Ask Imitation about 2years in China

[climber]

Mixing with the locals = take the train and sit in the hard seats at least once.

Kunming makes a nice January destination--beautiful and warm compared to rest of northern china at that time. Hainan is beautiful but not too developed beyond the basic simple resort structures. A place like Kunming will have a more thriving pothead backpacker party crowd. Shanghai is really cool. Beijing is OK--worth it for Great Wall i suppose but def get out to one of the sections of the wild wall where it is original and unrestored. You can fly BK to Kunming then domestic flight to Hainan another flight to Shanghai and then train to Beijing. Maybe 3 days in Kunming, 4 days in Hainan just relaxing, a week in Shanghai and 3-4 days in Beijing. Throw in a couple travel days and you have a nice 3 week trip where you get to see a lot of different parts of the country. At least parts of the country you will likely enjoy. This itinerary totally skips places like Xian, the center of 13 of 21 Chinese dynasties, so its not good from a history/cultural importance angle but it def would be an enjoyable trip. Note: Beijing is cold in winter but no tourists and way less people trying to bug you and sell you crap.

There is def some cool stuff further north and west but travel time starts to eat up a lot more of your trip and its generally a lot rougher but places like Urumqi and some of the Tibetan regions are pretty awesome and well worth a visit--in the summer.

[bwana devil]

imitation, is this place real?

http://www.bond-diamonds.com/fark/chinese.htm

[phiphika1453]

Is it true that the red army is the largers shareholder in HSBC (Hong Kong Shanghai Bank)???

[Iron Lung]

Imitation or Climber,

What is the area around Fudan like? Is it a good place to meet college age girls and find parties?

[octopi]

Imitation: On tv recently, I watched a competition or some sort of display of white kids (presumably studying in China) speaking some Chinese dialect, in what I can only assume was a storytelling contest of some kind. WTF? Are they any good? Are these common?

[mprhino]

[ QUOTE ]
Thats means all the chic's I think are super hot are also super easy to pick up. wtf is wrong with that?

[/ QUOTE ]

This is funny. I've been living in Korea for the last 3 months, and my taste is apparently very different from my Korean friends. The other night I was talking to this girl that I thought was absolutely adorable...and later on each one of my friends asked me separately why I was talking to her for so long because she wasn't their type

[imitation]

[ QUOTE ]
Imitation: On tv recently, I watched a competition or some sort of display of white kids (presumably studying in China) speaking some Chinese dialect, in what I can only assume was a storytelling contest of some kind. WTF? Are they any good? Are these common?

[/ QUOTE ]

There are many shows where foreigners show off their Chinese skills or compete in some form. Infact some foreigners have made their livelyhood from having ridiculously good Chinese. It's amazing how good these guys are and their knowledge of Chinese language and classical Chinese exceeds most Chinese even well educated by a far way.

The most famous of these is Da Shan a Canadian guy who's been here for years and has his own TV show teaching Chinese.

[Peter Harris]

silly one whilst i think of other pertinent questions:

have you watched the Go coverage on CCTV5?

[sushijerk]

[quote
The most famous of these is Da Shan a Canadian guy who's been here for years and has his own TV show teaching Chinese.

[/ QUOTE ]

Seriously. I used to watch this guy on TV when I was like 5 (i'm 24 now) and even then his Chinese was unbelievably good for a hulking white guy. Except now I realize how much tail he must pull based on the criteria OOT has mentioned in his thread. Plus his name in Chinese names "Big Mountain" so you know that has to work in his favor at bars.