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Even though I would select another language I am in total agreement with drjtrekker!
Coming to China with two adults and three children on one teacher’s salary is simply calling for troubles.
The solution you are searching most probably does not exist and you will most probably make your trip as short of possible in order not to put your children into too big a disadvantage when returning back to Europe and re-enrolling them to school.
I am sure that on top of education you will struggle with finances just to mantain your family at decent (from even East European perspective) but that you may be willing to accept in exchange for “culture and language” immersion for your children – but then you need years – not just one.
Education is then simply unsolvable unless you can do the homeschooling in the level UK education system can accept in order to prevent troubles after return.
Forget local private teachers as they will either not speak English or they will not be cheap from one teacher’s salary perspectice.
Local education is then out of question due to language barrier – but not even talking about recognising the lical education in Europe …
I just hope that these repeated quedtions are not neant seriously and are part of some joke …
MaryBlum,
In that case you may want to check http://www.maxxelli.net
They employ bunch of expats as well as English speaking Chinese. The company is quite professional but you shall be aware of the fact that in China always when you ‘have to’ speak English only so it has its price.
I would recommend to use some of English speaking Chinese friends/colleagues to assist you to go via Chinese real estate agents – there are plenty.
Dear joel8a,
If money is the issue so I would really recommend you following system:
1) Come to Chengdu (as per my opinion Chongqing would be even better because the city is really less international but the public transport infrastructure is much much better)
2) Select the cheap accommodation in some very local part of the city well away from any expat community (therefore Tong Zi Lin you should not even consider) but still with access to subway station – here considering roomsharing with Chinese person who cannot speak English would be great – as you are aiming for Chengdu so I assume you have some contacts here and they could assist you to find such deal.
3) Study every day for about two hours on your own with emphasize on vocabulary and characters
4) Find the nearest tea shop (for me Tian Fu Ming Cha worked the best but for instance Zhu Ye Qing will do equally well). In here I would suggest to experiment a bit and visit several as you shall ideally find at least one or two where you feel comfortable talking to the staff and where the staff is happy seeing you (generally they will be happy even if you buy nothing, or really little, because due your presence there will be probably coming more people to have a look at you and some of them will also buy the tea).
5) Enjoy the tea – they provide free samples for potential customers to try the taste and some of the tea is pretty good – and talk talk talk. In such environment you can easily spend 2-3 hours just drinking tea, eating the tea biscuits and talking. The shop assistants usually cannot speak English and will be usually quite happy being able to talk to the foreigner in Chinese (plus the benefit for them is increased flow of real customers – they work on commission so this is certainly for them the incentive to make you return to the shop).
6) If you combine two or three such shops so you will have the whole day of free Chinese conversation. You can also add majority of the people who’s job is to stand on the street and attract customers or to sit in the household reception. Usually they will be also pleased to talk to you but I would bet on teashops.
7) Subsequently I would combine it with so called ‘language exchange’ – ideally finding some university students who wants to improve own English and agree on several meetings a week – always one day talking in English and the other one in Chinese only – such arrangement you could get also for free and provided you select the right partner so the person may already point out the main mistakes in your pronunciation and grammar what can be of high value for you.
8) Subsequently I would take about 2 classes weekly with any of these schools with clear requirement of them to analyse your most common mistakes accompanied with recommendation how to prevent them.
Pls keep in mind that such a program requires a lot of discipline as you will have nobody to supervise you at every given hour and all will basically depend on your free will to work hard.
But the advantage of such a program is that it’s really cheap and efficient (you cannot get it cheaper unless you apply for one of Confucius institute scholarship what is then another alternative). If you would be really working every day about 6-8 hours on your Chinese with the rest of the time intentionally spending with the Chinese friends whose English is at best much worse than your Chinese so after several weeks you shall notice huge improvement.
Pls do not get me wrong – if your level is lower intermediate so there is no way to bring it in 1-2 months into upper intermediate level unless you have real talent for languages. But you will basically acquire certain language stereotypes, improve your pronunciation which is in Chinese quite important, increase your vocabulary and the most importantly the Chinese becomes for you a natural tool for communicating with the people. It’s already not bad for the start. But you shall be willing to accept a lot of internal ‘torture’ because it’s unlikely you will really enjoy any conversation in Chinese until you reach upper intermediate level.
joel8a,
Pls could you advise what is your current Chinese level and what is the time you want to invest into learning Chinese? Concurrently what is your target for this learning course?
