Three Cheers for Athletics!

Many people in Taiwan regard playing sports and doing well at school as mutually exclusive. If Harvard graduate Jeremy Lin had grown up in Taiwan, would his love of basketball have been squashed?

Athletics has never been a point of emphasis for Taiwanese students, and there is a notable disconnect between athletics in schools and the population at large. Physical education departments are a specialized, professional domain, whereas the athletic avocations most popular in society—hiking, health walking, and cycling—are passions cultivated outside of school.

A girl behind me at school is now a faculty member of a university, where she has won several awards for her teaching. Ten years or so ago she began to snorkel and jog. Whenever she gets a chance, she goes diving off of Green Island or some small Malaysian island before posting photos of her exploits on Facebook. Recently, there was an eye-opening shot of her with 10 of her diving buddies making a human pyramid under water. Her friends joked that the photo demonstrated talents on the level of the Cirque du Soleil.

I have many friends who started hiking, running marathons or cycling after they turned 30. Late-blooming amateur athletes are all the rage—a phenomenon that may stem from a growing recognition of how exercise helps to increase one’s vitality.

Ten-some years ago, co-workers urged me to join a gym near my office, and I dutifully bought my first swimming suit. At first I couldn’t even keep myself afloat and was scared of the water, but watching a grandmother in her seventies come to the club every day for lessons made me want to learn too.

Although my freestyle technique remains poor, I now swim for an hour ­every weekend to relieve stress. Swimming in winter is even more stimulating. So long as you can handle that first freezing moment, your body will quickly adjust to the temperature. And if a cold front sweeps in, then the gym’s pool will get fewer visitors, and swimmers can usually get a lane all to themselves.

Exercise improves mental agility and concentration and bolsters the immune system—benefits that are available to all, not only young students. King Liu, Giant’s nearly 80-year-old chairman, is a stomach cancer survivor. A few years ago a line from the film Island Etude—“putting off some things means you’ll never do them at all”—spurred him to train for a ride around the island. He started by cycling the 40 kilometers to work every day, and he ended up actually circumnavigating the island on a bicycle. His endurance and energy only got better and better.

In this issue we interview Peng Tai-lin, deputy director-general of the Sports Administration at the Ministry of Education, who recounts how he was a hyperactive child. Due learning difficulties, he almost dropped out of school. Fortunately, the school’s boxing club kept him enrolled. He is a great example of someone whose academics were saved by their athletics.

Taiwan Panorama deputy editor Lin Hsin-­ching tells us about students living near the beach in New Tai­pei City who have taken up snorkeling and sea swimming, as well as kids at an elementary school in central Taiwan who are learning martial arts and meditation. Physical education courses have a lot of interesting things on offer these days.

With fall’s arrival, we have the good fortune to eat fresh crabs from ­Wanli. Thanks to ocean currents and favorable geography, Taiwan’s waters are home to more than 500 species of crabs. These include freshwater crabs that live in all of our island’s major rivers, as well as wild saltwater crabs that fishermen go out to sea to catch.

Much to their credit, ­Wanli’s crab fishermen have ceased using dragnets or trawl nets and are now using more environmentally friendly crab traps instead.

If you drive to Taiwan’s northeast coast and visit Yeh­liu Geo­park early enough in the morning, you’ll see students from Ye­liu Elementary jogging on the trails there. On the way back you can stop to gorge on crabs in ­Wanli. Fall is the best time of year for traveling in Taiwan.