An 18-year-old student born with a congenital disorder graduated from National Taichung Special Education School with a Mayoral Award earlier this month.
Born with Apert syndrome — a disorder characterized by malformation of the skull, face, hands and feet — Wang Kuan-chun (王冠峻) was deemed to have multiple handicaps and was enrolled in the school for disabled people.
His homeroom teacher, Hsiao Hsu-mei (蕭素美), said she noticed that Wang liked to drum his hands on flat surfaces, so she arranged for him to practice on a cajon.
Photo: Su Meng-chuan, Taipei Times
Wang and his classmates formed a band and obtained a street performing license from the city, Hsiao said.
She later suggested he switch to a drum set, she added.
Due to the lack of apoptosis, a process that causes fingers to separate, Wang initially found it difficult to hold the drumstick and had to grip it between his thumb and index finger, but they often went flying.
The teachers improved Wang’s grip by tying friction strips to the drumstick, which stopped it from flying off every time, but also caused Wang’s thumbs to become sore and often bloody, Hsiao said.
However, he never gave up, she added.
Wang said he has never had formal music training and is unable to read sheet music, relying instead on remembering the melody and rhythm of each section of a piece.
Wang’s talent shone after he started playing on the full drum set, Hsiao said, adding that he would often be able to replicate the rhythm of a piece by just listening to the melody.
“Others might practice 10 times, but it will take me many, many repetitions; it might be difficult, it might hurt, but I did it! I’m going to live with the beat,” Wang said.
Although he had only played the drum set for less than a year, he last year took first place in a national competition for disabled people, obtained a street performing license with another band and was earlier this year awarded the Presidential Education Award.
He said he wishes to thank both Huang Jui-ling (黃瑞陵) and Liao Ying-tzu (廖盈姿) for their cajon and the drum set instruction respectively.
Wang said he wishes to continue to play the drums for a living after graduation, adding that he wants to prove that no matter a person’s physical condition, everyone is born with unique talents.
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:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching