For the past two months I’ve been studying at a little place called Dalian Ruiwen Langauge School (大连瑞文语言学校). “Ruiwen” means, roughly, auspicious letters, and sure enough I’ve really enjoyed studying there. I’ve found it much better than the Dalian University of Technology, where I studied last year.

As it turns out, if all you want is to learn Chinese and don’t care about accreditation, most of the Mandarin language programs for foreigners at Chinese universities are terrible deals relative to what’s also available at private language schools. A semester now at the Dalian University of Technology costs 8500RMB plus a 500RMB registration fee, or about US$1300. (I paid around 1000RMB less, but I don’t remember exactly how much and this year’s price is more pertinent anyway.) For that one gets, officially, eleven 100-minute classes per week. Should we assume that I actually studied to the end (I didn’t), that semester of 17 weeks should total to 187 classes. But, one really must subtract for holidays, test days, sports days, movie days, and mind numbing “speech competitions” (of course some of those cost the school money to put on, but I sure wouldn’t have paid if I had a choice so I count it as time wasted). That brings us to, let’s say, 170 proper classes. Each class is split with a ten-minute break in the middle. With large numbers of unmotivated students there is easily a wasted five minutes at the beginning of each class, and after each break, as students slowly peter into the classroom, sit down, and only eventually shut up. To be generous, we can say that each class is really about 90 minutes of teaching. To just finish this quantification before getting into the qualifications, that price comes out to about 53RMB per 90 minute class, or US$7.50.

That quantifies pretty cheap from an American perspective, but the qualifications are yet many. First and foremost are the class sizes. DUT promises to keep it’s classes under 14, but that turns to be only half true. It’s half untrue because after doing a poor job of student placement, many students move themselves up and down the levels, and in so doing end up clumping in some classes; the class I was in for most of last year ended up with about 20 students or so. The class size promise works out yet half true, however, because lots of people never come to class. Some students wouldn’t come no matter how great the classes were – these are mostly the Korean, Japanese, and Russian university students who are here as part of their major and really don’t care. Other students, like me, want to learn Mandarin, but sometimes don’t go to class because:

A) 8 a.m. is too goddamned early when nobody’s paying me and I’m not getting grades,
B) it’s listening class or any other class with a horrible teacher and a worse curriculum,
or,
C) you’ve made too many friends who too often nefariously present you with more interesting things to do.

To name some other qualifications, only half the teachers are any good, the pace is very slow (albeit something that can be remedied, as I did, by skipping a level every once in a while until you catch up again), and only the most disciplined and/or antisocial could help but speak one’s native tongue with one’s new classmates and friends outside of class times, all the time.

To get back to talk of money, let’s compare the above figure of 53RMB(US$7.50)/90mins. with the prices at Ruiwen. There I’ve been taking two 90-minute classes per day, which start punctually and, with no break, really last 90 minutes. Each day I have one private lesson, at 80RMB(US$11)/90mins., and one lesson with usually just one other student, but sometimes two and often none, for 40RMB(US$6)/90mins. That’s an average of 60RMB(US$8.50)/90mins. for classes with an average of, roughly, 1.4 students total, and it costs just one dollar more than at DUT.

Of class size is also not everything. My teachers have been spectacular. My main teacher, Feng Laoshi, is a wonderful older woman from Haerbin who’s clearly been teaching Mandarin for decades. (She told me she once taught a class of 40 North Koreans, that they were very hard working students, but had very sticky fingers.) Then there’s Zhang Laoshi, the younger girl who taught the HSK prep. class I refered to in my last post and lets her best sense of humor shine when the other students don’t show up, which is much of the time. Finally, Hou Laoshi, who clearly put a lot of time into preparing a short-term character writing class specifically for my somewhat special needs; I know lots of characters, but have been writing them all wrong, ugly, and with the wrong hand.

Having worked as a teacher really changes the experience of being a student. It makes it really obvious when your teachers are doing things wrong, and also obvious when you’re faced with a teacher much more experienced than you. My teachers at Ruiwen are just that. But, and this is the really important part, when there’s only one or two of you, and you choose your own curriculum, if you don’t like something all you have to do is ask to change it.

