I struggled for 2 years to study Chinese here in Taiwan. [...] I started reading the Bible every day I, too, went to Taiwan when I began learning Chinese. It w

I struggled for 2 years to study Chinese here in Taiwan. [...] I started reading the Bible every day I, too, went to Taiwan when I began learning Chinese. It was very interesting, but ultimately a waste of time for anything except visiting the lovely museums, developing an early (in my Chinese linguistic education) feel for the transition between traditional and simplified Chinese characters, and the political reality of Taiwan's steadfast refusal to accept communist pinyin - a clearly and embarrassingly superior romanization system to anything Taiwan's academics could ever muster. What I later learned (on the mainland) was that speaking to a wide variety of people with a wide variety of accents about a wide variety of every day matters and things of interest was the more efficient way to learn, but also learn to understand and be understood both verbally and in writing. Of the 1.4 billion people in mainland China, over sixteen years I've met perhaps ten who gave a damn about the bible, and nine out of ten were clearly and literally impoverished.[0] I would wager that this is the source of your issues: frankly, nobody cares. You are learning a vocabulary without practical community or utility. It may be very important to you, and perhaps Taiwan has some happening churches, but in the context of Chinese language it's totally irrelevant to almost everyone. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice_Christian https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice_Christian