Question: Where to learn Chinese in China?

Last night a reader from Paris asked me advice on where in Shanghai or Beijing to jumpstart his study of Chinese with a few months of intensive study to start with. Ten years ago I would have known the answer: neither Beijing or Shanghai, but Taiwan, if you really want to learn the language.

In greatly enjoyed my time studying Chinese in Shanghai at the East China Normal University (ECNU), it proved to be mostly useful in discovering how this Chinese entity was operating and for making friends. I developed a network that is still partly working up to today.

But in terms of learning the language, I was often impressed by the skills of those who started off in Taiwan. The teaching methods in Taiwan were much more modern than in China, where the books were still dominated by the remnants of the Cultural Revolution (Tongzimen!), even to the embarrassment of our teachers. Traditionally teaching in China means a sophisticated way of physical and mental torture and since the language itself is already tough enough, it was all to attractive to find alternative activities that were more fun.

Now this all might have changed over the past ten years. Maybe some of the readers have a fresher experience and would like to share that: what is the best place to study Chinese.