I would like to recommend you an affordable and excellent place to study Chinese. I am an Industrial Engineer; I arrived four months ago from Argentina to study Chinese at Aston Language Centre in Wuhu, Anhui province. They have an excellent group of teachers who have a university teaching degree with a specialization in “teaching Chinese to foreigners”. After only 4 months, I have a basic understanding (listening, speaking, reading and writing) of Chinese that allows me to travel and communicate easily in China which is essential if you are outside Shanghai and Beijing.

Benefits of studying in Wuhu:

• The school fee is lower, only 60 rmb/hour (8.5 U$D/h) for private 1-1 lessons.
• The cost of living is lower than in other provinces and almost one third of Shanghai and Beijing! Accommodation at Aston starts at 280 rmb/week (41.0 U$D/week) and the taxi starts at only 5 rmb (0.7 U$D) which is a fast and easy way of comparing the cost of living in different Chinese cities. Dinner at the best restaurant shouldn’t be more than 35 rmb (5 U$D); I usually eat for just 6 rmb (0.9 U$D).
• You will improve faster, as you will need to use Chinese more often because there are fewer foreign and English speaking Chinese.
• You will be overwhelmed by the friendliness shown by the local people, since they don’t often see foreigners.
• It is safer than living in a metropolis.
• It is close to lots of tourist attractions. The most important ones are, Shanghai (350 km), Hangzhou (280 km), Huängshan (250 km) , Jiuhuashan (100 km) , Suzhou (300 km), Nanjing (100 km) and Hefei (140 km).
• You will experience the real Chinese culture unlike in the westernized metropolis like Beijing or Shanghai.
• Wuhu’s accent is closer to Beijing’s official accent (unlike Shanghai) but with a nicer weather.

Although it is not a big metropolis, it is still a big city with plenty of Night Clubs (the best three are “Number One”, “1880” and “Soho”), bars, restaurants and KTV.

As there are many English native teachers (there are plenty of teaching positions at Aston) and international companies in Wuhu (e.g.: Siemens, SKF, Kawasaki) there are enough westerns settled here to go out with. This will help you adapt to the new culture until you have a basic understanding of the Chinese language. For the soccer fans like me, you even have the chance of joining our football team to play in the local football tournament.

If you feel this could be a good opportunity to study Chinese, teach English or you just need advice about living in China, contact me at astoneduenglish@gmail.com or at my personal email mariano.calabro@gmail.com. You may also visit the institute’s web page at www.astonedu.com in order to learn more about Wuhu.