Authentic Series: The Story of

泠汐兮兮

Authentic Series: The Story of the Girl from Malang #学秘# #ShareMee#  
The Story of the Girl from Malang
In Indonesia, we have a famous saying,” Tak kenal maka tak sayang” or translated as If you do not know about it, you won’t be able to love it. Let me introduce myself a little bit, my name is Glady, or my full name is Glady Fabiola Tanusaputra. I am 23 years old, was born on November 9th, 1996. I am the first kid in the family, I have one younger brother, he is still 8 years old. We have 14 years age gap. I am from Indonesia. For those who do not know, Indonesia is an island country in Southeast Asia. The capital is Jakarta. But, I come from a small cold city, named Malang in East Java Province. My father is from another island, called Sulawesi. He is from another city called Palu, where Tsunami hit back in 2018. My mother is from Malang. They are both are Chinese descendant, which makes me Indonesian born Chinese.
My father family is from Fujian and My mother is from Guangdong. Well, they both cannot speak Chinese. My grandparents used to speak Kejiahua or Hokkien for my fater’s side. The reason why my parent’s generation cannot speak Chinese well, during 1960’s Indonesia was led by a dictator who forbid anything Chinese related. In 1998, there was a May 1998 riot, which resulted in rape and killing of Chinese-Indonesian. It was a horrible time to be Chinese-Indonesian. Not until 2000’s, the Chinese Indonesian got the rights to celebrate Chinese New Year or used the language again. Today, everything is a little bit better for the Chinese Indonesian, even sometimes we still get the racist attack from the locals or being seen as ‘foreigner’ inside our own country.
Moving forward to the future, my parents got divorced when I was in high school. Now, I live with my mother, my brother, and my aunty. I went to Jakarta to study Bachelor’s degree in International Relations and graduated back in 2018. During my study in university, I was a very active student and competed in lots of Model United Nations. Model United Nations is a simulation on United Nations meetings, where I acted as a country’s representative and debated on certain topic on behalf of the country. The Mode UN brought me to lots of opportunities and awards, not to mention a wide range of networks from all over the world. I worked for one year as Brand Manager/ Marketing Communications for two wine brands before my mother decided to send me to Shanghai to study Chinese Language.
I actually have been studying Chinese since I was 6 years old. However, I barely used it outside of the tutor session. Even in university, I was also taking Chinese class, and still I was only good enough to pass the class. I used to think learning Chinese is hard and not important. I would rather spent my time to improve my English than Chinese. My mother thinks that Chinese language is very important today, especially seeing how good Chinese economic is. She had tried to send me to China so many times, only to succeed in 2018.
Studying in Shanghai and living in China really change my perspective about the Language. I am always amazed and excited by Chinese history and culture, but never about the language. Now, I really enjoy learning the language and culture and lifestyle.
On the next writing, I will be more than happy to share about my experiences back in University and in China, and how Model United Nations brings me to scholarship and awards! I think you will be excited![/cp]【图片】【图片】