Speakers of Western languages find Chinese hard to learn. The most obvious reasons are its non-phonetic writing and the fact that word meaning depends on changes in vocal pitch (which makes it a little like singing).

The U.S. State Department estimates that 500 hours of instruction are needed to acquire a working knowledge of European languages ...

To understand China -- well, there's a lot to understand, but we have to start somewhere.

The first thing to know is that China is an ethnostate.

Mainland China, whose official name is the People's Republic of China, is dominated by a single ethnic group called the "Han." ...