I guess that having this information more people can contribute with their advise.
In any case let me mention couple of brief general recommendation based on my own experience.
If you are starting with Chinese so I am afraid there is no other way than to go for formal classes and learn the phonetics and basic grammar structures. This is relatively slow and boring process but managing it properly will make your life much more easier later on.
Shall you already manage Chinese into intermediate/lower intermediate level so I would more recommend selfstudy (about two hours a day aiming at characters and new vocabulary) combined with practising the language (for me the best worked going to tea shops and talking with the shop assistants; talking Chinese to my Chinese friends usually did not work well at all as we almost always ended up talking in English).
This I would support by formal classes – about 2 hours a week – in order to get the proper explanation for your eventual language related questions as well as proper evaluation and guiding on your the most common mistakes.
Shall your Chinese language level reach advanced level then you shall probably go for tailormade programs depending on your target – area you want to improve.I suggest you visit Chongqing forum (www.cqexpat.com) and check for the roommate there – shall be a lot easier …
aux,
Actually I am not sure that the idea to make your Chinese friends speaking to you in Chinese may work. Unless you set up clear time and rules and will organize it as a lesson so this may not work at all. The point of being with friends is communication. The reason why so many male foreigners marrying Chinese girls speak just rudimental Chinese is that they both have common communication tool – usually English. Learning new language is not an easy task and when you have other means of communication few people can be persistent enough to go through the ‘torture’. On top of that majority of Chinese people really wants to practise and use their English so they will not really discourage you when you will tend to give up on speaking Chinese.
The reason why I mentioned tea shops and janitors is that really few of them can speak any English – thus you are forced to use your Chinese as there is no other way of communicating together. And as these people must stay in their place for long hours so they really appreciate anything what can bring a bit of ‘life’ into their working routine.
But at the end it’s totally up to you. Chinese is not that difficult as basically each Chinese managed to learn it. But it still requires a lot of discipline to learn it …
Let me add my 2 cents.
If you already practised for 4 months with the private tutor so you shall have the idea about the language basics (pronunciation, basic grammar, vocabulary etc.).
What I find important are two main things:
1) Learn every day (at least 30 minutes, one hour better)
2) Practise practise practise
The first one is self-explanatory (and I would not neglect writing of characters as it will firstly help you not to end up illiterate and secondly it usually helps to remember the word).
The second part then looks to be your concern.
What worked very well for me is to go to teashops. These are usually equipped with tables and chairs where potential customers may taste the tea.
The shop assistants are in average quite interested in talking to foreigners and the possibility to enjoy tea releases the stress from the ‘forced communication’. It’s also not really weird if you spend there one hour drinking tea and communicating. Especially in the initial stage when your Chinese is not so good then you will need plenty of time just to exchange (and comprehend) the basic phrases. And as your level increases so the communication will be smoother and smoother.
Another option are the janitors in your neighbourhood buildings.
All these people’s job is to stay in the place quite a long time and they usually welcome every chance to beat their boredom.
I also have to say that I do not see a big deal with Sichuan dialect, or better its form of Mandarin – ‘chuanpu’. Majority of the younger people can speak pretty decent Mandarin just with inevitable Southern accent and few Sichuanese words. Nothing wrong with that – if you learn it you will be perfectly understood through out the whole country and you will also not have major problem to understand other regions Mandarin (if not too tainted by local dialect – I still struggle to fully understand many Hong Kong people Mandarin …). Saying all of this it’s of course clear that till upper intermediate level you will understand the best Sichuanese and Chongqingese Mandarin and you will be the best understood in here. But after reaching intermediate or upper intermediate level so the difference will not be big.
This all I would recommend to combine with one or two lessons weekly with a teacher who will explain you your language related questions and points out your main mistakes together with the hint how to get rid of them.
Usually it makes little sense to hire private tutor extensively over the long period of time because the private school main interest is to earn money. Their experience with majority of the foreigners is that almost each foreigner after coming to China starts learning the language but really few of them can make it up to fluent conversational level or even higher.
This fact then pushes them to act in the way allowing them to keep the customer. The classes are then ‘tailor-made’ – usually the meaning is – ‘entertain the customer so he/she stays with us long term and spends his/her money in our school’.
