Video | Portuguese town of Sao Joao da Madeira makes Putonghua lessons compulsory
Portugal's shoe capital launches compulsory Chinese lessons for young children to give them a competitive edge in the growing luxury market
Five hundred years after the Portuguese became the first Europeans to establish sea trade with China, a town in the country's north is counting on its young people to secure a fresh foothold.
Sao Joao da Madeira, Portugal's shoe capital which specialises in luxury footwear, has made Putonghua compulsory for children aged eight and nine.
Watch: Portuguese of tomorrow, learning Mandarin today
The aim is to give youngsters a competitive tool to help sell products to China. And the government, battling to put six years of debilitating economic crisis behind, is watching the experiment closely to see if it can be replicated throughout the country.
China may be known as the factory of the world, and is indeed the biggest producer of footwear, making 10 billion pairs a year, but Portuguese shoemakers are starting to step into the huge Asian market.
Chinese with a taste for luxury are increasingly fond of handmade Portuguese footwear, the world's second most expensive after Italian shoes.
As Portugal battles for growth after a long recession that saw unemployment soar past 17 per cent, the industry is helping export its way out of the slump.
Exports of footwear by Portuguese brands to China soared from 10,000 pairs in 2011 to 170,000 pairs last year, reaching €5.4 million (HK$52 million). Adding in footwear made in Portugal for foreign brands, revenues for last year top €20 million, still a fraction of total shoe exports - €1.7 billion that year.
Sao Joao da Madeira, a city of only 20,000 residents, wants to get ahead of that curve by training its children from young to speak Putonghua.
The children appear to enjoy it. "I would like to see the Great Wall," Eduardo, nine, said. Classmate Daniela added: "Chinese is not particularly difficult."
"They are young and learning fast," their teacher, Wang Xinliang, said. The idea is for the children to study the language until the end of secondary school.
In one workshop in the town, boss Mario Tavares is convinced that the move will give the children a clear advantage over their peers in doing business with the Chinese one day.
Tavares' firm, Tape, began selling to China last year, starting with just 200 pairs, but he hopes that figure will reach 1,000 this year. Yet even that is just a drop in the ocean for the company, which exports 160,000 pairs of shoes worldwide every year.
"China has the potential to become our main market one day," he said, adding that the young Putonghua speakers would be perfect for "sales jobs or managerial posts at factories".
