Thirty-eight students and teachers from Beijing Medical University Affiliated Elementary School yesterday visited an elementary school in Kaohsiung’s Sanmin District (三民).
The visiting students greeted their peers by saying “Hello principal, hello director, hello teachers, hello everyone” in Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese) and in Hakka, which they had learned during their trip.
The visitors also performed a Peking opera scene, a form of Chinese martial art called bajiquan (八極拳) and demonstrated paper-cutting.
Photo: Huang Hsu-lei, Taipei Times
The Kaohsiung students performed a Hakka song and dance, and introduced Taiwanese fruits and the traditional temple customs.
Lee Hsin-han (李欣翰), director of Taiwan Statebuilding Party’s Kaohsiung chapter, called the visit “suspicious.”
The “cross-strait exchange tour” came just days after Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate, began a leave of absence from his job to campaign, Lee said.
At a Chinese national education conference in March, Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) said that education starts with wawa (娃娃, children), Lee said.
“If the school values international exchanges, it should not have chosen a country that has ‘united front’ plans toward Taiwan,” he said.
A director from the Beijing school, surnamed Liu (劉), said the school wanted to let its students experience a classroom in Taiwan and understand the lives of other children their age.
After the students met, the 30 visiting students, from grades four through six, sat in on classes at the school in groups of two.
A student from Beijing said they “had a lot of fun” during the visit.
The school still had Republic of China (ROC) flags near its entrance from Double Ten National Day, but the Chinese teachers and students appeared not to have noticed them.
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