Chinese. The very word sends chills down my spine. I always dread the days I have to endure such torture, such pain and mind-breaking numbness. The language is like a foul stench in a room, where everyone has no choice but to inhale it. Lessons are akin to mindless drivel, where glassy eyes stare blankly at the sheer incomprehensiveness of the language, despite the valiant efforts of the much-appreciated teachers.
Every lesson, papers filled with gibberish cloud our vision, proving a very effective cure for insomnia. Many of us, winded and aching from the psychological damage, simply give up on the subject, willing to stare with glazed eyes at the unrelenting barrage of writing exercises. To many of us, texts given to us were little more than pieces of paper, to be uselessly studied, and the contents that were supposed to edify us confound us instead.
We never understood the minutiae of the language, and for me it was significantly worse. To me, the Chinese language appears to be a warehouse of niceties covered with layers and layers of thick viscous dung, and I felt that we are only armed with a toothpick to chip away at the hardened peripheral of vague, hazy facts.
Every week, sentences and phrases of varying topics are shoved roughly down our throats, and despite our protests, we are expected to promptly retch up whatever had been stuffed previously into us whenever so needed. There is no gratification in the learning; and students are forever glancing wistfully at the outside while caged behind bars.