The figure for DUT of 53RMB(US$7.50)/90mins. only reflects the real price per class attended if you actually manage to attend every class. If you miss as many as I did, calculations start going skewing strongly in favor of a private school. For the dollar more of 60RMB(US$8.50)/90mins. I’ve been learning nearly twice as quickly at Ruiwen than I was at DUT, and enjoying my classes even more than that. Most important of all, to be perfectly honest, I schedule my own classes. Unless someone’s paying me or giving me a degree I’m not waking up at 7am everyday ever again. My day at Ruiwen starts at 10.


I’m openly writing this in the hope people stumble across my page and consider studying at Ruiwen. If that’s you, let me still give you some words of caution: if you’re new to Dalian and you go straight to Ruiwen, you’ll need to be very proactive in making friends. The biggest benefit of going to one of the university programs is the social aspect. While it may take away from your Mandarin practice to run around with other foreigners, we all get lonely and everyone knows studying abroad is about more than just going to class and learning a language, it’s also about having a great time. Nevertheless, if you’re the socially proactive type, all you’d have to do is check out some of the expat websites like daliandalian.com and dalianxpat.com, start going to the listed events and the recommended cafes and bars, and strike up conversation. The expat community here is vibrant and welcoming, so you’ll have no trouble if you take those first steps!

Ruiwen is located at the edge of downtown Dalian, on a shaded street off of Gao’erji Lu, a main transit artery, only a few blocks from Olympic square. (The closest landmark familiar to any Dalian expat is Hopscotch Bar, which is only a block and a half away.) It’s a private school, and as such a business and flexible, so expect that prices can change but are negotiable and they’ll be based on how many people are in your class. If you’re interested in studying there you can find contact information at the bottom of this page, or call English-speaking Wang Laoshi at +86 13940888549.

I’ve been back in Dalian for about a month and a half, and I’ve eaten barbecue kebabs from the same street stall at least once a week. Never had any trouble. Last Saturday I wanted something quick to eat, so I headed down the block to Chengren Jie, Martyr Street. It was yet early, and my usual barbecue stall was still setting up shop. That block has at least ten other stalls and c’mon, they’re all the same. I choose the next one, and started picking vegetables-on-sticks from the big table. In a moment of daring I said, alright, screw it, I’ll try the green eggs.

The green eggs were disgusting, I swallowed only one bite. The color was clearly not the only problematic result of some kind of microorganism’s handiwork. Sam-I-Am was right to be freaked out all along by these sorts of things, but I believe in trying everything once, even green eggs from a street vendor. The lesson here learned, however, is that one should perhaps not be too adventurous when the next morning one has a standardized test for which one has been preparing, on and off, for months.

The next day I took the HSK and of course I had explosive diarrhea.

H, S, and K are the Pinyin initials (Hànyǔ Shuǐpíng Kǎoshì, 汉语水平考试) for the People’s Republic of China’s official Chinese Proficiency Test. Every standardized test in the world must be known by its initials and must test nothing so well as one’s ability to take that test. The HSK fully conforms – even Chinese people call it “HSK” – and I can’t imagine doing well on it without what I learned in my prep class.

Take for example the reading comprehension section. The reading section, at 60 minutes, is the longest of the test’s four sections. On the elementary-intermediate level test one can score from a 3 to an 8 (the so-called basic test is 1-2 and the advanced is 9-11). To get an 8 one should probably know at least about 3000 characters, and 1500 characters should be enough to get the minimum score of 3. (I’m guessing I’m somewhere in the low 2000’s.) The reading comprehension texts love to be about science and nature just to throw people off with lots of specialized vocabulary and characters they’ve never seen before. So what do you do? Look at the questions first, see what characters you don’t know, since they’re the important ones, and then scan the text for those characters. The sentences immediately around those almost always have the answer. This is much faster than slogging through texts you don’t understand just to forget what little you did understand when you get to the questions. An hour might seem like a long time, but there are a lot of questions and time management is everything on these kinds of tests – especially when you miss the first few minutes after racing through the grammar section for a semi-supervised sprint to the bathroom and back.

Here, give it a try:

Full sample test materials here.

My original, rather-high goal for this test was a 6. A month and a half of practice questions made me lower that to a 5 in the name of warding off too much disappointment. Considering my intestinal distractions during those three long, break-less hours of testing, my score might be lower yet.

I had a high, delirious fever that evening, but I’m all the stronger for it now. I’ll be getting my scores in a few weeks.

[UPDATE: I ended up getting a 6 overall and an 8 on the reading.]