Love it or loathe it, the Mandarin Training Center (re-named The Center for Chinese Language and Culture in 1997), Taiwan's oldest university-run Chinese language teaching program, has established itself as something of a cultural icon among Taipei's foreign community.
It has provided many people with their first contact with Chinese culture, and for many, left an indelible mark on their professional development. Over 20,000 students have passed through its doors, but until recently, there has been little to hold this academic community together. The formation of the Mandarin Training Center Alumni Association (MTCAA) in 1997 has made the first step to addressing this issue, and it will hold its first Taipei gathering on Saturday.
The MTCAA, which was first founded in 1997 by alumni then studying at Nanjing University, is the creation of James Cheng, now an IT manager in Canada and David Peerless, now based in China with a security firm. Starting out with eight members on a mailing list, the association now boasts 335 registered members. With the assistance of Lynn Lee, a volunteer Web master for the MTC Web site, the association has a presence on the school's site, although its status is still unofficial.
For Cheng, creating and maintaining the MTCAA is about preserving a valuable resource. "Students [at the MTC] represent a diverse range of skills and talents ... and this should not be lost," he said, adding that it was a feeling of community that "touched" him while a student at MTC in the early 1990s.
All of the MTCAA's events until now have been held outside Taiwan. Cheng speculates that this has been because of a lack of urgency here -- after all, the school itself is located here. "But now the demographics [of the student population] is changing," Cheng said, with many long-term foreign residents in Taiwan seeking to find a means of maintaining their association with the school.
Elizabeth Green Sah, the managing director of Primasia Bio-Ventures in Taipei, said that she missed the cultural events most. "We tend to find out about things after the event," she said. "Links with the school would help [in keeping alumni up to date with what is happening.]" The MTC dragon boat teams have long been influential as a bond between former students, many of whom return to Taiwan to race and maintain the prestige of one of Taiwan's strongest dragon boat teams. The alumni association is seen as a means to expand alumni ties beyond just the dragon boat race.
Given the MTC's long history, many of Taiwan's most prominent foreign residents have an association with the school, including Karen Hess, the founder of Hess language schools, media personalities Richard Hartzell and Richard Vuylsteke and eminent sinologist Pierre Ryckmans. In 1993 and 1995, the former director Li Chen-ching
Although nearly 60 percent of current registered members of the association are from North America, with a further 13 percent from Europe, Lee said the organization hopes to make itself more accessible to non-English speakers, especially Japanese and Koreans, who jointly account for just over 11 percent of registered members at present.
The gathering will take place on the 7th floor of the training center's Bo-ai building
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