Extreme Chinese Immersion

I had an excellent two-week language immersion stay in Chengde. LTL found a very good teacher and organised a perfect home stay. Both perfectly suited my needs as someone needing a last push of intensive training before starting my new job in Beijing. I can also highly recommend Chengde as a midsized, yet attractive city, easy to reach and to find your way around.

LTL’s local staff were very dedicated and active in organising fun activities and giving lots of helpful advice. Overall I can highly recommend staying in Chengde with LTL.

Peter Sr and Peter Jr in a Chengde Cafe

To learn Chinese, Chengde is the best place there is. The combination of a homestay and 1on1 to classes is what gets you ahead the fastest – at least that’s how it was for my 11 year old son. His language progress in Chengde was very impressive.

As an accompanying dad, I personally enjoyed the good air and environment. Chengde sometimes feels a bit like a resort town. I also found visiting the historic sights very interesting. The imperial summer palace and temples were very impressive. 

Also Chengde is very green and relaxed – not as stressful and busy as bigger cities like Beijing.We already decided that my son (in a few years then by himself)  in the future will take all his Chinese classes in Chengde, because the language progress is simply much faster there.

Peters exploring Chengde

I am 22 years old, from England and just graduated from university last year. As I want my future to be in Mainland China or Hong Kong I felt that learning to be able to speak mandarin would be essential for my future job prospects. It also would allow me to learn more about the culture and lifestyle in Mainland China, which I can now say is a lot different to that of other countries.

Luke & his homestay family

I have been at LTL for 7 months now. When I arrived I knew very little mandarin, I could barely introduce myself and say some basic phrases. As a result landing in Beijing for the first time and being thrown straight into the fire (a homestay) was a very daunting prospect. My family however was very welcoming and patient with my non-existant mandarin, which meant I was able to settle in very quickly. My family would sit down and talk to me during meal times and would teach me the basic nouns, such as chopsticks, bowl and table. They would then test me the next day and it progressed from there. My homestay Auntie was also more than willing to take me to look at the sites on the weekend, which was helpful in acclimatising myself to Beijing and in getting to know her better. On a sidenote the cooking was really good.

In relation to classes, for the first 3 months I did 4 hours a day of group classes and 2 hours a day of one on one classes. Again I was initially daunted by the prospect of studying for so many hours a day, especially considering the fact I have never really had a penchant for languages. As with the homestay everyone at LTL was really welcoming and patient. The group classes were really fun because if you were stuck there was always other learners there to help you and ask questions you maybe would never have thought about yourself. The one on one classes were very tiring but allowed me to solidify my knowledge and ask more specific questions on areas I was still stuck on. I felt that having the one on one classes really did compliment the group classes well. This all gave me a really good base before i went to Chengde.

Luke ice-skating

After this I went to Chengde for 3 months and did 6 hours a day of one on one classes. This was intense but i felt my spoken confidence and fluidity skyrocketed during this time. The homestay in Chengde was really good and I would come home from class everyday and watch mandarin soaps with auntie (I hate to admit it but I got pretty into some of them). I was also there during chinese new year, which was an amazing experience. Fireworks went of nearly every minute and I ate like a king during the whole festival. I took my classes in cafes and having one on ones for such a long time was tiring but well worth it. By the end of the three months my teachers were more like friends and I would go have dinner or play mahjong with them after class. I also made friends with people my age through the gym and through my homestay. They would take me out drinking, eating and to play pool and this is the main reason why I think my mandarin improved so much in Chengde. In the three months I never had a conversation in english apart from with my parents once a week. 

I have now been back in Beijing for a month and am studying for the HSK 5, which I will take in a couple of months time. Looking back now I am actually quite astonished with how far I have been able to go in this time. I would seriously recommend a person who is serious about learning mandarin for whatever reason, be it work or hobby related, to do something like I have done. It has been a productive way to spend my time after graduating, not only from an educational standpoint, but also I have made a lot of good friends during my time here, allowing me to have had a lot of fun/cool experiences. Learning mandarin and living with homestay families has also allowed me to understand the chinese way of thinking and culture better, which hopefully will put me in good stead when I attempt to find a job in the future.

For the past ten months I’ve been studying Mandarin with LTL in Beijing and Chengde.

When I first arrived in Chengde I wasn’t really excited to be there. I had already established a pretty good lifestyle in Beijing; I had my classmates, my homestay, my boyfriend and my teachers to keep my busy. To be honest I was actually really upset that I had to leave. But in the end, I’m so glad I did leave. It wasn’t until I went to Chengde that I truly fell in love with the Chinese culture. I really loved living with the family, we did a lot of things together, cooking, dancing, it was amazing.

My teacher was also really great (but all the teachers I had at LTL were really good). He’s hip, strict, funny, and a good chef. Also, because he’s a part-time tour guide, he knows a lot about the history of China. For the most part, we would have class in my room (there’s no classroom’s in Chengde), but sometimes I’d go over to his house to have class and then after class he’d teach me how to cook. He helped prepare me to take my HSK test, which I passed (YAY!).

Jamie watching football with friends

Once you start meeting people in Chengde, it’s really easy to make friends (a lot easier than when I was in Beijing). One of my classmates introduced me to the soccer club he was in…and that’s when I actually started having fun in Chengde. After that night, I hung out with them all the time (I didn’t even care about soccer before I met them). Being with them I got to experience the Chengde lifestyle. I’d hang out at the club with them, watch their matches, play mahjong, go to dinners, to the movies, to KTV, and explore Chengde. They were really cool guys.

Another thing that I really like about Chengde is that it’s a lot smaller than Beijing. It was easy to get around and sometimes I’d just wander around the streets and try to explore new places; I mean it was small enough that I wouldn’t get lost, but big enough that there were places I still hadn’t explored. Also, since it’s a smaller city they have morning and night markets, which are always fun to see (I never saw anything like that in Beijing, everyone in Beijing just goes to the grocery store to shop).

Jamie hiking around chengde

Lastly, the atmosphere is a lot better there. The air is fresher and cleaner than in Beijing and there’s more nature surrounding such as trees, mountains and rivers. When visiting, don’t forget about BiShu ShanZhuang (避暑山庄, the Summer Resort), it feels as though it takes up half of Chengde! Since I stayed in Chengde for a while I got a year pass, so I could go whenever I wanted. It’s so worth it too, the Summer Resort is beautiful and peaceful, especially if you go during sunset.

So, to sum things up, I really liked Chengde because it had everything I was looking for…a good homestay, a good teacher, friends, culture, nature, dance and volleyball.

I originally planning to spend 1 month in Chengde, but in the end I stayed for 4! 🙂