The Taiwan Flagship Sets Sail

The National Taiwan University campus is the home to an exciting new Chinese language program, the Chinese Overseas Flagship in Taiwan. It’s a partnership between the US federal government and 12 US universities. The goal is to build undergraduate students’ Chinese proficiency to the point where they can work in Chinese after graduation. Recently, the program had its grand opening ceremony.

Flagship, which has my good friend Fann Meeiyuann as one of the teachers, is a full immersion program: No English Spoken Here. So the grand opening was also conducted entirely in Chinese. Even though lots of Americans attended as guests, there was not a word of English from any of the speakers, who included program administrators, students, Taiwan’s deputy ministers of Education and Foreign Affairs, and the Director of the American Institute in Taiwan, the US’s representative office in Taiwan.