Twenty university students who won US Department of State-sponsored scholarships began an eight-week intensive Mandarin program at Tainan’s National Cheng Kung University on Monday.
The university said the State Department launched the Critical Language Scholarship program in 2006 to equip foreign language professionals with the skills needed for political and diplomatic roles and to promote cultural exchanges and bilateral understanding.
Mandarin is listed as one of the 13 critical languages in the program.
The scholarships to study at the university’s Chinese Language Center were available to US college students who had studied Chinese for two years.
Because of the enthusiastic response, only 5 percent of the applicants were selected, the university said.
Department of International and Cross-strait Education director-general Yang Min-ling (楊敏玲) — who was at the school for the opening day of the program — said the program had previously sent students to China.
“In addition to arranging Mandarin courses, we are also offering classes on Taiwan’s culture, society, politics and economy. We call it immersion learning, especially because Tainan is a city rich in culture. The students will be able to experience genuine Taiwanese culture,” Yang said.
The Chinese Language Center has arranged for the students to live with host families to help them integrate into Taiwanese society.
Department of North American Affairs deputy director-general Yao Chin-hsiang (姚金祥) said he hoped the students would learn more about Taiwan during their stay and go on to seed deep connections between Taiwan and the US.
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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