Submitted by ciurce on
My name is Mugisha Adalbert, my Chinese name is Lú Wénjié (卢文杰). I am learning Chinese language from Confucius Institute, University of Rwanda (CIUR), Kigali campus, I am in Level one, evening program.
Well, my story started early 1990, when I saw Chinese men in my village building black roads and strong bridges, I was always curious to see people who speaks a language that nobody understand, they used to have interpreters or use gestures sign to communicate with men at the construction site. My curiosity about China and Chinese language never goes to sleep, but kept growing so much, the time I was able to read in French and English, I was wondering myself how everything is made in China?
After high school, I have developed a strong desire to read about China development, how it has become worldwide superpower, leading in international market with strong leadership.
I have started having dreams to visit China one day in future, after my undergraduate studies, I used to check the label of everything at home to make sure that it was made in China. I couldn’t imagine how a single country can supply everything worldwide: clothes, shoes, electronics, various spares, machinery, household items, I kept dreaming traveling to China with limited probability to have my dream come true, this situation made me anxious, after watching Jacky Chan, Jet Lee movies multiple times, reading more books with special intention to China. I remember during 2000 when Internet was accessible in cyber café, I used to visit China online admiring beautiful infrastructure and growth of China in terms of leading market.
Opportunity always comes looking for prepared mind, only last year, September 2019; my dream becomes true and possible, when I parched my bags and fly to Beijing for 25 days.
Mugisha Adalbert visited different manufacturers: Noodles, Tesla, drone & missile factory
Since 2000 I had a dream that one day I will be able to speak Chinese language, but still I could not figure it out for sure. 25 days I have spent in China I have realized and strongly decide that it’s obviously tremendous important to learn Chinese language by all means, back in Rwanda, I was directed to Confucius Institute.
Without any hesitation or delay, I have registered on January 13, 2020. Let alone, due to outbreak of Coronavirus, Covid-19; we had to suspended offline classrooms but shifted to online classes, our teachers are expert in field of teaching language, very patient with us, very kind, encouraging everyone to perform well and they try to adopt a common learning mechanism for everyone in class.
People have heard so many different stories about Chinese language; some says that it is difficult to learn with sophisticated characters some says it is easy but they don’t have time to goand learn more than 3000 characters in form of pictograph and ideograms, nevertheless there is a Chinese saying that says that “ the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”–Laozi, beside various perception and multiple excuses, nothing is easy and nothing is hard when someone is determined to achieve his / her dreams, compare to other languages like French or English, Chinese language is easy to learn when you set appropriate method of learning according to personal situation, everyone will share personal experience but for me I have admired especially grammatical simplicity in Chinese language, there is no verbs conjugation, there is no tenses, there is no grammatical gender to classify noun compared to French, English and other languages, Chinese language is very simple, look at how every character tells a particularly story, whereby everyone is allowed to create his / her own story while learning how to write Chinese characters.
Even though, I am just at the beginning, I am not scared or discouraged by a number of people who have dropped out after some few days or different negative perception, but I am determined to learn and be able to express myself during my second trip to Beijing without having interpreter.
I have realized that people have always more excuses when it’s about starting a project that requires serious commitment; I had to reset my time and reschedule my priorities.
Generally speaking there are many reasons why we have to learn Chinese language, it’s encompasses so many opportunities for these who understand today’s business direction, it’s the second language spoken worldwide; China is economically superpower also number one in terms of manufacturer production and procurement for all sectors of life.
I would like to encourage everyone who was a victim on any kind of discouragement to never listen again any kind of negative stories because we are all different and we are able to accomplish different great things.
作者简介：Mugisha Adalbert（中文姓名：卢文杰），卢旺达大学孔子学院2020级学员，学习汉语1个月。