The essay is mostly about the chinese writing system, which, indeed, is terrible. However, if you forget about reading/writing and focus on the language itself

The essay is mostly about the chinese writing system, which, indeed, is terrible. However, if you forget about reading/writing and focus on the language itself, it's a delight to learn. Mandarin is highly analytic, parsimonious and systematic. To indicate that something happened in the past, add "le" to the sentence. Compare that to any Indo-european language. There, you can literally write books about how to express past tense.