I was wondering how many of the forum readers have lived/studied in China. I noticed that quite a few of my fellow forum followers have a Chinese girlfriend/boyfriend. Be honest: Is that the real reason why you are learning Chinese, for more hook-up opportunities? Sadly, in a way, it was my main motivation in moving to Thailand; that and the cost of living. Cheap food!

I have been studying in Beijing and Hangzhou just because it where fun and for future job opportunities. Now i work in Japan and China but I also have a Chinese wife and 2 daughters so they are my main motivator now. Since I at least do speak some Chinese i will probably be working for my company in China for many years to come.

me: working in shanghai 2005-2007
for hook up: not at all. You are probably better off without it anyway in shanghai.
Chinese is a challenge which is always ongoing, very interactive and super useful, coming from an engineering minded background.

No Chinese girlfriend, don't live in China, never worked there either. Doubtless I'll have to go live there soon, I've hit a brick wall as far as my spoken Chinese goes.

I guess motivation springs from two things: The belief that China will be incredibly important in the future and the intellectual challenge of it.

Lived in China in both Shanghai and Inner Mongolia. Now on my 3rd year in Taiwan. I found it much easier to study Chinese while in the US, but learn more while here. Take advantage of learning you formal Chinese now and if you go to China then you can master spoken. If when you arrive you can read and write everything already then speaking will be so easy.

I am planning to move to Taiwan with my Taiwanese wife and two kids. Hopefully end of this year if we can sell our house. I plan to look for a job when I get to Taiwan so need to speak a bit of Chinese for that. If anybody on here needs IT-savvy people in Taiwan let me know :)

I started studying chinese first, learning chinese for many people tends to open up your cultural horizons and creates an interest in asia. The chinese g/f (now wife) came after this.

@skritterjohan Good luck with that. IT job's in Taiwan are difficult unless you are already used to working 12 hour days for half the pay. (: I have been looking into what Job's I could do in Taiwan and I think IT is not one of them. I am leaning towards some sort of online business.

@董雅各,@skritterjohan. About IT jobs. In mainland China it is the same for average IT jobs but there is a great demand for enterprise architects, application architects, senior DBA, SAP, Security architects etc. Especially if you have skills in many areas. Mostly it is foreign and domestic global companies that requires this. The pay is usually competitive to western salaries. Normal coding, windows stuff etc. on the other hand is usually much less payed and much harder to get. There is a lack of senior skills in many areas since the IT industry is not yet mature in China. In many ways it is the same in Japan. I should be one week in Japan and it is already over a year and I can't see any end to all the works that needs to be done. Once you build up some 关系, regardless if it is China or Japan, you have no problem to get new tasks. I have several friends doing the same thing currently.

Any other insights into the job market? I've thought about going over there to teach English. Any place you recommend?

@icecream, to get a teaching job is not that hard in China today but to get an decent salary might be. There are several schools that hires teachers but also several companies. Many people also combine studying Chinese at a university and teaching English at the same time. There are also several private schools with foreign teachers. TOEFL tests are hyped in China today and there are tons of schools focusing on that. As for recommendations, it totally depends on what you prefer. Beijing is a modern city with a great night life, Hangzhou is a very beautiful city, small towns gives a better Chinese atmosphere. I am a sucker for Hangzhou (I partly live there) so i would recommend that. There are more than 100 foreigners that I know of that teaches English there now. English is not my native language so I stay out of that area but I do have a lot of friends working in that field. A few sites with more info:
start with this one: http://www.china-teachers.com/

http://www.footprintsrecruiting.com/
http://www.chinajob.com/
http://www.englishfirst.com/trt/teaching-english-in-china.html

To everyone seeking job in at least mainland China. Nowadays it is much harder to get a working visa if you do not have a degree in your area to prove that you are really good in your field. There are always ways around this, especially for jobs such as teaching English, but for most other professions it is getting really hard. I have had friends denied renewal of visa due to lack off formal degree but with more than 20 years of experience in the field. I have had problems my self since my degrees are from other fields than the one I am currently working in. One way around this is to get an invitation letter from the company you will work for where they tell why your skills are so unique that they can't find anyone else for the position. Even with a working visa you will have to renew that in Hong Kong from time to time and it might be denied then as well.

icecream:
中国很多地方的生活成本（the cost of living)和食品(food)的价钱都不高啊，甚至(shen4zhi4,and even)比泰国还低啊，比如西北、西南等地。我认识的很多外国人他们都生活得比较轻松。

Lurks：
如果你想来尽管来，If you want to come,just come,please.
中国没那么恐怖，大部分中国人也挺友好的。China is not so terrible as you thougt and the majority of Chinese people) are friendly.

I do not think there is a shortage of work I could do in Taiwan. I think quite a few of them get decent pay too. I have quite a bit experience and not just doing programming and Windows, also storage, networking, Unix.

However, from what job searches I have done in Taiwan it has quickly become clear that if I want a big pond to fish in I definitely urgently need to learn to speak Chinese.

Learning Chinese is like climbing Everest. There are much easier ways to impress girls.

@jww1066

Well put. Latinas always seem to like me. If I was just looking for women, learning Spanish and moving to South America would have been a heck of a lot easier.

I am studying both Spanish and Mandarin (among some other languages). Neither of them for the ladies.

Learning a language to impress a lady!?! She better fall for you if she has any idea of the trouble!

三郎：
我不认为中国是令人惊恐的，不过还有几年完成我大学学习。即使中国人平时有传统的意见对于成熟的学生，我也大概到台湾当交换学生来。

Spent 4 1/2 months in BJ studying and another month travelling. I very much agree with James, and that (seemingly) never-ending challenge is a source of both frustration and motivation. As have also been said here, the learning process is interactive (no end of mental stimulation) and finds direct application (and probably will more in the future).

I’m joking, slightly, when I say that girls are my main motivation. Thanks for the links and the info. I'll be sure to check into it.


@mikethatguy312 I agree: learning alien abstractions amplifies your ability to analyze problems.

董雅各 said:

> IT job's in Taiwan are difficult unless you are already used to working 12 hour days for half the pay. (:

True, unless they are not in a field of so called pre-sales tech support. There are some products, which are impossible to sell, if you are not engineer. (Think of networking products similar to Cisco. )

What started off ten years ago as a need to fill a long commute, I choose to learn to speak Mandarin (Pimsleur audio tapes), where I could then "try out" my lessons with some of Chinese engineers I worked with.

@heruilin Did you finish Pimsleur? Which levels? Did you find it helpful?

I am still doing the Pimsleur, although not very actively the last half year. I am at level 2, lesson 17 or so.

I really recommend them, although I had a difficult time getting started in the beginning (up to lesson 10 of level 1).