Hi, Matthew,
If you would like to join a program where you can work on Chinese linguistics, and if you really want to go to Asia (I think you can do just fine in the US), I would highly recommend a program in Hong Kong (CUHK, CityU, PolyU, maybe HKU, depending on your interests and approach) over any program in China. Unless you want to work on Chinese historical phonology (which has a totally different approach from modern linguistics) or psycholinguistics of Chinese (in psychology departments), I don't think there are good places in mainland China to do linguistics, especially if you want to prepare for a PhD in the future. Furthermore, MPhil in Hong Kong is fully funded by the government, and applicants outside of Asia are highly welcomed. Taiwan and Singapore, on the other hand, should be great places to learn Chinese linguistics too.