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Long Pan -

I am French and got my tourist VISA in Paris. I had 3 months to enter China, and once in, 3 months
to stay. Chinese VISA are a bit confusing because they seem to be different from one country to
another - but this type of 3 months tourist visa is always what I got in Paris.

I still have 2 months on this VISA so I haven't started yet to worry about it. I know that it is
easy to get a 1 month extension, and that at least if I cannot get 6 months more here through an
agency, I can always go to HK where everybody seems to agree that you can get a 6 months visa
easily. A friend of mine (French also) is in the process to extend her tourist VISA through an
agency in Beijing - I will ask her how it is going. As for Global Village, it tends to be a bit
the mess here in 办公室 so I tend to avoid the place and only go to the courses.



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bdffrnt66 -

Thanks again for your answer, Long Pan. That´s cleared up a lot of doubts I had. Still would be
good to hear the experience of your friend. Obviously using an agency in Beijing or (if need be)
in Hong Kong, seems to be the easiest thing to do in order to extend your visa, but I would like
to avoid that if possible. I lived in Taiwan for 7 years, during which I had to go to the police
station every 3 months and leave the country every 6 months (flying out to HK). After a while, it
really gets to be a drag. I´d rather avoid that kind of situations while studying in China. I
guess I would really like to figure out the easiest/cheapest way to stay in China for the longest
time possible. Anyways, thanks again for your help!










bianfuxia -

My post provides some recent information for you to consider about alternative private schools in
Beijing. There are tonnes of them, of course. In the last week I went to trial classes at 4 of
them and have signed up for a month at Frontiers. Read on to find out why. It's all anecdotal of
course but you might find it helpful.

I'm an "upper elementary" student. I did a half-assed semester at the BLCU which in retrospect
provided a much better basis than I thought it would. But I'm hardly the world's most diligent
student so that's where I am.

The biggest conclusion I made is that the best thing to do is TRY before you BUY - for me, almost
everything depends on the individual teacher. His/her teaching method and ability to explain
things clearly is critical. I chose Frontiers on this basis even though it wasn't the cheapest.
Second most important factor for me is the level of the other students. Ideally I want to be in
the upper 50%, so the class pace is fast enough, not too fast, but I don't feel dragged down by
the slower classmates (or that I am holding everyone else up). Third would be the text book they
use. Only fourth, for me, comes price (assuming the options are all within what I can afford - I
ruled out a few on the basis of price alone).

School: Canjie Mandarin School.

Location: Heng'an Building, South of the Zhaolong Hotel, 6591 0933. A long walk from Dong Si Shi
Tiao subway.

Advertising offers: Group classes at all levels, all subjects. They have a maximum of 5 per group.

Price: 30 rmb per 50 minutes. Each class is composed of 2 x 50 minutes. There's also an option to
take 'super small classes' (2 people) for 840Y per month. Private classes: 70Y per hour.

CLASS: I attended a class which had only one other participant (a second person was absent). The
teacher meant well but wasn't very good at explaining things - when the other guy asked her some
questions she really struggled to communicate. They use a terrible book there, with a lot of
philosophical kind of texts (rather than more "every-day" kind of stuff) . OK for some, but not
what I am after just yet.

The level was actually a bit high for me, and I struggled to keep up. They had nothing to offer at
that time at my actual level, other than "take a private class".

Admin: Were attentive and responsive.

School: Juncheng School of Linguistics

Location: Two branches. One in Wangjing, the other at the East Road of Beijing Railway Station.
The walk from the subway was pretty seedy.

Advertising offers: group classes at all levels, all subjects. They have a maximum of 10 per group.

Price: Regular Chinese courses: 3,150Y Monday-Friday, 3 hours per day per 3 months. There's visa
assistance, and will give accommodation assistance. HSK courses 1,200Y per month, Monday to Friday
13:30-15:30. Private classes 80Y per hour (at the school)

There's a one time registration fee of 100Y. To do a one-month upper elementary course there would
have been 800Y.

CLASS: I took two classes here, both supposedly upper elementary but one was further along in the
text book than the other. The first, lower, class had a fantastic teacher but after 2 hours in the
class it was clear that I was a bit more advanced than both the material and the class mates. It's
a shame, because the teacher had an excellent, clear way of speaking, she could explain things in
Chinese and only resorted to her excellent English when absolutely necessary. The book was much
better - stupidly I didn't write down which books were used - but it was one that is commonly seen
around and perfectly acceptable as far as these books go (in that they are generally pretty much
the same). That class had quite a multicultural mix - Polish, Russian, Turkish, Korean and I would
have been classmate number 8 if I'd stayed.

I did the next class up and the teacher was quite good but not as stand-out as the first one. If I
could have had the first teacher and the second class, I probably would have stayed there. But the
second class was a bit less fun. Also, it was only Korean and Japanese class-mates, which for me
is difficult because I find (generally speaking) their Chinese a little more difficult to
understand due to pronunciation issues. The teacher spent a lot of the class time correcting them
on basic sounds which was going to get pretty annoying pretty quickly.

Ultimately I decided against this school because I couldn't find the right mix of teacher, level
and classmates. If I was a little less advanced, I would have taken the lower class in a
heartbeat. This school has a nice environment and is well priced.

