Should I study-abroad in China or in Taiwan?

Applying to College
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<p>Hey, I’m going to study Mandarin in college and plan to go abroad for a semester.</p>

<p>I’ve been wondering: should I go to China or to Taiwan?</p>

<p>I used to want to go to China b/c it’s in the news so often, but, at the same time, Taiwan still supposedly has a somewhat higher quality-of-life, and that’s a big deal to me if I’m going to live there for at least a semester, possibly a year. I also hope that rule-of-law is more developed in Taiwan (whereas I expect China to be more like Russia, where the police would probably laugh at you and send you on your way if you told them you’ve been robbed).</p>

<p>Now, the key interest of mine is more in the language (spoken-component, obviously) and in the overall traditional Chinese aesthetic. Taiwan actually seems to have more traditional-looking temples and other buildings than mainland China does (many of these were built in this century, i know, but that doesn’t automatically make me not want to see them).
Furthermore, it seems to me that mainland China went through a period of de-Chinazation under the Communists, who built many buildings in the Soviet style (which I’ve seen enough of and don’t want to see more of). In contrast, the Republic of China government in Taiwan built tons of buildings that hearkened back to ancient Chinese styles and also promoted the “rich history of the Chinese people.” I know that died down later-on, as Taiwan took on its own identity again, separate from China, but I still think that it’s present. The National Palace Museum in Taiwan seems to contain tons of historical artifacts from the mainland.
Mainland China is where the famous historic events took place, it’s “famous land,” so to speak, filled with famous mountains and rivers. However, it seems that the pollution in recent years has taken its toll on the environment and that much of the mainland probably no-longer looks as magical in real-life as it does on retouched photographs. Taiwan has a pollution problem as well, but I’m guessing that the overall appearance of the air, land, and buildings is cleaner (One thing I always love when returning to the US from Russia is how clean the buildings in the US look and how green the grass is).</p>

<p>So, what’s up? Where should I go and why? If the above posts seems like I’m biased towards Taiwan, it’s mainly because I brainstormed reasons to go to Taiwan. This is because mainland China seems like the obvious choice for a student studying Mandarin, but I wanted to ask whether you guys think it’s the right one.</p>

<p>As a side note: If I went to mainland China, I would probably go to Shanghai (where the Mandarin is a little nonstandard, but still Mandarin, i know), whereas in Taiwan I would go to Taipei.</p>

<p>Thoughts? Thanks!</p>

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<p>What kind of Chinese you want to study? Traditional or Simplify? If traditional, must go to Taiwan.</p>

<p>The quality of life now in Shanghai (or Beijing) is almost same as Taipei now, unless you go countryside. </p>

<p>Taiwan people are more friendly, you won’t get lonely at Taiwan (no matter which city). Taiwan government give generous scholarship for international students. There is a city in south - Tainan, an old cultured city, has one very good university (Chen-Kong?)</p>

<p>Beijing is a good place for learning Chinese, Shanghai dialect is different, not every Chinese understand Shanghai dialect.</p>

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<p>hmm if u want to go to a more prestigus school then u should go to bejing university and study.
also the police arnt bad… my aunt is a police in china and she helps people… =P
anyway yeah the beijing living is very upbeat now and so is shanghai.</p>

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<p>i think you should go to china. sure, taiwan speaks chinese too and is more western but… really… china is… a lot bigger and where most of the chinese people actually ARE. -_- pollution may be bad but there’s a lot more stuff overall… if you’re willing to travel a bit there is no lack of historical monuments… nor are there many russian style buildings from what i’ve seen. cities like beijing and shanghai have high standards of living. i’d say shanghai is even better than beijing in terms of things to do, liveliness, etc… though obviously beijing might be more useful for historical stuff/government and politics. i haven’t been to taiwan so idk how they compare but… the only thing you should really prepare yourself for is the toilets ;P</p>

<p>and you’ll see that in shanghai practically all the shopkeepers, etc. speak mandarin. i hardly heard the dialect while i was there… =/</p>

<p>and taiwanese people speak mandarin with funny accents. =P</p>

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<p>“and taiwanese people speak mandarin with funny accents.”</p>

<p>k. I’d like to learn more about this, although I can see how accents would be hard to describe.</p>

<p>“the toilets”</p>

<p>oh? are they “different” or just dirty? =P</p>

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<p>i second what arling said; from an academic perspective, if you want to learn traditional go to taiwan. if you want to learn simplified go to china. =)</p>

