A couple of accounts vouching for the comparative simplicity of spoken Chinese:

Language Log (2014): [1] "Chinese is the easiest language I ever learned to speak, but the writing system is by far the hardest I've ever had to grapple with."

Idlewords (2011) [2]: "Don't fall for the bait and switch with Chinese or Japanese! They might tempt you with an exotic writing system, but after a few months you find out that the underlying language is pretty vanilla, and meanwhile there is a stack of three thousand flash cards standing in between you and the ability to skim a newspaper."

[1] http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=11109

[2] https://idlewords.com/2011/08/why_arabic_is_terrific.htm