From a tin of tea to Chinese champion
A German student's story of transformation showcases how learning Mandarin opened new horizons and opportunities, culminating in a prestigious global victory, Li Yingxue reports.
During that difficult period, he returned to an interest that had first emerged years earlier — Chinese characters.
In 2021, Petersen enrolled at the University of Hamburg to study Sinology. Chinese was no longer simply a hobby. It became the beginning of a new plan.
His musical background also shaped the way Petersen learned Chinese.
To him, Chinese words resembled melodies, with tones marked by changes in pitch. Learning music, he says, had taught him how to remember sounds and replay them accurately in his mind.
He applied the same method to Chinese, putting sentences on an A-B loop and repeating them until the sounds flowed naturally.
After two years of study in Germany, Petersen came to China for the first time in 2023 for a one-month summer program at Henan Normal University. Although he had excelled in handwriting and dictation, everyday conversations quickly exposed a weakness.
"I could write every character people were saying, but when I listened, I was always half a beat behind," he recalls.
Back in Germany, he changed his approach. He spent less time copying characters and immersed himself in Chinese short videos, hiding the subtitles, guessing the meaning and then checking his understanding.
