| hi jianshuo,
i was searching for info regarding studies in china and i came across your blog. i was wondering if you could give me advice on whether to learn mandarin in beijing or shanghai. i know the basics of mandarin because i'm a filipino-chinese. i studied chinese from grade school to high school. However, the chinese language program in my school did not focus much on the conversational part. we just memorized everything that was written in the book without understanding. i know, not a very effective way of learning a language. And although we speak chinese at home, we use fujianhua because that's the dialect used by most chinese that live here in the philippines. i know beijing's mandarin is the closer to the standard putonghua but i prefer shanghai because i've already been to beijing twice. one was for a tour and the other was a 6 week study program. my mandarin improved a lot. i can understand basic conversations and i can bargain at the flee market!! hehe.. but i still do have a problem expressing myself in chinese. and when i watch chinse movies, i need to read the chinese subtitles because i can't understand anything when the actors talk too fast. so..with the basic knowledge i have, do you think it's ok for me to go to shanghai to learn mandarin? how is shanghainese different from putonghua in beijing (aside from not having the R's at the end of every word)? and is the night life as fun in beijing as it is in shanghai? i plan on enrolling in a 12 week or 1 sem program to be able to really practice using the language. thanks!! brandy |
About Jian Shuo Wang