Taiwan on Sunday opened the first branch of the Taiwan Center for Mandarin Learning in Ireland.
The center in Dublin would soon start accepting students, the Taipei Representative Office in Ireland said.
At the opening ceremony, Representative to Ireland Yang Tzu-pao (楊子葆) highlighted the center’s differences from similar institutions in Ireland.
Photo: CNA
There would be no limits when studying at the center and students would be in an environment that facilitates open learning, the office quoted Yang as saying.
The center is more attuned to traditional Chinese culture and values, as Taiwan uses traditional Chinese characters, he said.
Yang said he believes that the freedom-loving Irish would support the values that the center would convey in its classes.
The ceremony was also attended by center director Evan Furlong (劉淑慧), Dublin School of Mandarin Chinese chairperson Hsu Hsiao-ping (許曉平), Irish Senator Gerry Horkan and Dublin City Councilor Declan Flanagan, as well as other local and foreign dignitaries.
Horkan told the ceremony that as a member of the Irish parliament, which looks to cement concrete ties with Taiwan, he was happy to see the increase in collaborations between the countries.
He expressed the hope that with language as a tool, the center would help advance bilateral relations.
Hopefully, the center will play an important role in Mandarin’s growing popularity in Ireland, Flanagan said, adding that the language would be made an elective in Ireland’s standardized high-school examinations in June.
Furlong thanked the Overseas Community Affairs Council and the office for working with the Dublin School of Mandarin Chinese to establish the center, which is one of 27 that the council plans to open in Europe and the US this year.
The council worked with other groups to open 18 such centers in the US and Europe last year as part of its plan to support and collaborate with established Chinese-language schools abroad.
Fifteen of the schools are in the US, with one each in the UK, Germany and France.
By the end of this year, the council plans to have 35 Mandarin teaching centers.
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