Submitted by ciurce on
My Rwandan name is Mucyo Hubert and my Chinese name is 李一帆 (Li Yifan). I am a student of University of Rwanda, College of Education(UR-CE) in Language Department.
I started to learn Chinese in November 2018 when I attended the university. When I finished high school in 2016 I didn’t make it to have a scholarship to attend the university for the first year. During that period, I heard of studying Chinese from my high school classmates who were studying Chinese at their campuses. They said learning Chinese was not really easy but it was the great opportunity for its learners as you can get scholarship to go to study in China and good job related to Chinese language.
They used to speak a little Chinese to one another in my presence and I always found very excited to hear. That made me have a wish of knowing a little of it. Frankly speaking, apart from those opportunities from learning Chinese, I am naturally interested in learning languages as I did English, French and Kinyarwanda(EFK) in high school and now I am doing French, English with Education(FEE) in University of Rwanda, College of Education.
Arriving at university, my first day in Chinese class was very amazing with new classmates. We were too many students that the class seems to be too small. The same belief was that at the beginning of Chinese class is always full of students but by the time goes on, many give up and few remain. That was true. After a couple of weeks, the class was too big according to the number of students in it. Many had already given up.
We continued to learn Chinese and I have found that learning Chinese was getting more interesting than I thought. Besides, it is not as difficult as they thought. May be if they had known and understood the Chinese idiom "万事开头很难"(every beginning is difficult) they should have not given up.
In the year of 2019, we gathered the Kigali Convention Center (KCC) to celebrate the Chinese new year festival called Spring Festival (春节). The ceremony was very wonderful as the Chinese people performed for everyone who was there. Undoubtedly, after enjoying the performance I came to realize that the Chinese culture is very interesting.
After four months of learning Chinese in march 2019, I attended level two exam (HSK 二级) and I scored 184 out of 200. Absolutely, that was a big motivation to me and I courageously went on studying Chinese till December the same year where I scored 294 out of 300 in level three exam (HSK 三级). From that day, I completely believed that Chinese language is the greatest opportunity that could completely change my life. That made me work hard and believed that I will even go to study abroad in China no matter what. I was supposed to attend level four exam (HSK 四级) but, unfortunately due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the exam was not carried out as we, students, are all home as one of the measures taken to prevent the spread ofthe virus.
Since the time we have arrived home from school, I never spent even a day without learning Chinese and I have prepared the requirement to participate in 2020 Chinese Bridge competition held online even sthough I didn’t make it to be selected to join the competition. Today, I am working hard so that when we go back to school I will be ready enough to sit for HSK level 4 exam.
To sum up, depending on what I have achieved during this long journey of studying Chinese with my hard working I obviously believe that learning Chinese is a special weapon to change my future by making my dreams come true. Undoubtedly, after my graduation I am looking forward to go to study in China and to get a good job with the relation to Chinese language. This is the chance and opportunity to the youth of the whole world who have visions. In that case, I would like to thank the Confucius Institute and Chinese teachers for their inevitable hard work and cooperation. May the friendship and the cooperation between China and Rwanda live long and last forever.