I had been itching to write this.
In early 2001, I was despatched to head the Design department of an American company in Shenzhen, China. So overnight, burnishing my proficiency in Chinese became mandatory.
In the first week, I bought a copy of the local newspaper to read and study. Gosh, I discovered that the simplified script was often radically different from the complex script that I learned in my primary school, and the PRC literary sophistication was so much higher.
I had to consult a dictionary (a daunting challenge in itself) for almost every other character, and worse, the explanations in the dictionary also required the use of a dictionary. Undeterred, I plodded on painstakingly.
Guess what? By the end of 2007 when my China assignment ended, I still had not finished reading that copy of the newspaper!