Chinese people, welcome! [中國人, 歡迎你!] [中国人, 欢迎你!]

Econ & Econ History. I thought about actuary and cass but i dont think im interested in maths enough for that
Was reading through the past few pages about Chinese people mixing with Brits. Hmm cant really do anything about cliques, but im hoping i'll be able to get a good balance of diversity of friends.

I think that's definitely achievable, I'm British but the majority of my friends are Chinese... in my main friendship group there are 7 Chinese, 1 Japanese, a few Malaysians and 3 British

That's reassuring. I was so afraid that you Brits will be like no, go away shoo. It's a silly thought to have, but still..

Econ & Econ History. I thought about actuary and cass but i dont think im interested in maths enough for that
Was reading through the past few pages about Chinese people mixing with Brits. Hmm cant really do anything about cliques, but im hoping i'll be able to get a good balance of diversity of friends.

No not at all! For one thing the great thing about Britain is that unless you say you're not British, no-one will realise and then when they find out, they won't care. In my personal experience, the only thing that puts off home students from befriending internationals is either the language barrier (but the majority of people that I know don't have a problem with that) or that it's hard to meet one international without taking a dive into a massive clique...

With mainland Chinese students, a lot hang around in large Mandarin-speaking groups so it's hard for a home student to get chatting to them. If they however join a society that's not just a mainland Chinese social society, then everyone will treat them as they would anyone else.

I met one Malaysian girl on a train back to my university, and what I found sad was that she said that I was the first home student she'd spoken to... she was put in halls with internationals from Australia and the US so she was with other English speaking people but she found it hard to break into the 'home' crowd. I recommended her to come along to one of my society socials, or to any society social. She found the drinking culture a bit bizarre, but you don't have to drink to be part of that culture, although a lot of socials do take place in pubs/bars so you have to be prepared to be around it.

Just get stuck into university life, chat to coursemates, join loads of societies, speak to people in your halls/accommodation and you'll end up with a wonderfully diverse group of friends.

你好中国人！我相参加因为去年九月我在北京开始学汉语，所以我想练习用中文交流。请让我介绍一下：我说我是英国人（从六岁住在英国），但是我出生在香港，而且我妈妈是香港人，所以其实我是混血（一半英国人，一半香港人）。可是到去年我从来没学中文，只知道一点广东话（我妈用广东话和我说，但是我总是用英语回答。）。你们有时间的话，请帮我提高我的中文，改变我写错的地方。谢谢！



PS: Some of the characters aren't showing up properly for me. It's showing this symbol instead: �. Does anyone know how to fix this?
EDIT: This seems to be a TSR issue because it's fine if I go to Edit or Quote.
（好像是TSR的问题，如果我用"Edit"或者"Quote"没有问题了。）

My wife would love to know what you look like!!! My wife is Chinese and i'm a white British guy, my wife really wants to know what are kids will look like!

As for the 中文 on TSR, it is really annoying i've had the same problem and have quite simply stopped typing in Chinese. I think if you preview what you want to write and then add spaces between the 字 that do not appear it can help.

As for your Chinese itself keep it up! I lived in China for 2.5 years (where i met the wife) just remember you are not speaking English so try to 'think' in Chinese especially when it comes to your sentence structure! But it great that you have a solid character foundation! 有事在twitter联系给我

哈哈，你会在 Facebook 加我。我也有两个弟弟。
Haha, you can add me on Facebook. I also have two (younger) brothers.

你太逗了，那我怎么加 你叫什么名字？我学过 汉语的时候我天天看一 个电视剧叫奋斗倍儿好 看。

See just add spaces and the characters show up!

No problems with the language barrier here. I don't think I can survive my course if my English was bad hahaha.

I'm more concerned about the fact that I can't speak mandarin (counting one to ten and telling mandarin speakers I don't understand mandarin doesn't count ) and then I'll get excluded among the internationals AND home students. Quite an irrational thought but gah, I'm so scared of not having anyone to hang out with.

Actually, I am quite okay with drinking. I do not go out for a drink as much as you home students do, but I'm fine with having socials at a pubs.

Well, I hope all these concerns are just pre-universities jitters and once I'm there I won't be panicking so much. Hahaha, it's really a big step to be going to another country to study alone.

No problems with the language barrier here. I don't think I can survive my course if my English was bad hahaha.

I'm more concerned about the fact that I can't speak mandarin (counting one to ten and telling mandarin speakers I don't understand mandarin doesn't count ) and then I'll get excluded among the internationals AND home students. Quite an irrational thought but gah, I'm so scared of not having anyone to hang out with.

Actually, I am quite okay with drinking. I do not go out for a drink as much as you home students do, but I'm fine with having socials at a pubs.

Well, I hope all these concerns are just pre-universities jitters and once I'm there I won't be panicking so much. Hahaha, it's really a big step to be going to another country to study alone.

Haha wasn't implying you would have a problem with the language barrier! You speak English, therefore you'll be easily making friends with everyone. Seriously. Just ensure that, particularly in the early days of uni, you make the effort to speak to loads of people/go out with lots of different people/organise shopping/cinema trips and stuff and then you'll make sure that you meet your future good friends There is no difference between internationals and home students in terms of nervousness; most home students move a fair distance from home so they can't just go home at a weekend, so they'll be as lonely and homesick at first as anyone else. You won't be excluded among anyone, as long as you are as friendly as you can be. I live with an international this year, spend a lot of time round my Chinese friend's house who lives with two home students and three internationals... people do blend.

I can empathise with the nervousness of studying abroad somewhat; I studied at Shanghai Jiao Tong University for a year, and I was terrified! It didn't help that I was on the international student campus, so the only Chinese were doing PhDs and therefore weren't really up for just hanging out... I made friends but they were either other internationals or they were from my job.

Just stay positive, you're going to love it! If your uni runs an International Freshers Week, make sure you attend it, if only for the practical advice that they offer on like bank accounts and stuff

From the perspective of a domestic student, I think perhaps the most important thing for an international student is to make sure you let people know (by your actions) that you are up for making friends and hanging out with the home students. From my experience, many international students tended to (exclusively in some cases) keep to themselves, so if we (i.e. home students) get the impression that you're "one of them", we might not think it's worth the effort to get to know you. For example, I look (kind of, anyway) ethnically Chinese and I met a few Chinese people at uni in the first few weeks - there was more than one case where the moment they found out I couldn't speak Chinese they would essentially lose all interest and never talk to me again. As long as you show you're not like that then you should be fine.

Hi! ive always wanted to meet a half white/ chinese person (i know this sounds strange) maybe because i grew up in britain but i seem to be the least westernised out of all my chinese friends in UK too.
Do you prefer Canto or Mandarin?? My reading and writing is extremely poor and i'd like to improve my traditional chinese before moving on to mandarin/simplified. I think its quite cool that youve moved to Beijing to learn chinese. Good luck with it all!

你好，很高兴认识你！
Hi, very nice to meet you!

I like both of them but my Mandarin is now so much better than my Cantonese (I can understand close to half maybe, but can't speak at all apart from answering yes/no questions and very simple stuff) that I have to favour it. It's a good idea to learn traditional first, it's a lot more logical and will make it easy to learn simplified afterwards (I'm going to have to go the other way, which looks harder to me!).

Thanks. I actually only spent the one semester in Beijing (at Tsinghua University), and this semester I've been in Shanghai (at Fudan University for a bit, now interning at an international company). It's been quite interesting to see the differences in their Mandarin, and the general rivalry between the cities!

Huh.. Are you a PS helper? (im on my phone so i cant see) cos your name is very familiar, i think you helped me with my personal statement back in october?

I struggle with pronouncing the sounds in Mandarin sometimes. I do prefer reading to speaking/listening. Yes it will be difficult going from simplified to traditional! :P so did you go to China with studies as the main purpose or working there? Never been to Beijing but i have been to Shanghai (and HK of course!)

Yes I am a PS Helper. And a quick check shows that yes I did help you with your PS a while back - sorry I didn't remember! How did your application turn out?
Can you pronounce the sounds in Cantonese? They should be harder in theory. I'm here in China on a post-uni gap year with the main purpose being to learn Chinese and get a feel of what it would be like to live and work here. Maybe I'll come back in a few years, hopefully being fluent in Mandarin by then!

你好，很高兴认识你！


Thanks. I actually only spent the one semester in Beijing (at Tsinghua University), and this semester I've been in Shanghai (at Fudan University for a bit, now interning at an international company). It's been quite interesting to see the differences in their Mandarin, and the general rivalry between the cities!

Very well thank you, i got offers from all the uni's and should be heading to LSE in October. So thankyouu!! ^_^~

Yeah i think my pronunciation is pretty good, though there are moments when i make the odd mistake and change the whole meaning of the sentence :') i heard Mandarin is easier to pronounce for beginners than it is for Canto speaking people to learn it. Is that true?

Oh wow! Good plans would you like to go back to China later then? Or HK?

Which Tsinghua course did you go on? their normal language course? full degree course? or their crazy intensive one (forget the name...requires 6 HSK just to apply)?