Also there are relatively few good teachers knowing how to teach foreigners efficiently (and that’s really difficult because native English speakers, French speakers, German speakers or Slavic languages speakers need different approach and will have different problems). Majority of the teachers are young girls with little to no experience in teaching. Pls do not get me wrong – majority of them are really trying hard but it may not always suffice – you need talent, knowledge and experience – only the effort helps to achieve positive result.
By the way there is nothing wrong with commercial school approach – teaching Chinese is a business like any other. Just worthy to be aware of that.
But unfortunately the result is that it’s really really hard to find good school and good teacher. It’s already obvious from the approach – the elite schools in the West are testing their students on regular level and if the student cannot achieve the required level within the provided time so such a student is forced to leave the school and opt for some less demanding. So far I did not hear about any private language school in China testing their students and making them fail or even expelled in case they do not show adequate progress …
But back to the topic.
Once I met one European guy in Chongqing – he lived in China for several years, passed HSK 4 but basically was unable to communicate in Mandarin. When I asked him how is this possible so he told me it’s really hard to find a person with whom he could practise the language. When I showed him around telling him that 99% of the people around us speaks very fluent Mandarin so he looked at me in total disbelief.
What I want to say it’s all about the attitude. If a person decides to stay in own apartment (and I know some of such foreigners who basically refuse to leave their apartment!) or meet just with another foreigners so it may be really hard, if not impossible, to learn the language properly.
On the other hand if you go out and simply try and try and try so you shall see the progress pretty quickly, if the practising is accompanied with regular study.
🙂
greenarcher,
It’s very simple. There following scenarios:
1) The online shop plans how much of the item they can sell in given time frame and they import it using containers or LCL service via sea and stock it in distribution warehouse, waiting for enduser order. The time spent on the sea differs as per origin (a bit faster from US W/C up to almost two months in case of certain European origins) but as majority goes from the stock in the warehouse so final customer does not feel that and goods is available quite fast.
2) For certain items they airfreight it (usually high end and expensive products otherwise the airfreight costs would kill the business) – that can take few days.
3) In case of European origins currently they can use containers or LCL via rail – that is quite a new trend which enables to cut costs of the items which would normally need the airfreight. China is very very active to promote this type of service.
4) Traditional seafreight – that really can take time so sometimes you can see delivery time one or even two months. But it’s still the cheapest alternative when talking about transport fee for cargo from US and/or Europe
infallible,
You have two options – if you ship 20′ container so there is basically zero chance something could get lost – the container will be sealed after loading and for any seal break/change there will be a record.
During container transport by sea there is no chance anything could be stolen and majority of main terminals are well guarded/protected.
I shipped really tens of thousands of containers and it’s really rare to witness pilferage.
However broken things is totally different story – the best would be to higher a professional company in UK who could do the packing and container staffing for you. But they do not come cheap.
Alternatively you do all this on your own and in that case pls be aware that on the rough sea the vessel can and will heave, pitch and roll quite heavily. So good lashing of your cargo in the container is simply a must.
Door delivery is then a standard service as long as your destination is accessible by heavy truck and also hiring a professional company in China to help you with container stripping is already more affordable than in UK.
However shall you decide to load/strip the container on your own pls note there is certain free time and after it expires you will be charged per hour of truck waiting.
The other chance is then to ship your cargo as LCL (less then container load) in case you will not have so much goods.
That is totally different story and your chance of pilferage and/or damage is much much bigger.
Nevertheless you can buy the insurance covering you adequately.
Hope it helps a bit.
I would a bit disagree on the comment concerning Chongqing and Chengdu food quality. Even though I admit this is highly subjective so I find food in Chongqing generally better (much better!) than in Chengdu.
I assume it has something in common with the city landscape and peoples attitude towards the life and work.
Even though Chongqing was till 1997 part of Sichuan the people’s behaviour is distinctly different than those in Chengdu. You may immediately realize that the life pace in Chongqing is general faster and more direct than in Chengdu – people are trying hard to succeed.
Also due to the mountain landscape the restaurants are generally closer to each other and therefore directly competing with each other what contributes to better food quality.
Nevertheless it’s fair to say that in Chongqing, similar to Chengdu, you will not be able to enjoy the variety of non Sichuanese food …
On top of that Western food in particular will be quite expensive. Generally in Kempinski there is Paulaner which is in average much better than Chengdu Paulaner and quite OK Thai restaurant.
