>>1045979
Shanghai over Beijing, any day of the week.

Beijing is a fucking shithole, Shanghai is wild, beautiful and completely nuts.

I really liked Taipei too, but SH is always going to be my second home.

Taipei is better for food though, I'll say that.

Bear in mind if you're going via a confucius institute, it doesn't include taiwan

>>1045984
I like Beijing, some areas of Beijing are really nice.
Also for standard mandarin, Beijing is better even though it is now fully filled by nongming (peasants) with disgusting accents.

>>1045984
i will most likely get a scholarship from my univeristy so i can go anywhere i want including taiwan.

I have that feeling that Taiwan is way more progressiv and open to foreigners than China. Is that true? Did you have any problems with the locals or did you just hangout with other freigners?

>>1046021
Most mainlanders are chill with foreigners. If you are polite and make an effort to speak the language they will welcome you. Perhaps you could have problems fully integrating into the culture but you won't be doing that as an exchange student anyway. Obv. you have some people who just straight up hate foreigners, but then those people exist in every country.

As for where to go, some things to consider:
Beijing has terrible air quality but the dialect will be closest to what you have studied. Some cool sights but nothing you can't see in a few days.
I haven't been to Taipei but I know it uses traditional characters, it's also going to be more expensive to travel to other parts of china from there.
Shanghai is more westernised (in parts, still shitty for the most part) and has better nightlife if you're into that. Some people will speak to you in the local dialect which could get confusing for an inexperienced speaker.

>>1045979
To me, Taiwan is a no brainer. You can experience Chinese culture but in a cleaner, open, free, democratic country.

>>1046043

This.

While I was in mainland china I met some Taiwanese people who said Taiwan was much nicer.

However I'd say that Beijing is probably more interesting. But It depends on how long you intend to stay there.

If more than two weeks I'd do Taipei
If less than two weeks I'd do Beijing.
I didn't find shanghai all that interesting to be honest.

go with Taiwan. they are more open to foreigners, and Taiwan isn't a total shithole with a censored slow internet, pollution and bad food

there is also no foreign novelty left in shanghai or beijing anymore, girls don't give a shit anymore because there are tons of foreigners.

>>1046090
i will stay for at least half a year or one year

>>1046167
isnt Taibei also full of foreigners?

>>1046006
Yeah SH isn't the best for super-standard mandarin.

I've heard good things about going to Harbin for mandarin, actually, supposed to be incredibly standard, but dat fucking cold mang

>>1046033
>Some people will speak to you in the local dialect which could get confusing for an inexperienced speaker.

Rare, but it does happen.

I can only remember about two people while I was there that spoke no mandarin, so we had to kind of half communicate- me through mandarin, them through shanghainese. It's literally a different language.

Unless you're in the Old City it's not an issue though, even most young Shanghai people can't speak Shanghainese these days thanks to the government promoting Mandarin

I'm a big fan of Beijing. It's dirty and the air sucks but there's lots of stuff to do

I'd go with Taipei as you're going for a longer time than just a few weeks. I'm in Taipei now, it's much nicer than the mainland, doesn't smell like shit, people are super nice and speak surprisingly good english, and it's much more civilized.

China is interesting to visit but I'd much rather live in Taiwan.