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<p>i don’t think simplified vs. traditional is a big deal. simplified is used in mainland china, singapore, malaysia… traditional in taiwan, hk. but if you know simplified, you should be able to figure out traditional easily, and vice versa…it’s not like the characters are radically different. don’t let that dictate your decision… i think learning to speak is more important.</p>

<p>lol taiwan accent isn’t that bad. you’ll definitely be able to recognize it as mandarin… just some words and inflections are different. think of it like… a boston accent or something. it’s really the same english but there’s still a small difference. i know there’s also “taiwanese” like hakka, but i’m not sure how often that’s used.</p>

<p>they’re both different AND dirty. xD especially if you go mountain climbing or something. some places like the airport (or mcdonalds) will have western style toilets… but mostly it’s just the porcelain hole in the ground. but hey, think about it… it’s actually more sanitary b/c you’re not touching anything. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: and bring your own toilet paper.</p>

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<p>Beijing for sure. Welcome to Beijing.</p>

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<p>Avoid Beijing like the plague.
I hated it there. In any case, simplified characters was used moreso than traditional when I went.</p>

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<p>Definitely China, My friend, Taiwan has no future. The Chinese Communist Party will harmonize it one day or another.</p>

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<p>Well from a taiwanese perspective, beijing/shanghai chinese are the ones with the funny mandarin accents (they add <em>err</em> to almost every word at the end i.e. bian-errrrr in stead of bian). Mainland Chinese also typically say “shhhh” in stead of “ssss.” Its really not a big deal though, we can all understand each other. Taiwanese is spoken widely on the streets, but everyone understands mandarin.</p>

<p>And I’m not gonna go there about Taiwan being unified with china. But that shouldn’t be part of your decision between China/Taiwan at all. And if you want to know more about Chinese history, Taiwan would probably be the better place to go as most of the artifacts in China were either destroyed or brought over to Taiwan in the cultural revolution. Plus, there is no censored media in Taiwan. As for the pollution, Taiwan used to be awful but it has improved a lot in recent years. Don’t know about China</p>

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<p>China allllll the way. </p>

<p>I visited China two summers ago and I learned so much about Chinese history. The Imperial Palace and many other important historical monuments (Great Wall of China, The Great Empress’s Gardens, etc) are all in Beijing. Moreover, I suggest that you should visit other places in addition to Beijing/Shanghai. Don’t miss out Xi’an, with the Terra Cotta and the great city wall. Xi’an is extremely rich in history since I think it’s the first capital of China. It was later moved to Beijing. There are so many other wonderful places in China (Sichuan, Wennan) to explore the lives of a typical chinese villager. To understand China and history, you really need to go there to experience it first hand. I’m learning Mandarin right now and I simply love the Beijing accent. It’s rich, complex and authentic.</p>

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<p>i don’t even know if your’e still reading this… but</p>

<p>well… considering that the beijing accent is what the true “mandarin” is based off of… you can’t really complain about beijing ppl having an accent. the sh vs s thing… lol. in beijing they really make that distinction, like you know that tongue twister w/ “shi si shi shi si, si shi shi si shi” (14 is 14, 40 is 40). in other regions where they also speak dialects people often have trouble differentiating between ch and c, sh and s, h and f, n and l, n and ng, etc. beijing is as standard as you can get if you want to really hear those minute differences between yin and ying… -_-</p>

<p>(i’m from sichuan, i also have those sh and s issues… lol)</p>

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<p>Clollin:
Last year, I was in Taipei, Taiwan studying at Shida university’s Mandarin Training Center for about 9 months. Everyone at the center is foreign and the overall experience was very good. A lot of the students there chose to go there instead of China because they said Shida was actually cheaper AND the teachers were better.
You should consider though that if you want to learn simplified Chinese, you might lean more towards China, but in reality it doesn’t matter that much. I know people that learned traditional and took only about a month to adjust to simplified.
Taiwanese accent is not a big deal… I actually find it funny and unnecessary ow Beijing people add the “errrrrrrrr” at the end of every phrase, like our friend above said.
Trabia-wind is definitely right on the minute differences like the sh and s… That might be a little problem if you’re just starting to learn Mandarin and what you learn is a little bit different than what you hear Taiwanese speak.
Taiwanese people are pretty friendly towards foreign people in general, even more if you are a white person lol. You’ll get lucky if you’re a tall white dude at a club there lol.
I don’t know about China because I’ve never been there, but Taiwan does have a lot of “gu ji” and the National Palace Museum is definitely worth going to. If you want to go to China, just go take a trip there like many of the foreign students at Taiwan do.</p>