For sushi you may go to Ying Li in Jiefangbei which is quite OK but I agree with Charlie that in average China does not really offer good sushi and sashimi (I would also agree that you need to really watch out for the quality!). In Ying Li there is also quite good Italian restaurant and as per my opinion the best Beijing duck restaurant in Chongqing and Sichuan :-).
Many Western restaurants are then in Tiandi and Hongyadong. But again – usually quite expensive and the taste differs from the one you are used to in the West.
In general if you really cannot eat spicy food I assume you will either spend quite an amount of money for average food or you will have to cook for yourself.
It will certainly not be an easy life for you in neither Chengdu nor Chongqing …
Charlie,
I think your post is basically supporting what I have written – you are writing that:
1) …there are very few places in China where I would even want to live …
2) … few places in China are conducive to raising a family
3) China is covered with virtually indistinguishable mega-cities, …
On top of that you mentioned that it would be desirable to find the place which offers reasonable education. But in my opinion this does not apply to OP as her children cannot join the Chinese education system due to inability to speak, read and write in Chinese and the budget will not allow her to send two of her children into international school irrespective if such is or is not at the given place available.
I am strongly convinced that in case the person comes from EU or US, monthly funds will be somewhere between 15000 and 20000 CNY and there is a need to support 5 members family (three of them relatively small children) so in case of any serious concern about air pollution, food safety and of course traffic safety the person shall not even consider China in the first place.
I would just recommend to search for tier 2 -3 cities as tier 1 may be out of budget and tier 4 and lower may be too harsh an experience for the ‘newcomer’.
But as I mentioned – I do not rule out that I am totally wrong in this as I absolutely agree with you that any such selection is highly subjective.
Hey guys,
I am not sure it is possible to make a reasonable research about the dream city when you are coming to China for the first time.
I assume that irrespective where you go you will experience the typical three phases (love, disillusion, coming to ‘normal’ stage whatever it is).
After having certain experience with Chinese environment and being able to see more subtle differences you may be able to say you like one over the another because you will have the reasons supported by experience/reality for that.
I would really question this is possible to do when you are still at in your home country and your only experience with China is the nearest Chinese restaurant …
But I do not rule out I am wrong …
infallible star,
I am not sure how are you going to manage to accept a regular job, take care of your 1 year old and teach your two school age children all at once …
I am not sure it’s really possible but keep it in your good hands.
In contradiction to drjtrekker and Ray I do not find that important which city you choose (of course unless you have a strong preference for subtropical seaside or similar) with exception of tier 1 cities for which, with 5 members family and by you indicated income, you may not have enough money.
In general with such a big family which will the most probably heavily depend on you and without being able to communicate in Chinese you will most probably not enjoy too fruitful social life.
Usually the foreigners in China, when the first ‘honeymoons’ are over, have very strong opinion about the environment. Either they like it or they hate it.
It’s not easy to come to the place where you are efficiently illiterate (and will be for more than year even if you study several hours everyday), where the people are not able to understand you the most simple Chinese words even though you believe your pronunciation does not have a trouble and when taxi drivers just push you out on the street because they do not know the address and you are not able to explain them how to get there or offer a Chinese speaking person who can.
The people behave very differently from Europe and certain commonly accepted practises are from European perspective really really strange.
Saying all of this I know a lot of foreigners who really love China and enjoy their life in here – including the food which tends to be delicious.
All in all for a family with 3 children, one of them 1 year old and two in school age, none of them speaking Chinese it will be quite hard.
But probably manageable if this is what you want and if you are willing to compromise on your living standards.
Saying then that Xiamen is great because it offers kind of the European holiday ideal environment, Kunming is perfect because the weather is everlasting spring and Zhengzhou is the hell because it’s industrious city without any remarkable tourist spot is not exactly relevant because it highly depends on individual preference. I for instance believe that absolutely the best city in China is Chongqing followed closely by Lianyungang – both of them are not high on majority of foreigners priority list … 🙂
If you really decided to accept the burden so come first, taste China and later on you may decide if this is the environment you like or not. But I would anyway recommend to may try coming firstly without children for three to four weeks to get the real experience. You may realize that China is not a place you want to spend a year or two …
Dear noelhunter,
Unfortunately you did misspelled her name as Mandarin does not have a word sounding ‘ring’ – xiao then not being part of the name.
