Mandarin isn't strictly necessary to live in China. Plenty of my laowai colleagues only knew a few words and got along just fine in a tier one Beijing, which admittedly is a bit behind Shanghai and Shenzhen.
The only thing that really drove us out was the pollution (a huge problem in Beijing that is supposedly finally getting better).
Given the US visa policy, as bad as it is, still attracts far more many foreigners than China, at least. More than most countries actually even by per capita measures.
> Mandarin isn't strictly necessary to live in China
Basic question: what do you do in China for browsing, emails and maps? I suppose Google doesn't work there and all the local services would be in Mandarin, no? When I travel I use Google search, emails, maps extensively but I have no clue what would I do in China. Also FB and Twitter also likely won't be accessible. So how do I even keep touch with folks outside China, especially if I don't know Mandarin?
Many foreigners have VPNs, but many do not. They aren't the easiest thing to set up, and they often close shop a few weeks after you pay a yearly subscription fee.
Email: I use outlook.com, but I shut my gmail account long before gmail was blocked. I'm weird.
maps: Apple Maps on an iphone works well enough. Not sure if gmaps on Android works or not. Many Google services still work even if a few are blocked.
Browsing: many websites work in China, but I also had full internet access at work for when I needed it, so Facebooking family was easy enough, I just didn't use it at night when I was at home...I didn't miss it.
Its definitely isolating, but not incredibly so. If you are addicted to social media, this can even help you become unaddicted, weird therapy for sure :)
Apple maps works perfectly fine in China. I’m not sure what it’s like for android users.
It includes transit, at least for Beijing, see https://www.apple.com/ios/feature-availability/. I always took a taxi though so that wasn’t very important to me, so I used mostly the didi dache app.
For crying out loud, even using github based services like 'go get' or homebrew without proxies is a real pain in the arse, stop defending your 'it's not that bad' view cos it is.
Get a SIM card from Project Fi (by Google), which auto-VPN's for you, and you can use everything (FB, Twitter, etc.) you're used to using. Bring a Chromebook and use your phone to provide Internet for your Chromebook.
Install Didi so you can hail a ride. Install WeChat and some of the mini apps so that you can order Starbucks without waiting in line. Since you probably don't have a Chinese bank account, find a local (possibly even a hotel concierge) who is willing to take cash from you and send you some RMB into your WeChat account so you can pay vendors, including restaurant bills, train tickets, farmer's markets, and the guy on the street corner selling oranges.
I spent a couple hours setting up an OpenVPN server on AWS EC2 nano instance so it's going to be completely free for the first year. Speed is not great but enough to watch HD youtube videos, etc. I know have unrestricted internet on both my phone and macbook.
For a long while shadowsocks/shadowsocksr (the latter being more actively developed) has been preferred way to bypass the GFW although what works is constantly changing. This was an interesting write up passed a couple years ago where a dev tries out various methods for bypass on a China trip: http://blog.zorinaq.com/my-experience-with-the-great-firewal...
I'm moving to China in a week for graduate school and have been asking myself many of these questions :)
In past trips to China, VPN services--specially Express VPN--allowed me to easily bypass the Great Firewall. That unlocks Twitter, FB, Google services, etc.
That being said, many services don't have a great experience in China. For example, Google Maps doesn't offer public transit or driving instructions. In these cases, using the chinese-based app (Du Maps) is just far better.
Even that depends. A (young educated) Chinese can speak better English than a Laowai could probably ever speak Chinese. Plenty of foreigners work exec positions in Chinese companies with only very basic mandarin.
Anyone can learn how to say 你好are you? But seriously, getting basic taxi cab mandarin down in 6 months is pretty easy. Heck, when I did it it was much harder since real beijingers back then had thick 儿 accents.
You definitely don't need 大山-level mandarin to do business in china these days.
Yeah but it's still not honest to say you don't need to learn Chinese at all. I would say that you will need atleast 6 months to be able to live normally, 12 months to get respect in business meetings, 3-4 years to be understood and make it a comp. advantage.And I'm not talking about 上海。
I'm always shocked when I visit shanghai and the taxi drivers can actually speak English. Nothing like that ever happens in Beijing.
Plenty of foreigners work in China having much less than 6 months of Chinese. Most of them weren't even at my level. They still got by. Business meetings held with foreigners are usually in English anyways, it is only the old guard (Xi's generation) that can't English very well. And those people aren't so common in tech.
My winning combination for China: Google Fi (unrestricted access to real Internet), Google Translate, Didi. Most places have pictures for food so I just play the pointing game, but it would be difficult if you were a picky eater.
After seeing Mark Zuckerberg's "Chinese ability" I have less respect for him than before. I don't think 12 months cuts it. Maybe gives you a cute factor, yes. I would think respect is independent of language ability, unless you are taking language ability as your main selling point as a person. I'm sure Bill Gates is both respected in China, and effective, whether he speaks any Chinese or not. It all depends on the circumstances.
Considering that there are over 300 million, yes million, people in China who do not speak Mandarin, I'd say yes one could get by. I'd even venture to say many of these 300 million people also do business in China. But yeah, I know what you meant.
> Considering that there are over 300 million, yes million, people in China who do not speak Mandarin
I don't think your numbers are right. Tibet has 4 million population. Xinjiang has 20 million, among which 50% are Han. Those are only 2 provinces where I can think of that doesn't require Mandarin to get by in certain area.
The rest of China, at least, could understand Mandarin without problems.
You're just going by intuition, which can be misleading.
Guangdong province alone is 100 million people. Some of whom are Mandarin speakers (1st or 2nd or 2nd+ language). But many are not, not even as 2nd or 2nd+ language speakers. And their predominant language is Cantonese. Many people grew up before mandatory Mandarin education was instituted. There's a similar situation in other huge provinces all around China, especially southern China.
I would say assuming people from Guangdong province, and majority of them don't speak Mandarin is an exaggeration to great extent. Of course they do, it is imperfect with heavy accent. But I won't go that far claiming they don't speak Mandarin, as if saying all English speakers in India don't count, that is just hilarious.
It is definitely your claim about the 300 million Chinese that they don't speak Mandarin, that is why the whole conversation happens. Otherwise, it won't add up, even assume majority of Guangdong province don't speak Mandarin at all.
If you mean that these 300 million do not have Chinese as the first language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_China then it would be correct. But every kid growing up in China has to learn Chinese in school (plus TV etc).
Wrong. A lot of people grew up before this started. And no, I removed the Mandarin-as-an-additional-language people from the number already. (Mandarin 1st + Mandarin as a 2nd or 3rd languages speakers) = 1.1 billion. Population of China, 1.4 billion. 1.4 billion minus 1.1 billion is 300 million.
The only thing that really drove us out was the pollution (a huge problem in Beijing that is supposedly finally getting better).
Given the US visa policy, as bad as it is, still attracts far more many foreigners than China, at least. More than most countries actually even by per capita measures.