Letters from famous figures like Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Harry Potter writer J. K. Rowling and physically impaired painter Grace Yang (楊恩典) have become the most invaluable and unforgettable graduation gifts for students of a class at a Taoyuan City elementary school.
“When we received Rowling’s letter, it felt like a letter sent by owl from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry as described in the Harry Potter series of magical books,” said Chiu Hui-chih (邱慧智), the lead teacher of the class at Shin Pu Elementary School, who initiated the “writing letters to celebrities” program last semester as part of a course to nurture students’ creativity and imagination.
Under the program, each of the class’s 31 students sent a letter to a celebrity he or she would most like to know. Although only five of them received letters of response from their idols, “my students have learned a lot of valuable experiences from the process,” Chiu said.
Two of the students — Hsiung Yuan-li (熊元立) and Chiang Yung-chen (蔣永禎) — were enthusiastic fans of Harry Potter novels. They decided to write to Rowling.
“Although I had little confidence in receiving a response, I still wrote a letter to my idol because it was homework,” said Hsiung, who wrote a short letter in English.
“Much thanks to my teacher who helped make the letter longer and more readable,” he said.
With his parents’ help, Chiang also wrote a letter to Rowling. Both of them used Harry Potter-themed paper and envelopes to convey their admiration for the British writer.
Rowling discovered Chiang and Hsiung were classmates and responded with a single letter addressed to both of them.
Much to the disappointment of the duo and their classmates, Rowling confirmed that there will be no eighth book in the Harry Potter series.
“We earnestly hope she [Rowling] will change her mind and continue to create eighth, ninth and tenth sequels of the series,” Hsiung said.
In her letter, Rowling explained in detail her inner thoughts in creating the adventurous Harry Potter stories.
“Although the letter was not long, all of my students said it gave them much inspiration,” said Chiu, who has a master’s degree from a US university.
Another student, Chen Yu (陳禹), wrote to Bill Gates, asking him about the secret behind his success. In his letter, Gates encouraged the sixth-grader to continue learning and apply technology to improve human life.
In her response letter to Lo Chi-wei (羅之唯), Grace Yang, who was born with physical disabilities and uses her mouth and her feet to paint, wrote that complaints about one’s fate will not do any good in one’s life and that perseverance is the key to success.
The teacher said the response ratio from celebrities was disappointingly low.
Before the launch of the program, Chiu said, she had reminded her students that they might not receive any response from their idols.
One of the students broke into tears when she received her letter with a return-to-sender stamp. She had hoped for a response from pop star Jay Chou (周杰倫), Chiu said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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