When more than 700 contestants attended the 14th World Chinese Kuoshu Championships in Yunlin County from May 1 to May 3, Taiwanese contestant Wu Chia-hsin (吳佳欣) won her third consecutive gold medal in a women’s wushu division with a form from northern China.
The 20-year-old said she learned wushu from her father, Wu Ming-tsung (吳明宗), from a young age and that her solid foundations in the style from years of practice enabled her to compete against Europeans, including from Russia and Italy, despite their size advantage.
Wu said she would be taking over operation of her father’s wushu school this year, adding that she would strive to spread the fame of both the school and martial arts in Taiwan.
Photo: Chiou Chih-jou, Taipei Times
Meanwhile, 18-year-old Chang Wen-yao (張文耀), another gold medalist and a student of the Wu school since he was eight years old, said that he would stay with the school and be trained by Wu Chia-hsin.
“Master Wu Ming-tsung teaches us not only about martial arts, but also about morals,” Chang said, adding that practicing martial arts is a way of being.
“It can temper a student’s mind,” he said.
“Winning gold made me happy, but we should not become overly proud and show off,” Chang said, adding that there is much hard work to be done to promote Taiwanese wushu on the world stage.
The school is attracting students due to the implementation of the 12-year national education program, Wu Ming-tsung said, adding that during training, he noticed children lacked respect toward their elders.
“We hope that through learning wushu, students take away the concept of wu te (武德),’” Wu Ming-tsung said.
The concept implies that force should be used only to uphold kindness and social order.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods