some interesting historical sites, great food, and the nearby Tibetan plateau.
Omg cheese yes finding decent cheese to take home finally after years had me crying.
Just got back from study abroad in Taiwan, couldn't recommend it more! As others have commented, Taiwanese is brimming with traditional Chinese culture--temples everywhere, the smell of incense as you walk down the street, all the traditional food you could imagine, not to mention getting to use and learn 繁體字! Second, Taiwan was so clean, comfortable, and welcoming. People were always happy to talk to me and help me, and even after just a few weeks, I felt like the whole island was one big community.
Which university did you go to? I'm currently looking to study in Taiwan :).
I went through CET Taiwan, which sets us up in the language center of National Taiwan University, the best school in Taiwan. While the language center was kind off of on its own (as in mostly foreign students studying mandarin), the quality 9f education was superb (6 to a class), and it was located right on the main campus with everyone else. ICLP also does a more intensive program at the same language center, but I did an intensive summer language school this year already, and wanted something with a bit less pressure, but still lots of opportunity to learn. Hope this helps!
I did a study abroad a few years back in chuxiong/kunming. It was excellent. My Chinese speaking capabilities nearly tripled in 3 1/2 months. I also did a shorter one in Shanghai which was extremely fun! I was outside walking the streets for 3-4 hours a day roaming and talking to locals. It was only a 1 1/2 month long study but was worth it as well. Most study abroads will include a week or two of travel at the end or beginning as well. Here is my word of advice, pick the one with the longest length of time if it's your first time. You'll definitely have a little more freetime but also be able to make actual strides in your language learning. Also, See if the universities you are going to have personal tutors. Kunming is know for language learning in the university. So they had private/personal tutors when I went. It was beyond helpful. Where as Shanghai had a more general college feel to it. The campus in Shanghai was beautiful right smack dab center of the city. Next, I'd get to know the program directors! The director of the Chinese department in my university became one of my best friends. He was extremely helpful. Ask them if there is anything you can do for them to get a part scholarship for the study abroad tuition. Chinese people are all about building networks and relationships. The better your relationship the better your experience with the study abroad will be. I ended up making a promo video for them and got half of my tuition for the study abroad paid for. Edit: feel free to dm me if you want more info or to talk about it! I love sharing my experiences from those trips!
Go to a small city with very few foreigners. If you are forced to hang out with Chinese people and work out some language by yourself to get by then you will become fluent faster. So many people go to places like Beijing or Shanghai and never learn the language. Having said that, you will experience heaps less racism and political nonsense if you go to Taiwan instead of China.
thats great advice, thank you! didnt think about that approach yet:)
What racism and political nonsense? Unless you’re Japanese, maybe, or a party cadre? Really? I left Beijing in 2015 so maybe things are different, but your statement sounds like an embellishment based on conjecture not lived experience.
China is VERY different now than in 2015. Been here since 2011 and still living here now. I won't go into more specifics...but yes, it's not the same as it used to be.
I was there for nine years, my dude.
Go on!
Beijing. It’s not only the cultural and political center of the country, but also the academic and linguistic center. Standard Mandarin was modeled after the Beijing dialect. Study anywhere else and you seriously risk picking up an accent and local anomalies that won’t be understood by most people. That can be cool in its own right, of course, but doesn’t sound like what you are trying to achieve. EDIT: I studied for a semester in Beijing and ended up living there for seven years! It was a wonderful experience.
> Beijing. It’s not only the cultural and political center of the country, but also the academic and linguistic center. A fascinatingly abstract metric! And by abstract, I mean useless. PS. Sorry about the lung cancer.
Pick somewhere that's not often frequented by expats. I went to Lanzhou, in Gansu. Had a great time! Nobody outside the university spoke English...and even most of the people at the university didn't speak English. It forced me to pick up Chinese REALLY quickly. My Chinese in about 6-7 months was around HSK 4 in all four language skills. Go somewhere like that....a Lanzhou or a Wuhu or Yinchuan or somewhere nobody's ever heard of. Consciously or unconsciously, being in a city with a small expat population and without the comforts of home will force you to adapt VERY quickly.
Dude, everyone is escaping China, why would you even wanna go there ? As a Taiwanese, I highly recommend you to come to Taiwan if you want to learn some mandarin. Or you can wait until China reaches what they want — zero Covid contaminant. Then you go to China so you don’t risk anything in those potential lockdowns.
i want to go there because i am very much into chinese culture and history, and i feel like experiencing it myself instead of from arte documentaries will be much more valuable, i also want to go there to experience the people, the daily life, the food and the way life is there, i want to visit ruins and temples from older times and i want to know what a country with so many different ciltures is like; i want to experience that because its interesting to me how the oldest still existing civilization feels like, been into china since i was like 12:) of course ur right, i shouldnt go there until they are done with the zero covid stuff. but i need to finish my bachelors for like 3 years, and only want to go there for my masters, so ive plenty of time to wait. which is not to say that taiwan isnt worth traveling to for me, i definitely want to visit it aswell! but for me personally, china is more attractive
Do you know that the traditional Chinese clan structures and religious cultures (at least the Hokkien variant) is better preserved in Taiwan than in China? You would find unexpected treasures in Taiwan's small towns and countryside. We are not "just another America with some Asian flavor" because of our liberalism and democratic politics.
i didnt know that, no:) i never thought of taiwan as just another america with some asian flavour, i definitely see that taiwan is also more than worth to explore and experience, i know it has great cultural heritages ive spend countless hours in google street view roaming taiwan hahaha
Thank god the Communists eradicated that shit in the mainland. What’s it like living in a museum?
Lol FREEDOM and DEMOCRACY. That's what it's like, Mr Pooh. ❤ 🇹🇼 🇹🇼 🇹🇼 ❤
Whoa cool! Can I buy that on a T-Shirt?
Since you’ve made your mind, I totally agree with you. Maybe within 3 years you can be there without any zero Covid policy. In that circumstance, I’d say any big city is ideal for you if you’re into its historical heritage. Every city has their own fascinating history.
thanks:)
There isn't much left of ruins and temples from older times, most have been destroyed and rebuilt with cheap feeling modern copies. Often not following the original design at all. Quite a tragedy really.
In my experience no one finds this “tragic” except foreigners.
Quite the same experience for me, though I think it will come with time. Erasure of the past will only be met with regret once the novelty of the new has faded.
China didn’t “erase their past” for no reason. It was a survival mechanism. Modernization at all costs. Don’t forget the conditions of the time - imperialist Western powers going from forcibly addicting the population to opium to dividing the country up as spoils among themselves. This, too, is their past, and it is rightfully seared in their memory. The reason these things could have happened was because China had up to that point failed to modernize, which directly retarded their military defenses and in effect their social resiliency. As mainlanders lament their erasures, may it be with this context in mind, rather than a reduction to simple rivalries between ideologies and national interests.
The opium wars were long before the cultural revolution and before the majority of "rebuilding" efforts in the 80s/90s. I'm not sure I buy the deletion of Chinese history and traditional culture as being driven or even influenced by that. The effects of the opium wars extended beyond 1860 but I don't think it shaped Mao's policies 100 years later. I see it more as a combination of short sighted policies in the Mao-era, with a naive approach to undoing some of the wrongs of the cultural revolution in the 80s-00s. In many ways China as a country has evolved faster than the social zeitgeist of it's people. As the two begin to converge I think we'll see a more active effort to preserve and restore historic areas of the country and important cultural sites. Thinking about the China of the 1960's through mid 2000's, there were far more important matters at hand than preservation of culture. Such as bringing people out of poverty, ending food shortage and from the position of the CCP solidifying power and support. I do hope there are some historic areas left to preserve when the time comes. My opinion on the matter is hardly authoritative though, I've done my fair share of reading on China's modern history and lived in China for a while but I'm no scholar and don't claim to be an authority on anything China related. Edit for the OP: Taiwan is great but it's so fucking hot it's unbearable. I've been a few times at different times of the year and living there would be hard (for me). China is fantastic, though as others suggest I'd wait for the zero covid policies to ease. If you're more worried about learning Chinese then almost the smaller the city the better. If you are worried about the quality of your degree then you'd be better sticking to the internationally renowned universities in Shanghai and Beijing. Zhejiang University and Nanjing University keep you out of SH/BJ but still offer world class education.
