Striving to serve the local Taiwanese community and preserve the traditional culture of Taiwan, the Yokohama Overseas Chinese School asked visiting Lien Fang Yu (連方瑀), the wife of APEC envoy and former vice president Lien Chan (連戰) for help with the school’s development.
Arriving to a warm welcome as students of the school performed the traditional lion dance and waved the Republic of China flag, Lien Fang visited the Yokohama Overseas Chinese School — founded by Sun Yat-sen (孫逸仙) in 1897 — as part of her visit to Yokohama’s Chinatown.
Lien Fang arrived in Yokohama on Thursday, accompanying her husband, who is to take part today and tomorrow in APEC summit meetings on behalf of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九).
After the welcome ceremony, Lien Fang was briefed about the school by school president Shih Huei-chen (施惠珍), before she visited a fourth-grade classroom.
It was during the briefing that the school president told Lien Fang that the school was in constant financial hardship and asked her to deliver a message to the government in Taipei that the school needs more help.
“We’re always having financial difficulties,” Academic Affairs Office director Yang -Ching-huei (楊靜蕙), told the Taipei Times.
“Although we do receive some funds from the Overseas -Compatriots Commission, we depend mostly on tuition fees as a source of income,” she said. “Since our main goal is to serve the Taiwanese community here, we’re charging far less than most other Japanese schools.”
She said the Yokohama Overseas Chinese School charges ¥22,000 (US$268) per student per month at elementary and junior high school levels, and ¥25,000 per student per month at the high school level, while other private schools in Japan charge about ¥50,000 per student per month on average.
“Other than regular expenses, the buildings on campus need some serious renovation work. As you can see, these buildings are very old,” Yang said.
Yang is a retired teacher from Taiwan, who has devoted her time to serving overseas communities since her retirement, which led her to teach in Thailand before moving to Japan.
Although there are also Japanese students and ethnic Chinese students from other countries, 71 percent of the students are either from Taiwan or children of local Taiwanese families, which is the result of the schooling staying “focused,” said Chiang Pin-huei (江品輝), a teacher at the school who moved from Taiwan to Japan about a year ago.
Chiang said that since about half of the teachers are Japanese, both Japanese and Mandarin are used as the instructional languages of the school.
Another teacher at the school, Chang Ma-yun (張瑪雲), said that because of the lack of funds, teachers get paid very little and have to take on more than one person’s work.
“You asked which subject I teach, well, I teach everything because we don’t have enough money to hire more teachers,” Chang said.
REPORT: Taipei has expressed an interest in obtaining loitering munitions matching the AeroVironment Switchblade 300 or the Anduril Altius-600, ‘Foreign Policy’ said Taiwan is seeking US-made kamikaze drones in an apparent concession to pressure from Washington to focus on asymmetric capabilities to defeat or deter a Chinese attack, Foreign Policy said in a report on Wednesday. Taipei has expressed an interest in obtaining AeroVironment Switchblade loitering munitions or other devices with similar capabilities, it said, citing four sources familiar with the matter commenting on condition of anonymity. The Switchblade 300 is a tube-launched drone designed for attacking ground troops, while its larger sibling, the Switchblade 600, could be used to destroy tanks and entrenched troops. Ukraine has utilized both systems extensively in its fight against
Police officers yesterday morning apprehended the prime suspect of a triple homicide case, after raiding the suspect’s hideout in Taichung. They transported the suspect to New Taipei City for questioning and recorded his statement last night. The suspect, identified as a 24-year-old man surnamed Chang (張), is believed to have used his hands to strangle his wife, surnamed Chen (陳), 29, along with his three-year-old son from a previous marriage and his wife’s mother, 69. The three dead bodies were wrapped in blankets when they were discovered inside their apartment in New Taipei City’s Sanchong District (三重) on Saturday. Chang was holding a
Hungarian Member of Parliament Tompos Marton said he considers Taiwan to be a better alternative to China as a strategic partner. Marton, who is the vice president of the opposition Momentum Party, made the remarks in an interview with the Central News Agency on Sunday. He draped a Republic of China flag across his shoulders to protest Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) visit to the capital city, Budapest, on Thursday last week, and openly voiced support for Taiwan on social media. He said in the interview that he wanted to remind the world that there were alternatives to China, and that “Taiwan has
A female physician at New Taipei City’s Shuang Ho Hospital was bullied and made to work for 32 consecutive hours by a senior colleague while pregnant before later having a miscarriage, an internal investigation found, the hospital said on Monday. The perpetrator has been removed from his post, the hospital said. The attending physician in the hospital’s Medical Imaging Department, identified by the pseudonym Y, earlier on Monday told reporters that she had been bullied by a male senior colleague who arranged shifts in her department. In January, shortly after she became pregnant, Y asked the department director if she could avoid overnight