But that may not be the most important as you could hardly find a woman in Chengdu just by the surname or first name.
But your message is a bit confusing. You visited beautiful lady in Chengdu two weeks ago but was talking to her on Wechat for months. Were you then talking to her already before you met her? How did you get her contact? Any common Wechat friends (can easily find out by comments on Wechat Moments)?
And are you sure the lady also wants to marry you? Or was it a reason why she deleted you from her Wechat (not suggesting – just trying to understand the situation)?
In anyway provided you really want to marry her and she also wants to marry you, you both lost each other contacts by mistake, have no phone nos., e-mails, no common friends etc. (vow – sounds so weird … 🙂 ) then I assume your only chance is to make it into the Wechat newspapers like the Canadian guy in Shenzhen carrying a poster for weeks in the streets of Shenzhen, also looking for his ‘love’.
If you make it into such media (what would be a high chance in case you really do something similar …) so she will certainly read it and if she would consider it romantic (pls note there is still a chance she could consider it quite stupid …) so she would contact you.
But overall if you want to marry her I assume you know her a bit and therefore you may know roughly where is she living, what does she like, to which places/cafes/restaurants is she going and searching for her there could be more efficient.
Shall you not have any such knowledge about her so it’s recommendable to get it first before marrying a person … 😉
If I get your message right so your husband is going to earn something about 16,700 CNY monthly gross, what makes it about 15,000 CNY monthly net, correct?
For your children I would not really see a chance to participate in Chinese education system anytime soon because Chinese education requires good knowledge of spoken and especially written Chinese. Considering that your children will have to master 5000+ characters so I doubt it’s manageable in less than 2+ years (provided they study hard every day and are exposed to Chinese environment).
Homeschooling stays thus the only option for first two years as 15,000 CNY monthly will most probably not allow you to send your children into private, English speaking schools.
Generally I would not see a big deal to live from 15,000 CNY monthly provided you will be able to adapt to ‘Chinese’ style of life and will feel happy with that. A lot of Chinese families are living for less and still are quite happy and save some money.
But you need to take into consideration that generally
1) the Chinese apartments standard is much lower than European one; with your requirements for 3 bedrooms apartment, relatively new in the good and easily accessible environment would probably cost you much more than 4000 CNY a month so I guess you will have to compromise a bit. But even the ‘high-end, Western style’ apartments in Chengdu are usually at best questionable quality if measured by EU standards.
2) not speaking Chinese and not knowing the environment will result in certain ‘surcharge’ in comparison to local people at least in the initial period of your stage. Pls note that Chinese is for Europeans not the easiest language to learn and even with intensive courses it may take certain time (rather in years than months) till you reach a conversational fluency. Nevertheless to be able to express yourself in the most common life situations, without requirement to understand your counterpart reply shall it be more complex than simple agreement or disagreement, you shall manage within the first half to one year shall you not give up studying.
3) anything imported from the Western countries is in China relatively expensive
Officially you will not be allowed to work unless you find an employer who will be willing to apply for your work permit or set up your own company in China.
With one child of just 1 year old and homeschooling the other two I doubt you will have enough time for a regular employment unless you employ an assistant taking care of your son (that would costs you something around 3,000 CNY monthly for local, only Chinese speaking person – pls note that you would be in danger that this person speaks just local dialect and not proper Mandarin – proper Mandarin and English speaking nanny would cost you much more than that; but pls keep in mind that many Chinese have a concern to leave a child with a stranger and even though this practice is not rate so there are numerous horror stories about children maltreatment) – but you are still going to be busy with homeschooling of your two other children …
Concerning health insurance I would suggest to deal with Hong Kong based or Chinese insurance companies as the premium shall come much cheaper than if you buy this service in UK. But pls read the contract and conditions carefully because there can be many exclusions you may not feel comfortable with. Also pls note that Chinese health system is generally paid (if I simplify it a bit) and in case of any problem not covered by your insurance you will have to pay in cash (or by bank card provided you have Chinese one).
On top of that it’s more than rare to find an English speaking doctor in Chengdu Chinese hospitals so you will be either cut from any effective communication with the doctor and nurses or will have to rely on the support of your English speaking Chinese friend.
That’s one of the reasons why certain ‘international clinics’ in China are actually no clinics at all but just the ambulances with English speaking doctors (sometimes also foreign doctors) who are then using the background of Chinese hospitals to act as kind of interface between the non Chinese speaking patient and the Chinese clinics. Their services is then subject to minimal fee which is usually exceeding 1000 CNY (any real treatment or medicine coming then on top so it may not be rare to be treated for a bit more serious flu with the bill close to 1,800 CNY – nevertheless on the positive note in case you have a reasonable insurance policy with solid insurance company so this fee would be covered).
Some foreigners in China have a huge trouble to adapt to Chinese environment and some have no trouble at all (in both these categories are those who managed to speak decent Mandarin as well as these who cannot say more than hardly understandable ‘Hello’ in Chinese). Just time will show into which category you will belong but China certainly offers a lot of positive for people arriving with open mind and willing to accept that different is not always better or worse but frequently really can be just different …
Among all these aspects I would really find the airpollution (which is really bad in majority of Chinese cities), problematic food (pls note that buying the fresh ingredients may not help you at all due to the usage of antibiotics and chemistry during the process of foodstuff preparation and to live 100% on imported food – when you also do not know if it’s not the false import – you may not have enough money) and probably inevitable culture shock are of minor importance.
All in all shall you be coming alone with your husband I would say you should not have a big trouble to live relatively decent life (even though absolutely different from your European life but I guess that is a part of your excitement to come to China).
With three children, two of them in the school age and none of them really independent yet, I dare to say that it will be at best challenge …
I would also recommend to link your bank card with your Wechat wallet. Subsequently it’s very easy to top up the phone.
Dear Raylene,
I really wish you your success! I hope for your business to develop into even larger scale with growing (quality) wine demand in China.
I would also never question that China is the biggest wine consumer country in the world. This you can say about majority of the products because if just 5% of China population would be drinking wine so it’s more than majority countries in the world whole population.
What I mean is that for China there is still a long way to go what concerns wine culture – currently it’s really hard to get a good wine and if then for price which is several times higher than similar quality wine in ‘traditional’ wine drinking countries.
But I also hope this will change. For sure I will also check you store 🙂
Dear Kike,
Of course China has ancient wine culture. More or less all civilization started with simple fermentation and therefore the first alcoholic drinks were some sort of beers and wines 🙂
What I say that nowadays the most common alcoholic drink in China is either (Chinese) beer or distillate. Subsequently the problem is with the translation of the word ‘jiu’. It’s commonly translated as wine while English has different word for different type of alcoholic drinks and English word ‘wine’ generally refers to way of drink preparation.
Therefore many newcomers into China when offered ‘white wine’ certainly do not expect to get something with 52% of alcohol …
I do not want to sound rude but so far I found just one wine which I could call the real wine (it’s Di Bella one) – not counting wine which you pay several hundred/thousands RMB per bottle as I find it hard to accept spending so much money on a drink …
For the rest I more or less concluded for myself that Chinese Great Wall is usually, when in the similar price category with imported wines, much better than those imports but it still lacks a bit to be really a good wine.
Unfortunately China is not a wine drinking country and usually the wine commonly available is at the border of drinkability …
BUT!
Thumb up for you trying to educate the people in China about the wine culture as such!
Nevertheless I am afraid it’s still a long way to go …
Looking at it from another angle I would recommend to consider setting up the bai jiu school as China (and especially Sichuan!) has many great bai jiu brands which are in decent price range and their quality is really good.
Well I do not fit absolute majority of required categories (and also not exactly on the hunt either …:) ) but let me just express my opinion.
On Hanno’s comment, I would not see anything wrong with gold digging or all the eventual mistress culture as long as all participants are aware what they are going for and still see the value in such deals. If you see no value in such arrangements so you just do not go for that – that’s it.
I even understand why people prefer to post ads (or messages) rather than approaching real person in the real life – many people do not want to risk being rejected publicly.
But I still believe that whatever the motivation (short/long term fun, serious relationship etc.) it’s still much better to go outside, meet the people and do the first step.
And it’s just a ‘superstition’ that girls cannot be the active ones. Especially if we talk about local girls and foreigners who are guests.
So I would just suggest – rather than writing about meeting people try to go out and meet some 🙂
