I think the tones are what makes it a hard language to pick up through listening; the subtleties of the same sounds in different pitches is hard to distinguish if it’s not part of your native language.

I was reading about the honorifics because a character tells another one that she doesn’t have to use them with him and I was wondering if they were similar to Japanese honorifics, which I vaguely know from the minuscule amount of anime I’ve watched, and it said in the wiki article that they aren’t used very much anymore in modern China, but I guess they were in the 1930s, which goes along with what you’re saying about the language differences based on the era.

I watched an Italian show once set in a department store in the 50s and random people kept being called Dottore So and So, which, depending on who subtitled the episodes would either get translated as ‘Mr So and So’ or ‘Dr. So and So’ and it turns out that any one who has a university degree in Italy can use the title of doctor, so it was a sign of the characters’ education level, but the nuance is lost in English. Those sorts of things are really interesting when consuming foreign media. They tickle me.