It'd been a minute since I bought a new pen, and I've always wanted to try a vacuum fill pen so I finally pulled the trigger. The pen writes so well straight out of the box but that's always been my experience with TWSBI pens. The kon-peki ink is a nice beautiful blue that also seems to dry fairly quickly which is nice because I'm a lefty and it's impossible for me to write without making a mess lol.
I had an 18 hour layover in Taiwan years ago, which encouraged me to learn Mandarin. Same boat as you, not enough to be anywhere close to fluent, but at least not a complete stranger to the language and culture. I find it fun to write.