About Ema

Ema Dujmović is 13 years old and comes from Samobor, in the Republic of Croatia. She was born on June 15, 2012 in Zagreb. She has always shown her versatility. She is an excellent 8th-grade student at Milan Lang Primary School in Bregana.

For eight years she has been actively learning Chinese. During the first four years she had a teacher in Croatia; afterwards she spent three years attending the Chinese school Unifons through online classes, and since April 2025 she has become the youngest student at the Confucius Institute of the University of Zagreb. For a year and a half she has also been actively learning Dutch with a teacher in the Netherlands through online classes, while she has been formally studying English for seven and a half years.

For eight years she has been engaged in painting and drawing and is completely self-taught. Three years ago she began actively writing stories, fairy tales and poems. She has been very successful in various art and literary competitions, and in the last two school years alone she has won awards in three literary and more than fifteen art competitions, including major international competitions in Austria, Greece, the USA, the United Kingdom, India, China, Japan, Slovenia, Serbia…

That same day, she had the great honor of receiving—personally, for her—one of the most significant awards to date: the City of Samobor Plaque for 2022. Ema is the first child ever to receive this important recognition, awarded by the Mayor of the City of Samobor, Ms Petra Škrobot.

In April 2023, the first Hakuna Matata chocolates by Hedona Chocolate Factory from Križevci went on sale. Ema had the great honor of conceiving and designing four chocolate wrappers, and a year later her artwork design won the competition for the cover of a notebook by the company Lipamill.

On 28 May 2023, she participated for the first time in the Chinese language knowledge competition for non-native speakers in Zagreb entitled "Chinese Bridge." The competition was held under the organization of the Confucius Institute of the University of Zagreb and the Embassy of the PRC. In the competition of the same name, Ema won with 98.73 out of a maximum of 100 points and, as the youngest participant, earned the opportunity to represent the Republic of Croatia at the world Chinese language competition in Kunming, China, in October 2023.

In July 2025, Ema won the prestigious international "Grand Prize" at the art competition for children and youth in the spirit of Sino-European exchange – "The First International Xu Beihong Painting Competition." In addition to the valuable award itself, she is especially honored that her work will be part of an exhibition in February 2026 in one of the most renowned galleries, at the Hofburg Palace in Vienna.

In September 2025, Ema participated for the second time in the World Championship of Chinese Language Proficiency (non-native speakers, primary-school category), "Chinese Bridge 2025," in China. She achieved an outstanding result: she was among the top two in Europe (TOP 2) and entered the world top ten.

Over the past year and a half, alongside all her activities, Ema has devoted herself to writing lyrics and music in the field of pop music and to learning to play the piano. She presented her first original composition to the public at the world Chinese language competition in 2025 in Tianjin, China: she wrote the composition in Chinese, dedicated it and performed it herself. Her second single, "Loved," was released a few months later with a professional male vocalist, with whom she competed (as the author of the lyrics and music) at the prestigious "Dora 2026" competition, Croatia's selection for the Eurovision Song Contest, and she became the youngest author ever to submit her song.