Should I study-abroad in China or in Taiwan?

jiceo1
Sun, 11 May 2008 11:15:29 +0000

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.