Our trip to Shanghai: Finding a tutor to learn Chinese

Having secured a summer camp for Elena and Pablo in Shanghai, Cristina and I were looking to find a tutor so that we could make progress during the two weeks there. We found Gloria Li.



Gloria was a great teacher and we had a lot of fun together. We spent 2 hours in the morning practicing our Chinese. Gloria also helped us better understand Chinese culture. She shared with us anecdotes about Shanghai, its people and about daily life there. And we were lucky enough to taste her amazing food, including her homemade dumplings. She wrote a great book to learn Chinese which we recommend: “You can speak Chinese”.

Here are a few simple tips to find a tutor in Shanghai to learn Chinese, if you do not live in Shanghai:

1. Go through online classifieds. classifieds.chinadaily.com has several teachers looking to give Chinese lessons
2. Ask friends for recommendations
3. Do a free lesson via Skype to see which teacher is the right fit
4. Commit to a first lesson once in Shangai to evaluate of you have a good time.

We certainly had a great time. Thank you to Gloria who had a lot of patience and helped us make some progress!