A ceremony on Wednesday celebrating the opening of two kindergartens in Dongshih Township (東勢) and Shihgang (石岡) marks the implementation of Taichung Mayor Lin Chia-lung’s (林佳龍) promised policy to create mother-tongue-friendly environments for children.
“It is a great and happy thing for children who can learn using their mother tongue,” Lin said, adding that the city government hoped to establish at least one such kindergarten in townships where Hakka pupils are concentrated, such as Sinshe (新社) and Fengyuan (豐原).
Lin said that of Taichung’s total population of 2.73 million, about 440,000 people speak Hakka, and that his government considers any language a valuable asset for the municipality.
“We hope that with the establishment of these kindergartens, the knowledge of the mother tongue will continue to be passed from generation to generation,” Lin said.
“We hope that through these schools, the children will have a very natural environment to learn the mother tongue of their grandparents and parents,” Lin added.
However, Lin said that the most important thing was for the family members of the child to converse with them in Hakka at home as well.
The special municipality is looking forward to holding a multitude of Hakka-centric cultural events, including a Tianchuan Day event, the Sinding Ban festival and events in honor of Lu Ban (魯班), revered by architects and construction workers as the deity of the trades, Lin said.
“We hope the events will help the municipality promote the Hakka culture to not only local residents, but also tourists and, most importantly, the younger generation,” Lin 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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