by Dames Alexander Sinaga
JAKARTA, March 19 (Xinhua) -- Around 20 years ago, Lu Fang landed in Indonesia from China with excitement to begin her career as a Mandarin teacher. Now, she is on cloud nine as more Indonesians love to learn the language and the culture.
Lu's journey to the Southeast Asian country started after a friend of hers in China informed her about a private school in the Kelapa Gading area in North Jakarta, which was looking for a native Chinese teacher to give Mandarin lessons to preschool and elementary students.
"Since 2003, many private schools in Indonesia have started giving Mandarin lessons to their students. So then I decided to fly here to become the school's teacher. It's very exciting," said Lu, who originates from the Chinese city of Xi'an.
Lu, who remains working at the school, found that more Indonesian children nowadays have been passionate about learning the language over the past eight years.
"Some students used to be afraid of learning it. Mandarin has four tones and its characters, for them, are hard to write. Now, I see more students somehow enjoying learning it. Perhaps the internet has also helped them to learn Mandarin simpler in many ways," she explained.
Her students, including Annemarie Dealova, Siyu Huo and Liu Junji are able to speak Mandarin fluently. All of them have learned since an early age.
Dealova, now 11, has learned Mandarin since the age of three. Learning Mandarin tones and pronunciations used to be very challenging for her, but persistent practice improved her skills.
"Learning the Chinese characters was also uneasy at first. I had to memorize the characters and kept practicing a lot. Now I'm also better at them," she said.
Meanwhile, for 12-year-old Siyu and 10-year-old Liu, who are both of Chinese descent, learning Mandarin is interesting, fun and easy. Learning the language is worth their time because they like to travel to China for family vacations. Mandarin, they said, helps them to communicate and interact with locals there confidently.
Their school principal, Januati Halim, explained that her school provides Mandarin as a subject mainly since it is one of the most spoken languages in the world.
Moreover, China's investment and trading in Indonesia continue to increase, highlighting the importance of Mandarin, which will contribute to students' future, particularly when they work at or with Chinese businesses or institutions, she added.
"The ability to speak Mandarin can help boost career prospects, offering benefits in employability, business opportunities, as well as cultural understanding," she emphasized.
In September last year, the Chinese embassy in Indonesia in collaboration with Istiqlal Mosque, the country's largest mosque, inaugurated a Chinese cultural space within the mosque complex. Named China Space at Istiqlal, the project offers bilateral cultural and educational exchanges and cooperation between China and Indonesia.
The classroom not only offers Mandarin lessons, and displays the charm of traditional Chinese culture, such as silk paintings, porcelain and panda dolls, but also demonstrates a number of Chinese technological achievements, represented by satellites and ship models, and miniature Jakarta-Bandung high-speed trains.
For over a decade, China has been Indonesia's largest trading partner and a significant source of foreign investment. The two countries will commemorate the 75th anniversary of their diplomatic relations in April.
Both Halim and Lu expressed hopes that the relationship between the two countries would increase to a higher level, saying that "China and Indonesia should maintain their continued trust and support." ■
