The University of Indonesia (UI) in Jakarta has held the 9th Chinese Language Competition for basic and advanced levels involving students of the Chinese Literature discipline from various universities, The Jakarta Post reported Monday.

Besides competitions for all levels of Chinese language, the events over the weekend also included speech, storytelling, and karaoke competitions.

"The language competition participants came from the universities that we invited. But for speech, storytelling and karaoke, we only set a quota of 15 participants for each competition. But more than 20 registered for each competition," Etsy Tia Kartika, spokesperson of the organizing committee, was quoted as saying.

Iwan Lee, one of the jurors at the competition, said that this was heartening because it showed how Mandarin has become popular in the country.

"Chinese has become the second most popular language after English in the world. The fact that many students are mastering the language proves that this trend has also infected Indonesia," he said.

Source: Xinhua