In my time in China I’ve come across several people who have wondered whether studying Chinese in Kunming–where I live–was really worth the effort. After all, the locals speak Kunming-hua to each other, not Mandarin. When they do speak Mandarin, they do so with a local accent that differed greatly from the kind heard on television and in language learning tapes. In the countryside, some of the people don’t speak Mandarin at all. Wouldn’t it be better to go elsewhere?
Nearly all of the people who have expressed this concern did so in their native English. Yet many of them came from places like Liverpool, England; Hobart, Australia; or Durham, North Carolina–hardly bastions of proper, standard English. I doubt, had I asked, whether being from such places hindered their ability to learn English as they could all communicate perfectly well in the language. For some reason, though, they thought being in Beijing or the northeast was a necessary condition for mastering Chinese.
If you’re reading this and harboring similar misgivings about choosing the right venue, then don’t worry! Excepting far-flung locales like rural Xinjiang or Tibet and “special” regions like Hong Kong and Macao, it is perfectly possible to learn Mandarin anywhere in China.
There’s something to be said for the “ascetic” method of studying, a term I learned from this blogger. This method involves going to a grim, industrial city in northern China where there are no other foreigners and no other distractions. Preferably, the climate will be perfectly miserable most of the year so you’ll have little choice other than to sit at home and work on your Chinese all day.
This method, though, has one significant drawback–you may lose your sanity, or descend into abject alcoholism, before accomplishing your goal to learn Chinese.
An alternative method may be to live somewhere warm and blissful, where the quality of life is higher. You may not be as motivated to learn the language but you may just stay there long enough that the language will come to you eventually. Then again, I have met people for whom the laid-back vibes of Yunnan sustained them without a shred of Mandarin for years and years and years.
If your quest is to become the next Da Shan, then perhaps choose your Chinese destination wisely. Otherwise, crack open a book, work on your tones, and get the most of wherever you end up in this amazing country.
I like the “Don’t sweat it too much,” tone of this post, Matt. I did my Mandarin studies in Kunming. Upon arriving in Beijing, I was surprised to discover that my Mandarin was much better than I’d thought–I could actually communicate with taxi drivers and shopkeepers in Beijing. I was also surprised to find how many Beijing laowai spoke virtually no Chinese. It’s very easy to spend all of your time here with English speakers, whereas in Kunming hitting the bars on the weekend always meant meeting people with whom I could only communicate in Chinese.
An interesting and strong blog. I am getting ready to choose my 3rd Chinese home in 3 years and trying to figure out where exactly to go. North is too cold so that’s out, and foreigner paradises are annoying to me and make it too easy not to learn Chinese. Gotta pick a good one for the 3rd one.
(my website link is a site that is currently crap, but will be functional sometime in the near future).
Oh, I have to admit, I’m a Beijing snob. That was the first place I ever heard Mandarin, and even though my Chinese is not that great, the accent stuck, and I’m happy about that. So I guess I’d recommend splitting the difference. Go someplace grim and Northern for a few months just to get your tones and consonant sounds down (save me from sibilant Southerners!) and then depart for warmer climes!
You may end up an alcoholic in BJ just as easily.. Hehe.. But seriously: I found that it was easier to understand Shanghainese and Wuhanese people who spoke standard putonghua, than those who spoke putonghua with Beijing accents. So while the BJ thing might be traditionally the place to go, I would definitely prefer to learn my putonghua in SH or Wuhan..
Living in Suzhou, where we’re not dealing with a different accent so much as a different language, I completely agree with you Matt, as well as light487’s point.
Though I’m never able to understand two locals speaking to each other when eavesdropping, I can easily communicate with them in putonghua. It’s sometimes problematic with the older generations, but with standardized putonghua taught throughout the education system, rare is the new-gen Chinese who can’t speak it.
As for learning it – the lion’s share of learning happens in a classroom or at your kitchen table (with or without a tutor). And when speaking and listening in public for practice it’s not a pass/fail test-like situation, there’s a considerable amount of grace with absolutely no loss in benefit.
I found the worst thing for me when learning Chinese (which I haven’t managed to do yet) was getting a Chinese girlfriend (who I eventually married). If I’m going to be doing something that will require me to speak even a little mandarin, she has to tag along and make life ‘easy’ for me, which has made me complacent and feeling there’s just no need to learn. I’ve spoken to other people here who have had the same experience, they learned much more when they were alone than when they had a local girlfriend/boyfriend.
The point is, Matt, that you have to put yourself in a position where you have to learn. Certain parts of the country are too easy on the laowai, and therefore, not so good for learning Chinese of any language or dialect.
If you know what you’re listening for, you can hear clearly from my Chinese that although I have learnt upwards of 90% of my Mandarin in Beijing, I started learning in Changsha, and that which I’ve learned in Beijing, I’ve learned from different parts of the city.
