When China's economy and technology develop rapidly, Chinese language is expected to be the next global business language.  But mastering it is by no means easy even you were in environment surrounded by Chinese, as a fresh graduate finds out.

I FIRST began to feel the China itch about three years ago, when my marketing lecturer pronounced it the next “New World Order”. Mysterious, unpredictable, and chaotic €” in short, a marketer’s nirvana €” Beijing beckoned like a dragon in waiting. And so began my journey eastward.

In September 2007, after extensive research, I signed up for a six-month course called Introduction to Chinese Language at Beijing Normal University (beijingshifandaxue). Not only was the university highly recommended, its campus was located just two ring roads from the Forbidden City.

The main library of the Beijing Normal University, where the sixth-month Introduction to Chinese Language course was held.

Even for a non-Chinese-speaker like me, arriving in Beijing during the wee hours of that September morning seemed like a piece of cake. Armed only with ni hao and xie xie, I was convinced that I was well on my way to mastering a language five centuries old.

On the first day, all new students had to sit for a placement test. Like Po in Kung Fu Panda, I reached for the sky ... and mastered Level Zero.

Half-expecting to be sent home, I was instead solemnly given a schedule that read: Classes start at 8am, five days a week. Weekends were reserved for mountains of homework and molehills of rest.

As the only Malaysian in my class, I stuck out among my Indonesian, Korean, American and Japanese classmates.

Our class was a combination of fresh graduates and working professionals taking a break from their career to learn a language which many expect to be the next global language in business.

We had three subjects to cover: Conversation (huihua), Listening (tingIi) and Reading & Writing (jingdu). By far, my biggest challenge was the last. For a Latin alphabet writer, the deconstruction of the rudiments of writing into pictograms and Byzantine rules was no joke for me €” and that’s not even including the grammar!

Our teachers (Iaoshi) demonstrated characteristic Chinese precision and tenacity. The homework was relentless, and speaking anything but Chinese was forbidden in the classroom. Then there was my most dreaded activity of all €” dictation (tingxie).

Every Monday morning at 8am, students would be called randomly to write a sentence in Chinese on the blackboard.

The sheer terror of embarrassment forced us to learn.

If you didn’t know how to write the word, you could write it in pinyin. The pinyin is a name for the system used to transliterate Chinese words into the Roman Alphabet

If you didn’t know the pinyin, God help you.

There were two major exams each semester €” the mid-term and final-term exams. Many, like me, found our mid-terms particularly stressful and difficult. It was our first foray into benchmarking our progress after three months.

It is said that the first three months are the most difficult when you’re learning a new language.

The human mind deconstructs the foundations of your native language, and reconstructs a new foundation with Chinese.

At times, this process crawls like a learner driver €” bunny-hopping and stalling as you go along. Sometimes you hit a brick wall €” the brain goes on strike and is unable to take on new words or recall the correct pronunciation.

Worse yet is the feeling of complete isolation you feel while trying to master the language, but unable to communicate with other Chinese people.

The only way through this barrier is to persevere, and continue to practise as much as possible. Eventually, the mental blocks melt away, and before you know it, you’re conversing in Chinese. Sure, a bit slowly and in a rudimentary fashion, but suddenly, people get what you’re saying and you become a language-functional person in China.

After six months of intense language and cultural immersion, the final triumph turned out to be a three-hour session of karaoke.

Upon graduation, my classmates and teachers celebrated with an elaborate hotpot (huoguo) dinner. Then we belted our hearts out to old Chinese classics €” a tribute to our success at learning the language. My defining moment came when I sang The Moon Represents my heart (yueliangdaibiaowodexin) by Teresa Teng without faltering.

At that moment, I knew I had achieved my goal, although it was just a small step in my quest to learn the Chinese language.