When Zhang Chao first arrived in Indonesia a decade ago, he found himself confused by a single word: yes.
In China, the word usually signals agreement, a decision made. In Indonesia, he quickly learned it can mean something entirely different — courtesy, acknowledgment, or simply "I hear you".
The distinction, minor on the surface, would come to shape how Zhang understood not only his work but also his colleagues.
This story was shared at a China-Indonesia Friendship Story Sharing Event themed "Gathering in Spring, Harmony Across Shores" held on Jan 29 at the China International Communications Group in Beijing. The event gathered six speakers with firsthand experience in cooperation between the two countries.
Zhang was among the earliest Chinese managers involved in Indonesia's first high-speed rail project, the Jakarta-Bandung high-speed railway. At the beginning, meetings were thorough, and timelines were clear, but things often unfolded differently than expected. The reasons, he realized, were not technical.
This mental shift came during an informal conversation, far from blueprints and construction schedules, when Chinese and Indonesian colleagues talked about habits and the rhythms of daily life.
"That's when it clicked," Zhang recalls.
"A railway isn't just built with steel and concrete. It's built through understanding between people."
That understanding slowly emerged in a series of small, warm gestures. Indonesian colleagues noticed that Chinese team members were accustomed to midday naps and set aside a quiet resting space in a new office building. One colleague presented Zhang with a hand-drawn picture of Chinese and Indonesian workers building the railway together.
Zhang took the drawing home to Beijing. "It's the best gift I've ever received," he says.
The railway, which opened in 2023, is a flagship project under China's Belt and Road Initiative and part of Indonesia's national development strategy, reducing the travel time between Jakarta and Bandung from roughly four hours to 40 minutes.
But for Gandhi Priambodo, its impact was measured not only in terms of speed but also in everyday life.
"Even during construction, people along the route started selling fruit and snacks," he notes. "After it opened, students could live in Jakarta and attend school in Bandung."
Priambodo, the chief executive of Nanyang Bridge Media, hopes to turn such stories into a documentary.
In 2017, his company coproduced a romantic film about a Chinese engineer and an Indonesian nurse whose relationship is tested by cultural differences and family opposition. The premise, he explains, was simple: familiarity breeds understanding.
That sense of everyday connection was echoed by Desca Lidya Natalia, a Beijing-based correspondent for Indonesia's Antara News Agency. She arrived in China in 2023 with limited Mandarin.
During last year's Spring Festival travel rush, she planned to film scenes at the Beijing Daxing International Airport, but mistakenly went to Daxing Railway Station instead.
Finding herself in a quiet suburb, she was helped by station staff who struggled with English, called her a taxi, and exchanged contact information to make sure she arrived safely.
As a journalist, Natalia hopes to shape public understanding through factual reporting. "Journalism should help people distinguish reality from assumptions."
She points to China's decades-long effort to lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty as an example that, in her view, deserves more attention in Indonesia.
The event also featured accounts of cooperation in marine conservation, the localization efforts of Chinese technology companies in Indonesia, and observations of rural China by Indonesian professionals working in Beijing.
Parulian Silalahi, deputy chief of mission of the embassy of the Republic of Indonesia in China, says that such exchanges mattered precisely because they were personal.
"I believe the stories shared today by our friends from Indonesia and China will become part of the rich history of our partnership. Stories have the power to inspire change, and that inspiration can ignite progress in our relations," he says.
The storytelling series will continue throughout the year, with organizers collecting stories via social media and inviting more participants to share their experiences of China-Indonesia cooperation.
Bai Shuhao contributed to this story.