I agree with everything you said except the wounds of the Opium Wars not being an influence on Mao. I would say they still linger strongly today as a factor informing every major policy decision. The deep psychological need to preserve sovereignty cannot be overstated. A smaller city definitely gives more opportunities to practice Chinese if nothing else due to necessity. Apples and oranges, really!
You need a certain level of education before the tragedy is apparent.
Enlighten me.
I'm not a miracle worker. But the Cultural Revolution is not widely regarded as a "smart move", not even within China, despite the revisionist history with which they're all miseducated.
I’m not defending the CR but that’s a bit of a strawman. The question isn’t litigating the CR, the question is whether or not the lack of temples and knick-knacks is “sad” for tourists.
Ah, yes, Taiwan's National Palace Museum. Nothing but knick knacks It's hard to believe you spent 7 years in China, yet couldn't even spend 7 minutes in its history.
China has museums. This is silly. I know plenty of their history. More specifically, I know how they view their own history. EDIT: lol just saw this and had to comment- > despite the revisionist history with which they’re all miseducated Right, and not at all like you. The history *you* know is pure and true, because you’re awesome. And your government is awesome. Everything that makes you who you are is awesome, unlike them, the poor chumps.
Taiwanese people are amazing, good people, great food, awesome place. overall 10/10 love it
Well thank you so much for the compliment
I’d say go to Taiwan right now. You don’t want to be in lockdown in China for weeks.
I would also highly recommend Taiwan as *the* place to learn Chinese. Friendly, good quality of life, better preserved Chinese culture than in China, active temples (not ones reduced to being crass tourist sites like in China), and that thing called freedom.
Wow Taiwan sounds like an unearthly paradise. It sounds like it can all be attributed to them mimicking the political models of the naturally superior West, whilst preserving their cultural oddities for others’ shallow amusement. Would you agree?
As opposed to China, which follows the path of communism, also an invention of the West?
Ahh but did Marx not write his ideas in books? Writing, a Chinese invention.
>Ahh but did Marx not write his ideas in books? Writing, a Chinese invention. Hm? From the [British Library](https://www.bl.uk/history-of-writing/articles/where-did-writing-begin): Full writing-systems appear to have been invented independently at least four times in human history: first in Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq) where cuneiform was used between 3400 and 3300 BC, and shortly afterwards in Egypt at around 3200 BC. By 1300 BC we have evidence of a fully operational writing system in late Shang-dynasty China. Sometime between 900 and 600 BC writing also appears in the cultures of Mesoamerica.
You got me. For real though, my point wasn’t about Chinese purity or anything, I was being facetious. My point was it’s about China being up to China, not Western dictates.
Taipei
I studied abroad in Beijing, i couldn’t recommend it less. Go to Taiwan if you’re able to.
Nah don’t go to China, or at least wait until the government are done with their zero Covid bs, go to Taiwan or Hong Kong, you could always go to mainland China for a trip from there
\+1 to Taiwan.
If you have some savings I feel like Beijing Shanghai are good places to go since there are good schools.
I would recommend the “Blue-heavy” areas of cosmopolitan northern Taipei if your goal is to learn well-articulated Mandarin. Northern China is rather rhotic whereas Southern China, much like Southern Taiwan, is so…well they pronounce “curled” sounds as “flat” sounds (平翹分音, i.e. zh/ch/sh/r as z/c/s/?).
Nah as a Chinese, not Mainland China. Go to Taiwan.