I should also point out that I was not the originator of the “freeze your arse off” school of Chinese language studies. That honour belongs to a friend and colleague who has recently been back in Beijing for a brief respite from freezing his arse into oblivion.
Anyway, I certainly do recommend spending a year or two out in the boonies, or at least avoiding laowai-magnets, before you head for the Big Smoke. It’s not just language, it’s also culture and attitude, you learn a lot more outside than you do in.
But, as someone who has successfully learnt and continues to successfully learn Putonghua in Beijing, I do have to say that you must find your own balance, and finding that balance will only come from personal experience. Get out there and figure out the hard way what you need to learn the language.
But the thing is you have to put yourself in a position where you have to learn. There is a multitude of ways you can do that, and you have to find what works for you. In other words, you have to decide for you what “deep” means, then throw yourself in the deep end.
first, i’d like to echo ryan’s comments, being a stone’s throw from suzhou, though unlike ryan my mad eavesdroppping skillz have become passable. it has caused a few small issues where i tend to drop the ch/zh/sh in favour of c/z/s when speaking putonghua, but i’ve not really had trouble finding people who use it regularly. in part that’s due to the high availability of jobs in the city bringing in a large number of waidiren of all (both?) classes.
second, pay attention oh ye who’ve recently arrived: warped0ne is right on target. stay away from using girlfriends/boyfriends as study tools. not only do they simplify everything making the necessity to learn that much less imposing, in my case, we’ve developed quite the little creole.
The problem I have with Beijing-centric foreigners is that those who get really good all end up sounding exactly the same…the kind of foreigners who show up on TV, and have a really pronounced Beijing-hua. This problem is compounded by the fact that they tend to say the same kind of things – it’s like they all went to the same class in 北大, learned the same colloquialisms from the taxi drivers/street vendors, etc.
I live in Lijiang, where people either speak mandarin, local Yunnan dialect, Naxi, or Tibetan. Because I have previously learned Chinese and Tibetan, and am in the process of learning Naxi, I wouldn’t be anywhere elase. You have to go where people speak the language, but these days, as Ryan says, everywhere you go the kids can speak decent putonghua. Beijing is only really necessary for the å„¿è¯éŸ³ diehards.
Or maybe I’m jealous – my tones probably suck compared to your average 北大 laowai.
@warped0ne Yeah I have the same experience. Before you have a girlfriend, you have to rely more on your own abilities, have more time to study, etc. People tell you that you could use your gf to practice your Chinese with her. But who actually does that? Unless your gf can speak next to no English or your Mandarin is near perfect that is.
Regards significant others, all I can say is that my wife speaks excellent English, and yet we almost always communicate in Chinese, and no, she does not simplify anything.
If I may rephrase the last few words of this post: the people I know in China who speak the best Chinese are almost directly proportionate to the people I know in China that worked at it the most.
Other factors, whether they be your location, your job, or your romantic status, are far less consequential.
Matt, agreed.
My Mandarin fluent significant other has been a bit of a mixed blessing for my Chinese acquisition abilities (but of course, a full blessing elsewhere…just in case she’s reading…:)). She is very good about tutouring me (I do ask quite a bit as well), but I find that whenever I try to practice when we are out together, it doesn’t get too far. After I say a few words, and if they don’t quite understand, instead of asking me to repeat anything, they immediately turn to her, leaving me to either miss a chance to practice or, worse, practice improperly.
When I first came to China, I was in one of those NE industrial cities, fewer than 10 foreigners and desperately cold in winter. Looking back on it, I’m hugely grateful. I cut my Mandarin teeth with a 50+ year old couple who ran a fruit and veg stall in the local street market. They were amazing, and would sit waffling to me in Chinese for hours on end, even though I couldn’t understand a word. After about 6 months, I could figure out I was being teased about 星期八… (no, it doesn’t exist), and after a year, I could pick up their phoneme issues… the husband would always say “you” for 肉 “rou” for example. I helped them serve fruit and veggies too, which meant I quickly picked up produce names. I didn’t stay at home either; I used to just go out all the time, and usually someone would end up sitting next to me and chatting Chinese with me… English being much rarer there than in BJ for sure.
Having lived in Zhejiang for 2 years, I can say that I found it really frustrating that I couldn’t eavesdrop on locals. Listening opportunities plummeted, even though I could speak with locals using my putonghua. It is brilliant to be back in the North and be able to listen in on others’ conversations and be able to understand. I still maintain that the people of Harbin, of all the places I’ve been to, speak the cleanest and nicest sounding putonghua in China.
The Beijinger’s “r” sound is rough and ugly to my ears… sorry… but I am picking it up. I’m often told that the å„¿ sound is more “cute”, but I still think å°å© sounds much nicer than å°å©å„¿, etc.
