[yuck39]

Not sure if OP is the author but my love of learning languages was also unlocked through Esperanto when I was a teenager.

Its possible that my journey has been a bit longer, I did eventually get around to studying Mandarin Chinese, From 2016 until present day I still study an hour every day. I also was able to live in China for a year which was a great help.

Going from Esperanto, a language designed as a second language, to Chinese, one that is absolutely not, is like going from Ruby on Rails development to writing a web server in Assembly. There is so much more practice and rote memorization required to attain any level of fluency.

After over 7 years of study I still speak with an accent and have trouble communicating on some topics. But at this point I can read just about anything which was always my primary goal :).