Unhappy with the change in spelling from “Chien Kuo” (建國) to “-Jianguo” (建國) after President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) switched the official spelling system to Hanyu pinyin when he was Taipei mayor, students from Taipei Municipal Jianguo Senior High School have launched an online petition to revert to the old spelling of the school’s name.
Chiang Pin-hsu (江品緒), who launched the online campaign, said the abbreviation of the school using the old spelling, “CK,” was a tradition for the school and that it had been used on most items or publications related to the school.
The acronym “CK” is an inseparable part of the school’s history, he said.
Photo: Chu Pei-hsiung, Taipei Times
Hung Wei (洪瑋), another organizer of the online campaign, said he took part in the petition because he does not want the unique emotional connection between students and graduates of the 100-year-old school to be lost.
Hung said he planned to launch a survey on campus to gather more support to call for the school’s name to be written as “Chien Kuo.”
Since the online petition campaign was initiated on the social networking Web site Facebook about six months ago, more than 4,600 people have showed their support.
Responding to the call, school principal Hsu Chien-kuo (徐建國) said the spelling of the school name was changed eight years ago and that one should bear in mind there could also be opposition to changing the spelling back to the original.
However, he said he would discuss the matter with the Taipei City Department of Education to see whether it would be possible to change the spelling once more.
Student affairs director Tsai Tse-ming (蔡哲銘), a graduate of the school, said most of the students and graduates from the school call themselves “CKers” and that he also felt somewhat uncomfortable when its name was changed to “Jianguo.”
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