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- I have heard Xian is now more of a urban sprawl shanty town than it was when i visited nearly 5 years ago. Is it?


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I have not visited Xian but every city is expanding at such an incredible rate I would not be surprised if had not changed enormously.
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- I'd like to learn Mandarin whilst teaching an English course over there next year. Questions:

1) which city, if any, would you commend to someone planning on spending a year there? The city should have plenty to keep me there, but also have decent transport links to other places.


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It depends on your goals, but if you want to learn good Mandarin living in the north is a must, living in the south has really been a drain on my exposure to clean unaccented Mandarin because everyone here speaks Cantonese 90% of the time.

On the other side of things bigger cities and touristy cities in the north have a lot of young English speakers, so for example Shanghai (it's actually south) and Beijing as the two big expat cities are not great for learning Mandarin because everyones going to try and speak to you in English, ofcourse you can fight this off and still learn very good Chinese in Beijing but it would be somewhat of a problem.

My recommendations are Qingdao (home of the famous beer) which is a beautiful coastal city, it is not too far north so the weather is mostly nice, it's not too far to travel by train to Beijing or Shanghai. But it has a fairly reasonable expat community from what I hear but not suffocating.

Next bet is Dalian in the far north in line with Korea, it has a lot of Koreans which is great because Koreans party awesome and the girls are pretty, it snows in winter, but was voted Chineses most liveable city last year. Very scenic and clean air as opposed to big cities.

Dalian and Qingdao they both speak fairly standard Mandarin which is good.
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2) Do people mostly speak Cantonese in Shanghai - i.e., would i be able to learn/would it be useful to learn Mandarin if I was there?


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They speak Shanghainese in Shanghai, but Mandarin is the official language so everyone speaks it, people just speak it with an accent which is difficult for beginners to understand.
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3) what standard of english was your class before you started teaching? what age range/educational background? Do you have any tips, recollections or advice to those, like me, who wish to teach an English class in China? Any hard-earned lessons, or things which aided teaching. Isn't it tough for someone raised in a culture of ideographical language to grasp alphabetical/semantic constructs?


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Ok my teaching experience is limited to one class I taught before I decided I'd rather just play poker and study.

However most of my friends are teachers so I know about some of the pitfalls. Most important don't organise a contract before you leave your country, first choose a city you want to live, have enough money to live there for a month and get set up in a house etc, then when you arrive spend a month getting your bearings and meeting foreigners who are teaching. You will make some connections and get a feel for what is a reasonable pay. Now go out and find work. I can't advise much on pay levels because it varies alot from city to city.

Also one other thing if a foreigner is eager to help you find work in a city it is often because they take a kick back of your wage or get a teachers finders fee. I really hate the sly underhandness of this that goes on in China because they will mostly lie to your face and act like they are just helping you.