Admin: Quite helpful and accommodating. They were patient and let me sit in on 2 classes.

School: Frontiers

Location: Dongzhimen and Jianguomen.

Advertising offers: Courses designed for all levels, from beginner to advanced, as well as
specialised courses in business Chinese, HSK, current events etc.

Price: 1470Y for 42 hours. (payment done as a package) Private classes are 80Y per hour.

I went to the Jianguomen branch and very quickly found out that they had no classes at all. The
branch is new so they have no students yet. They asked their manager if they could set up a
beginning/intermediate class and they said: pay for private class then roll them over when some
more students enrol'...

At Dongzhimen things were much better. I tried 2 classes, again, and found that the lower level
class, which had only 2 other students, was burdened with a teacher of poor quality. An example:
we were studying the use of "zheng hao" meaning "precisely or exactly", as in when you give the
shop assistant exactly the correct money and they say "zheng hao". The teacher had a lot of
difficulty explaining this. She had made some exercises for us to fill out. One said: "A: You're
on time today!" "B: Yes, I took the subway...". After some confusion at our proposed answers she
told us she'd designed the answer to say "Yes I took the subway and when i arrived I saw a friend
and he has a car so he offered me a lift and that's how I got here "zheng hao" at 2pm". (rough
translation of course). Rather convoluted, no? I also felt that the other classmates reverted to
English too much, probably because they had trouble understanding the teacher in Chinese. There
were a lot of discussions along the lines of "what is it, how does this work?" etc.

So that afternoon I took the more advanced class which was right about the correct level for me.
It has 3 other students, one less advanced, one about the same, and one a bit higher. The teacher
is excellent, nearly as good as the mythically fantastic one from the other school. He has solid
English but is adept at explaining things in Chinese and the class is conducted almost exclusively
in that.

It's more expensive here, 1470 for 42 hrs broken down into 9 hrs per week spread over 3 days/wk,
but for me it was within budget and therefore the best choice, based on the teacher-students-level
equation.

Admin: Very helpful. Even cut me a discount on the basis that I would miss the 2 last classes
because I have to leave the country before my month's package ends.

Di Qiu Cun

There's lots of info about DQC but I also tried there.

Basically I found the teachers to be ok, probably average compared to the others I've seen. This
time around, my class sizes were good - only about 5. Other times I've tried there, though, I've
been crammed in with 20 other students for a kouyu class which isn't ideal. I might have
perservered with the smaller class this time around except that Wudaokou is quite a way from where
I live. Plus, I don't like the heavy smoke environment that pervades the building! Still, there is
no denying that DQC offers a huge range of classes and time slots and the teachers generally seem
competent.










ffswoo -

Thanks for the reviews, bianfuxia. About your advice to try before you buy - do most private
schools allow a free trial lesson?










bdffrnt66 -

Hi Bianfuxia, thanks for the info on the other schools. I will be checking them out when I´m
there, although my preference still seems to go to Di Qiu Cun (Global Village) because of wide
choice/flexibility/price.

For those of you following this thread because of the visa situation when studying at a private
school: as mentioned in an earlier post, I had a Chinese friend of mine call Global Village, and
it was confirmed that they can not give you an invitation letter to apply for an F-visa abroad,
and they can not help you with changing an L-visa into an F-visa. I probably will be taking Long
Pan´s advice and just use a visa agency. My Chinese friend found the admin people at Global
Village rude, and unwilling to get into details over the phone regarding costs of extending visas
etc...Will be continued!










Jekai -

I've been watching this thread hoping for good news about getting a student visa (I assume you
mean student X visa, an F is a business visa) to study at Global Village as I also want to come
here for a year, but it looks like no luck.

Do any private schools in Beijing have the ability to grant X visas, or just universities? Also,
do agencies have some sort of special pull to get better visas than I can on my own through the
embassy? This is all very confusing and was easier last summer when I didn't need more than a
tourist visa.










bdffrnt66 -

Hi Jekai! Apparently, an X visa is for students studying for more than 6 months, and an F-visa is
either for business OR for short term students (less than 6 months). But Global Village is not
allowed to issue the "invitation letter" which is needed to apply for an F or an X visa...I have
not yet figured out for sure if there are other private schools that can issue it, but I´m
getting the impression it´s only the universities that can. Really seems that, if you want to
tudy at a private school, the best is to use the visa agencies, who have the necessary guangxi to
pull things through.










yonitabonita -

Yes most schools allow you to try before you buy. But usually just one class though.

The staff at Diqiucun are notoriously rude. They're paid an absolute pittance and have no
incentive to be helpful. I'm referring to the people at the front desk, not the teachers. My
teachers are nice and I suppose that's what counts.

As for visas, only universities as far as I know are able to help you with X visas. Private
schools can't. Several staff at the BLCU, Diqiucun were consistent on this point.

I went through this process when I dropped out of the BLCU last year. The end result was that I
went to HK and switched to a F visa. I went to HK again in February for a 'visa' holiday. Bit of a
hassle, but beyond that first extension which must be done overseas (or HK), additional extensions
can be done in Beijing.

hope this helps.

y










Long Pan -

See here for more info on the agency in Wudaokou for L visa extension (up to one year)












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