At the end of the day, agree with the last comments, that if you really want to learn Mandarin, it doesn’t matter where you are. The bonus of being in the South is that when you ever visit the North, you will suddenly think your listening skills have got much better!
Definitely need to echo the point about “forcing yourself into situations where you HAVE to use Chinese”. There are many places in all of the cities I went to (well.. ok.. maybe not Wuhan so much.. 🙂 hehe) where I could go and get by with limited Chinese and a little bit of broken English. However, it was the places I went where people couldn’t speak English (beyond “hello”) that I got the most from my adventure. I actively sort out these kind of places and situations throughout my stay in China, and after only a single month I learned more than I learned in a whole year of self-study.
Self-study is definitely required though, to drill tones and increase vocab etc but it’s not until you get out there “in the field” and actually HAVE to use it to survive on a day-to-day basis that things really kick in and understanding occurs. You also learn little tricks to make pronunciation easier, local or colloquial usages and words and so on. One of my most used phrases in China would have to be å·®ä¸å¤š chà buduÅ and it’s something I had never come across in my self-study.
Go ride a bus instead of taking a taxi (although taxi language can be just as challenging at times.. haha!); go shopping in the back alleys where the locals shop; take “language” vacations and “language tourism” seriously; put yourself into situations where your only choice is to use Chinese until you are so frazzled that finding someone who speaks English for a few minutes is like finding an oasis in the desert.. 🙂 Quench your thirst but don’t delay.. your journey is a long one! 🙂
Interesting point about taxis, light487. One of the main issues that impedes Chinese development for foreigners is complacency. The experience of being in taxis illustrates this point very clearly.
Because most taxi drivers ask the same questions to a foreigner (e.g., “ä½ åœ¨ä¸å›½å¤šé•¿æ—¶é—´äº†?”), we have ample time to rehearse our answers. This can lead the laowai to assume, mistakenly, that he has attained a certain degree of fluency that doesn’t actually exist.
A friend of mine, for instance, can give cabbies precise directions to his apartment but is unable to construct simple sentences concerning virtually any other topic.
re taxis, after only a few months in china with no previous study i’d get “hey your chinese is really good!” because i was a rockstar at saying my address and the name of the downtown district. for 30 seconds i was mirror-universe 大山.
I laid my Chinese foundation in Kunming over a few years, then spent some time in Beijing, where I was able to finely hone it. For the most part, I agree with your post, except that you put too much emphasis on the classroom and studying at home. My learning method was a lot closer to Tam’s, though I didn’t man a fruit stand. Classroom learning and home studies are important, but more important is your interaction in the environment. That is the only way to break out of the stiff language constructs and boring propriety of classroom Chinese. I learned a lot of Chinese playing pool and philosophizing with locals over bottles of Lancangjiang and Jinjiu.
I find that though Beijing is home to the most “didao” accent, the sheer amount of foreigners there makes it easy for people to get caught up in the foreign scene and not really take part in the local community. Kunming had very few foreigners when I arrived, and basically no locals who spoke English, so I didn’t have many crutches to fall back on.
Having said that, if you show up to Beijing with functional Chinese and make an effort to get into the local scene, you’ll find that the people there speak a much richer language full of chengyu’s, xiehouyu’s and very interesting slang. If you want to speak “cool Chinese”, you should definitely spend some time there.
@martin @warped0ne
the horizontal dictionary is the best kind….key is you have to find one that doesnt know a stitch of English or is more embarrassed/lazy than you about speaking a foreign tongue.
after studying for two years and living in BJ for almost 3 I met my wife and can say that my Chinese improved 5X in 5 months because she refused to use any english.
After moving to SH , and getting used to the putonghua here it always takes me an hour or two for my ears to adjust when i go to Beijing and have to listen to people like they have a mouth full of marbles
The ‘horizontal dictionary?’ I like it!
@matt other sexist terminology : long haired dictionary, talking blanket, mumbling pillow
I would say that for people who want to do their HSK that spending some time in Beijing is important. I lived in BJ for a while then was working in Kunming, I did my HSK in Kunming and felt that if I hadn’t lived in BJ before I would have found the HSK harder. A lot of the place names, language usage etc in the HSK is different to what you hear in Kunming.
In reality Mandarin as we learn it in the text books is only widely spoken as a street language in the north, so its probably a good idea for people starting to learn Chinese to start in the north,,then get to a nice place like Kunming ASAP.
Wondering if you can help. I’m not getting any joy via google about private mandarin teachers in Lijiang. I’d like one-on-one tutoring for 2 weeks this August. Is anyone able to point me in the right direction? Thanks. Jo
I believe it is not the location that is important but the methods you use. I live in Barcelona in Spain and know quite a few people who have achieved a reasonably high level of Chinese without living in China. Spending some time in a Chinese environment helps but this can be done at home using Chinese DVDs and the internet and by making Chinese friends locally. Check out my blogs for further information: [links removed – too spammy /RM]