Submitted by ciurce on
I am IKUZE ANGE CHALLOM, Chinesename is 叶星(ye xing) and am about 1year and half studying Chinese language.
There is one saying that says: " If you want to know something new you only have towork hard, love it and be patient." Actually, in accordance to this saying I have started and am currently studying Chinese. My journey with Chinese started when I admitted to university of Rwanda-Busogo campus in November 2018. I met many challenges but I had this thirst of knowing Chinese regardless of whatever it'd take.
Before I start to learn Chinese, I had some knowledge about China like the fact that itspopulation is about 1.4 billion according to 2018 data that made China mostpopulated country in World, density of 9.6 million square kilometers. In highschool, we learnt Chinese revolution and geographical features of china, I also knew famous film actors like Jackie Chan and also Shanghai as one of great city in the world, but besides that I hadn’t any basic knowledge about this Chinese language.
I remember well, it was on Monday of 19th November 2018 around six o'clock when I started a journey of learning Chinese with my one and only teacher ye, just in the beginning, we were many students over one hundred. Our teacher started by introducing China to us, I went back home knowing some Chinese word like “ni hao” , “xiexie”and other basic words. As days went by, I started to know how to read initialsand finals. At that time I was thinking that Chinese language was easy but when we got to study Chinese characters I saw how hard Chinese really is. Even my teacher can witness this. I was going to give up studying Chinese because not only Chinese was hard but also I was having lectures in my college that I have had to cover.
Let me take this opportunity to thank my teacher ye. She is the one who made me understand how great studying Chinese is, benefits and opportunities over there in learning Chinese. I am not recognizing well the day, she made a video-call on WeChat with one of her old student who is now in China. We made had a great conversation and from that day I started to learn Chinese with all my heart and efforts, with the dream that one day I will go to China in one way or another.
In March 2019 I was on level of doing HSK level 2. Iattended the exam and I got first score in HSK level 2 with 190 scores out of 200. This increased my hard working whereby I started every night before sleeping write 100 Chinese character, fortunately I got a chance of participating in 2019 Chinese bridge competition, at that time I was only about 3 months studying Chinese. My journey continued in learning more and more Chinese to the point that our teacher started to teach us some Chinese cultural songs and their events such as Taiji(taichi) and many other different songs like my most favorite song and so much more. In this journey I can't forget the event of 2019春节 (ChineseSpring Festival) in Kigali convention center. It was my first to get there and by then, I felt like because of Chinese, I could certainly go anywhere.
IKUZE Ange Challom and his teacher with his classmates, KCC, 2019
I can't hesitate to say that 2019 year had been very fruitful. After ending my lectures in August, I attended 2019 Chinese camp at Confucius Institute where my Chinese level increased too much, but at Kigali the life was so hard where by every day I used to walk around 1hour and half from where I had to rent a house to get to Confucius Institute, which means I used to take 3 hours walking for coming backand forth. My life in Kigali learning Chinese is another chapter that I can write a book on. The Chinese camp increased a lot my Chinese linguistic skillsand got me to pass December 2019 HSK level 3 with 295 scores out of 300.
In this current year 2020, I started it having many plans but unfortunately Covd-19 destroyed it, but even though I am at home, I am still learning Chinese, writing Chinese characters and also our teacher tries her best giving us online classes. I am hoping to continue studying Chinese until classes in person begin and keepgoing.
Lastly, as university of Rwanda student, let me take this opportunity to say a warmly thank you to all Chinese teachers in Confucius Institute for your help that made me capable of speaking Chinese. I can’t forget to thank also my classmates for their challenges that always help me to improve my spirit of learning Chinese. I am still working hard to make my dreams come true.
作者简介：IKUZE Ange Challom（中文姓名：叶星），卢旺达大学农业学院学生，2018级孔子学院学员，第十九届“汉语桥”世界大学生中文比赛卢旺达赛区最佳人气奖获得者。