Submitted by ciurce on
I’m called MUKESHIMANA Jackson and my Chinese name is Tian Yong (田勇). Recently I am studying at GSO de BUTARE (G.S.O.B) in senior six. Now it’s been around 2years and a half when I first started to study Chinese language.
Before I started to learn Chinese language on my first time I really had heard about it before. Because when I was young I mostly like to watch the Chinese movies especially, those of Karate and Kung Fu movies and at that time I was big fan of Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee due to their Excellent performance in their movies, but even if I loved so much to watch their movies I wasn’t able even to understand little on what they are discussing about, only watching actions only I remember that one time I asked one of my colleague that is there anyone who can know Chinese language when He/She is not from China? And he replied to me that he doesn’ t know, this makes me to ask myself the same question more time.
Later, I got a chance to attend my upper level courses at G.S.O.B and I got to know that we will even study Chinese language, I was very happy after knowing that, because it was one of my wish when I was very young, of studying Chinese language one time.
I remembered the first time on the entry of our first Chinese teacher when I saw every classmate there was a smile on their face which really shows that everybody was happy due to knowing that they are going to study something new for their first time especially Chinese language, that time we learnt some Chinese greetings and some vocabularies ended when I was able to pronounce well, greeting like “ni hao” and other Chinese greetings.
But when I first started to write Chinese characters I was thinking that may be in learning Chinese language there are alphabets that you have to follow as it is in writing English and when I asked that to our Chinese teacher She told me that it is not the same in writing Chinese language because every word has, it’s own particularity in writing it, as me I used to think that if they are few alphabets it would be more easy for me when I’m writing it and that answer she gave to me made me thinking that learning Chinese is very hard, especially writing Chinese characters, as I got to know that they are a lot of Chinese characters in Chinese language.
Then we continued like that to study Chinese where afterwards we started to learnsome Chinese songs, Chinese tongue twisters, other Chinese vocabularies and also the way of introducing ourselves in Chinese language.
Our teacher had also shown us all the opportunities you can get through learning Chinese language and that made me to understand that if I work hard I can get brighter future through studying Chinese language as I got to know that there are a lot of benefits anyone can enjoy through studying it. But the problem was the short period of time we used to get Chinese language class at our school, because we only have one period of 40 minutes in whole week of studying Chinese language which used to limit us from getting to know more Chinese language vocabularies and other necessary knowledge in Chinese language that was one of the main challenge that I Faced and even to others.
Another challenge was that one of not being easy for me to try to learn Chinese very hard when combining it with other sciences courses that I had to follow, where even some of my classmate used to tell me that studying Chinese for me will result in getting poor marks in class, because they were looking only on the long period of time I took everyday to learn Chinese language.
The truth was, I ended up with excellence marks in my class even if I used to take all that time for learning Chinese. That was year of 2018 but in the big holiday of November 2018 it was when I decided to download some Chinese language apps when I was at home, those apps had really helped me a lot in improving my pronunciation and also to know more other vocabularies. Then after I remember it was in March 2019 when our Chinese teachers at G.S.O.B posted an announcement about Chinese Bridge Competition, mainly was to announce the selection that was to take place in order to choose two best students from our school who were going to attend Chinese Bridge Competition in June 2019 on National level when representing G.S.O.B in that competition, and I got the chance to be among two students who were selected, that pushed me alot to work hard so that I can be the winner but in that competition and it ended up when I managed to get the Third position out of 10 competitors that I was competing with.
After coming from that competition I did not stop because at that time, it is where I decided to start preparing to do HSK exam for my first time and that time I thought that I will start on HSK Level 3 even if it was for my first time, also it was not easy for me due to being for my first time trying to do HSK exam also at that time I even knew to write only few Chinese characters. This makes me to try to write many other Chinese characters every day so that I canbe able to pass HSK exam, later I attended Chinese camp at Confucius Institute November 2019 at Kigali while still preparing for my HSK exam.
My home is in Northern province, I came to live in Kigali to one of my relatives in order to follow my studies easily even if I always walk 40 minutes every day in order to reach at Confucius Institute.
Confucius Institute is where my Chinese language level got increased innoticeable way, includes on my listening, speaking and writing knowledge got increased directly compared to my previous period level that helped a lot me to pass December 2019 HSK3 exam with 268 scores out of 300. I was very happy for me to be able to get that score on my first time doing HSK exam this year of 2020, I started it studying Chinese at my school but also still preparing for my next HSK4 exam, even now when I am home, I am still learning Chinese every day using my HSK document and also through some prepared online videos.
Lastly, I can’t finish without thanking all Chinese teachers in Confucius Institute who help a lot me to improve my level in Chinese language and to thank also all people who motivate me just to go on, I am also still working hard in order to achieve my dream one day of getting brighter future through learning Chinese language.
MUKESHIMANA Jackson 录制的为中国加油视频截图
作者简介：MUKESHIMANA Jackson（中文姓名：田勇），卢旺达南部省布塔雷中学六年级学生。2018年开始在学校学习汉语，2020年疫情停课期间仍坚持学习，并参加了第十三届“汉语桥”世界中学生中文比赛卢旺达赛区比赛，获得最佳人气奖。