Sorry about being quiet for so long. I started class two weeks ago and have been busy with some other things as well. I'm going to a school called Kunming Eastern College of Language and Culture, known around town as Dong Feng, (translation: Eastern). Aside from Keats, there are three main options for Mandarin study. Yunnan University's language program has a reputation for larger classes, outmoded teaching styles and bureaucratic rigidity. Summit Language School is run by some Brits, and seems like a good enough place, but it's a little expensive and they don't have the necessary connection to obtain student visas.
Dong Feng, however, does have the guanxi to get us student visas, which are necessary for anyone who wants to stay longer than three months. It offers a 20-week semester for 5,000 RMB (about $625 U.S.), for 10-15 hours of class time per week. There are a couple hundred students there, so it's a good place to meet people. It's also located a 15-minute walk from my home, near the restaurant/bar/cafes of Wenlin Jie and Wenhua Xiang.
My class has 10 to 12 people; it's hard to say because there is still some expanding and contracting as people decide which class they belong in. I personally tried three classes on the first day before settling on the third level. Countries represented include France, Italy, Korea, Japan, Thailand, Germany and Spain. There is one other American, a grizzled native Brooklyner who knows his characters extremely well but is reviewing grammar and working on speaking.
My teacher, Chen Laoshi, speaks pretty good English, but he rarely uses it in class. This has been very good for me, as my first teacher spoke a lot of English in our lessons, and my listening comprehension has suffered as a result. Compared to the other students, my reading is good, but in pronunciation and listening I am probably worse than half the other students. But most have also had at least a few more months of Chinese than I have had.
It's interesting to hear Chinese spoken in all these different accents. My favorite classmate to listen to and watch is an Italian man in his early 50s. He brings the Italian habit of speaking with his hands to his efforts to speak Mandarin, signaling the appropriate tone of a word with a wave of his hand or a nod of his head.
