Students learning Portuguese in Macau give surprisingly blunt answers when asked why they want to learn the language. 'I like [soccer player] Cristiano Ronaldo,' said Thai Thi Thu Trang, a student from the University of Hanoi taking a one-month intensive class here.
Whatever their reasons, learning Portuguese has become the latest fashion in Macau. Nearly six years after the handover, unprecedented numbers of teenagers and adults are signing up for language classes. At the 1,000-student Institute of Portugal in the Orient (Ipor) - the Portuguese counterpart to the British Council and Alliance Francaise - there are 200 people on the waiting list for the beginners' class.
There has never been such a long waiting list, says Ipor president Antonio Vasconcelos de Saldanha. Day and night, phone calls pour in from government officials and other notables in Macau, asking Mr Saldanha to add somebody's child or nephew to a class. 'There is a limitation of venues and we do not have enough teachers,' he explains. 'Otherwise we would ... open more classes.'
Students from all over Asia are coming to Macau to take advantage of the Lusophone environment. Given the large volume of Chinese-Brazilian trade, more pragmatic students say the language will enable them to land jobs at trading companies or the Chinese Foreign Ministry.
'Every Chinese who can speak Portuguese is 100 per cent guaranteed to have a job,' claimed Qian Mingfeng, a student from the Shanghai University of Foreign Language Studies. Instead of using his Chinese name, he insists that his friends call him Fabiano.
At the University of Macau, the bachelor's degree for Portuguese as a second language is oversubscribed. More than 400 applicants competed for 30 vacancies for the school year starting in September. Three years ago, only 17 applied.