普通话

Devil's Chinese language.

I'll tell step by step.

In one of the institutes of Tyumen State university free lessons of Chinese are held. Having had considered all the drawbacks of free study I made my mind to attend the lessons. There were 2 meetings in order to make decision about timetable when we met our lovely teacher - Xu Zhong Lian. At 1st lesson (perhaps, 16.09) there wasn't room to swing a cat and were even 2 boys (oh, unexpectedness). After the second lesson Xu-laoshi (well, to be honest, we got used to call him simply Zhong Lian but I know it's unceremoniously) gave us as a homework a task to learn some simple Chinese characters by heart. Then the row of Chinese learners thinned out.

After some time the X day came. Xu-laoshi informed the students that he was going to China for a month and another teacher would substitute for him - Teng Zhou Bao. The new teacher we couldn't and can't (he still teaches us) call with the name. He is so different to Xu-laoshi!

Xu-laoshi masters Chinese (I adore his enunciation *_*) and has enough good Russian to discuss with us; Teng-laoshi knows Chinese, English and Russian but his Russian is sooo poor... I'd like him to explain all the rules and meanings in English. Xu-laoshi seems to be not so stricter but Teng-laoshi isn't a dragon, nevertheless.  And there's no secret that Xu-laoshi looks so young but Teng-laoshi is "old battle-scarred and weather-worn".

At the last lesson there were only 7 students (including me). I'm satisfied :D there're only those who really wants to study the language. Also some people can leave the lessons after the tests to be. Though it seems to be nothing fearful after studying Japanese for me x) the majority of characters used in Chinese of course differ from Japanese ones but the grammar is similar to European languages.

Small statistics (people):
enrolling for the study - 25+
1st Xu-laoshi lesson - 20+
last Xu-laoshi lesson - 15
1st Teng-laoshi lesson - 10-12
recent Teng-laoshi lesson - 7