Tsai Pei-yu (蔡佩玉) was left paralyzed below the waist after a car accident 20 years ago. On Saturday she received her entry-level scuba diving certificate in Taipei.
Tsai lost two friends in the accident and while she survived, she sustained a spinal cord injury that put her in a wheelchair, she said.
In the first two years after the accident, Tsai said she often wondered why she had to live such a difficult life.
Photo: Yang Chin-chieh, Taipei Times
However, her mother was simply glad that she was alive and her mother’s optimism slowly lifted her spirits, Tsai said.
The incident made her feel that she should seize every opportunity to pursue her passions, Tsai said, adding that before the crash, she never exercised, but she took up swimming, as her doctor said it would help with her recovery.
Diving coaches usually decide which direction to take, but she wanted to go her own way, Tsai said.
After much consideration, she decided to sign up for a diving certification course, she said.
However, the process was not without obstacles, Tsai said.
Not only were the oxygen tanks and other equipment very heavy, but she also had to overcome physical obstacles that other people did not have to face, she said.
After a four-day intensive certification course in Kenting (墾丁), Tsai passed the test and received her certificate from the Taiwan Disability Scuba Diving Association, along several other people with disabilities.
Tsai said she is very grateful to her coach, Hung Chi-yao (洪啟堯), who volunteers at the association and paid for his own travel expenses every week to prepare her and other students in Taipei for their tests.
She added she would like to continue training for more advanced certification and dreams of diving at the Great Barrier Reef in Australia.
Tsai said she enjoys being in water, because on land, she needs other people to help her, but when she is in the ocean, she is free.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
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,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift