न्यूज अभियान
हरेक खबर विशेष खबर

Kathmandu, Nov 14: In the morning, Sabin might be leading a group of Chinese tourists through Durbar Square. By the afternoon, he could be translating between Nepali workers and Chinese engineers at a construction site in the Kathmandu Valley. And in the evening, he teaches Chinese to the Nepali students.
Three jobs with one skill. “Without learning Chinese,” he says, “I couldn't have stayed in Nepal”.
The skill is the thread. It holds his life together. It also keeps him in Nepal. He belongs to a generation that has turned the Chinese language into a livelihood and a reason to stay.
Sabin is not an exception. He is a part of the generation of young Nepalis who have built their lives around the Chinese language and, in doing so, have found a way to build their future at home.
According to Nepal's 2021 census, the median age in the country is 25.3, with nearly 65 percent of the population under 35, among which the youth unemployment runs between 20 to 25 per cent. For decades, the answer to this problem has been the same—go abroad. To the Gulf countries, to Malaysia, to South Korea, to Japan, to Europe and to the United States, and many other destinations. 
In the fiscal year 2023/24, more than 741,000 new labour permits were issued to Nepalis going overseas to work. Different literatures suggest that different push factors have contributed to the mass exodus of Nepali youth, while peer pressure has served as a pull factor, too.
For decades, the road out of Nepal has run west. Lately, though another road has been opening — north, toward China. And the young Nepalis who have taken it are coming back.
This road however was not built up overnight. When China and Nepal first established diplomatic relations in 1955, the bond remained institutional for decades, confined to state-level treaties, official visits and foreign aids. For ordinary Nepali citizens, the relationship was an abstraction.
It began to change in 1977 when a young Nepali youth named Harish left for China. At the time, almost no one in Nepal knew Chinese well. After studying Chinese, Harish returned home to do something his friends couldn't understand -- screening Chinese films and translating Chinese TV dramas for local audience. “There were no cell phones or internet back then,” he recalls. “I would project the movies and translate them live from Chinese into Nepali, on the spot”. He became one of the earliest links between the two nations.
In 1992, another young pioneer named Bidyanand went to China through a government-sponsored program. He had been promised a government job when he returned, but the job never came through. Rather than giving up, he survived on his Chinese, carving out a career in telecommunications, tourism, and trade.
From Harish to Bidyanand, a few frontrunners opened this road without knowing where it would lead. It slowly became a viable path but only a handful walked it. What truly turned this path into a highway was a decade of growing ties between Nepal and China. The foundation was laid in 2017 when Kathmandu and Beijing signed a MoU on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Yet the definitive turning point came in 2019 with President Xi Jinping’s historic state visit to Nepal, which aligned the BRI with Nepal’s strategy to transform from a “land-locked” to a “land-linked” country.
A flurry of bilateral agreements followed, and Chinese goods filled the storefronts of Kathmandu. By 2024, a Cooperation Framework Agreement had formalized partnerships in infrastructure, trade and investment. Investment grew markedly. By 2026, China accounted for roughly 48 percent of Nepal's approved FDI—the largest share—with cumulative inflows still catching up. The changing situation completely changed the place of Chinese language education in Nepal. As Chinese people, businesses and products became part of everyday life, speaking Chinese went from something only a few people did to a real advantage at work. The surge in demand has changed how Chinese is taught all over Nepal.
When Bishwa Bhasa Campus, Tribhuvan University's only language teaching campus, began teaching Chinese in 1961, it remained a language of the few for over four decades. The explosion happened in the last ten years. The growing number of Chinese tourists and entrepreneurs created a massive vacuum for specialized talent: tour guides, translators, corporate staff and educators.
To meet the market demand, the educational infrastructure scaled up rapidly. The Chinese Language Teacher Volunteer Program was launched in Nepal in 2005, bringing the language into primary and secondary schools. The Confucius Institute at Kathmandu University opened in 2007, becoming Nepal's first. 
By 2022, Chinese had been formally added to Nepal's school curriculum as an optional subject for grades 9 through 12, and the Confucius Institute at Tribhuvan University opened the same year as the country's second. Lumbini Buddhist University launched a Chinese-language undergraduate program in 2023, co-founded the Nepal Institute of China Studies with Beijing Language and Culture University in 2024, and established a Confucius Institute in 2025.
