“I want to be able to read the books and watch the movies without having to read subtitles, enjoying the original language,” she said. “I also want to master a new language, not only English and Indonesian.”

Femmy has been in love with these films since her elementary school years in the 1980s, and when she was in high school she started reading Jin Yong’s Condor trilogy of Sia-tiauw-eng-hiong, Sin-tiauw-hiap-lu and Ie-thian-to-liong-to.

She tried to learn the language on her own, but found little improvement. So, last May she joined a language course with a native speaker as the teacher.

There is indeed a growing trend among Indonesians to learn the Chinese language, thanks to the new political atmosphere that has allowed people to express themselves in Chinese. Indeed, for more than 30 years, during Soeharto’s iron-fist rule, anything related to Chinese culture was restricted.

Chinese schools were banned and people were discouraged from speaking the language in public.  

Since his downfall in 1998, Indonesia has had the freedom to fully explore the Chinese culture. In Jakarta, an independent Chinese newspaper is available, Chinese songs can be heard through a Chinese radio station and a private television station even airs Chinese news programs.

Chinese, along with other foreign languages like English and Arabic, are offered in many formal schools, from kindergartens to junior high schools.

Chinese language centers are also mushrooming, ready to fulfill the rising demand of the market.
Arlena Surni, who opened a Mandarin language center in Kemang, South Jakarta, in 2006, observed the growing trend of people, not only Indonesians but also expatriates, to study the language.  

Half of her students are of other nationalities, said Arlena, who has more than 30 students in private classes.

Some of her students want to learn Chinese mostly for business purposes while the others do it to satisfy a pure interest in learning the language.

Arlena, now in her 40s, learned Chinese when she was a little girl.

“At that time, learning Chinese was prohibited in school so we had to go to a private teacher’s house to learn it. My sisters and I all hated it, but we had no choice. However, that gave us a strong foundation of the language. Later on, I went to Beijing for study further,” she said.

Another bitter experience was told by Magdalena, 33.

Early in 1990 she learned Chinese in a learning center, which offered English, Chinese and computer courses, in her hometown in Klaten, Central Java.

“But after fewer than 10 visits, the Chinese course was disbanded because the learning center could not get a permit to teach the language,” said Magdalena, who now lives in Hong Kong.  

It happens that her husband was in the country to write his thesis and Magdalena learned Chinese at the Chinese University of Hong Kong so that she could stay close to him.

Learning Chinese required lots of effort, but it was fun as the language was like a “puzzle”, she said.
“It is useful. Not only do I know the language of my ancestors, but in the future, hopefully I can make money as a Chinese-Indonesian translator,” said Magdalena, who is also an English teacher.

In fact, the recent amazing growth of China with its emerging economic power as a newly industrialized country has heightened the importance of the language. Learning the language has become a need of people in many businesses.

“I think it is highly likely that Chinese will become the second international language after English. Just see the ‘boom’ [in the use of the language], we need to catch up from now,” said Gusnellya Bunardi, 24, a logistics officer in a coal trading company.

She has been learning Chinese for quite some time and is now at the intermediate level, enabling her to speak the language to Chinese customers. Her skill in Chinese is an additional value to her as she is the only one in the office who speaks the language.

“In addition, it will be a great advantage if I travel to Mandarin-speaking countries,” said Gusnellya, who loves traveling.

Like Gusnellya and Magdalena, Adhi Ariebowo, also 24, learns Chinese because he believes that his skill in the language will bring him a lot of advantages related to his job as a freelance translator and teacher.

However, he underlines that his first motivation is to satisfy his thirst for foreign languages.

Adhi, who speaks English and French, began learning Chinese near his boarding house in Depok, south of Jakarta, only two and a half months ago.  

 “I really love Mandarin because the logic of the grammar is quite similar to Indonesian [Is it accurate or not? I am still new in this area] and therefore I find it relatively easy,” he said.

Adhi claims that he is a person who loves “strange characters” and is glad to know that hanzi (Chinese characters) offers it.

“I am very happy when I can find out the meaning of a word in that character because hanzi, and also kanji, is formed upon basic ideas, which would produce a new idea upon their combination,” he said.

“Besides, I am also interested in understanding how the character is formed. Working on it is like working on a puzzle … this one is a thousands years old puzzle,” he said.

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