Five decades ago, Harish started out walking alone. Today, tens of thousands of young Nepalis are following in his footsteps. Ramila Gautam is a perfect example. In 2016, at just 22 years old and speaking barely a word of Chinese, she left Kathmandu for China. Seven years later, she returned home fluent in Chinese — as the CEO of South Asia Network TV.
“By now, I’ve traveled back and forth to China several times,” she recalled. Having studied the Chinese language and culture in China, she now runs a media outlet dedicated to connecting the two nations.
She mentions a project with the Chinese Embassy donating solar lamps and water purification equipment to a remote village. Ramila dispatched journalists into the mountains to capture the stark contrast between a life lived by candlelight and the sudden dawn of electricity. At the press launch, she gave the stage to the villagers themselves, drawing coverage from more than 30 media outlets. A villager commented, “Finally, someone cares about us, the folks up on the mountain”. And all of this she could do in Chinese by telling the story to Nepal and to China alike. For Ramila, Chinese was never just a language, it was a gateway to information, markets, and a future she doesn't have to leave home for.
If Ramila’s story is about an individual finding her way home, Kumar Khadka’s mission is to ensure that thousands more of Nepal's young people can follow. Kumar went to China in 2013, earning a Master’s degree in Teaching Chinese to Speakers of Other Languages from Beijing Language and Culture University, before completing a PhD in Philosophy at Beijing Normal University. In 2019, he returned to Nepal pursuing his doctorate.
In 2015, when Kumar was still a student in Beijing, he co-founded the Chinese Language Teachers Association of Nepal. The Association's priority was training local Chinese teachers. “We cannot indefinitely rely on volunteer Chinese language teachers,” Kumar observes. “Back then, we trained 72 local students, who then went on to study in China in 2016”.
Another beneficiary of the boom is Hari Silwal, who began studying Chinese in 2012. He left for China in 2015, completed his undergraduate degree at Beijing Normal University, and returned to Nepal in 2019. Since then, his bilingual skills have opened doors for him to work as a language teacher, a sales manager for a major smartphone brand, and a brilliant translator for corporate and government delegations.
Sabin, Ramila, Kumar and Hari are just a few representatives of a much larger trend. By mastering Chinese and tapping into the growing market of Chinese investment, tourism and trade, young Nepalis can build a prosperous future at home.
As Chinese companies invest in Nepal's hydropower, infrastructure, telecommunication and cement sectors, and as visitor numbers and bilateral trade keep growing, demand has surged for translators, coordinators, Chinese-speaking tourist guides, hospitality staff and facilitators who can deal directly with Chinese suppliers. Chinese, in short, is fast becoming a skill that pays.
By 2024, the language began attracting a new demographic. In Kathmandu, a lady named Neesha also started learning Chinese, though for an entirely different reason. Fascinated by Huawei's HarmonyOS, she found English-language resources frustratingly scarce — so she decided to learn Chinese simply to read the company's technical documentation firsthand.
The same year, a college student named Prashna fell in love with Chinese characters. “Suddenly, I just fell in love with those Chinese characters,” she says. Armed with inexpensive paintbrushes costing just a few dozen rupees, she began practicing calligraphy on ordinary paper, meticulously mimicking the strokes. For her, the beauty of the Chinese lies entirely within the forms of the characters themselves.
Two young ladies, one is drawn by the cutting-edge technology of modern China; the other is captivated by the timeless aesthetics of Chinese calligraphy. Yet both point to the same thing: Chinese is fast becoming a gateway to a world of possibilities for Nepal’s youth.
Nearly 50 years have passed since Harish first blazed the trail. A man's lonely journey has become a collective march, turning a path that once puzzled people into a highly desirable career and life path.
Prashna’s story is still unfolding. Though as a law student, she is currently studying to prepare for the HSK Level 5 exam, still weighing whether she will eventually go to China.
But unlike the Nepali youth of a decade ago, she is blessed with one absolute certainty—she no longer has to ask herself, “What is the point of learning Chinese”?
Recently, the stories of Nepali youths have changed and so is their fate too as they not only leave for gulf countries and other destinations for jobs but also seek business opportunities and career development in China. Many of them say China’s market-oriented economy was benefitting countries like Nepal. 
(Dr. Yang Zhen is a Lecturer at the School of Foreign Languages (South Asian Studies) and a Researcher at the Institute of South Asian Studies, Xizang Minzu University, China.)