Cultural seeds
Richard Shih, head of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office (TECO) in Hanoi, notes that Taiwan and Vietnam have very similar customs, which helps Taiwanese businesspeople feel very much at home there. Vietnam’s geographical and psychological proximity to Taiwan has also made it a natural focus for Taiwan’s efforts to export Mandarin education. Shih says that Vietnam is a close partner with Taiwan, and is widely recognized as a country on the rise. In March, some 30 Taiwan universities will stage an education fair in Vietnam. He is highly confident of the prospects for Mandarin education there.
In fact, the Ministry of Education began implementing a joint effort with Vietnam to promote Chinese language education there in 2007. The program, which involves assigning Mandarin teachers from Taiwan to teaching positions at Vietnamese universities, was folded into the ministry’s eight-year plan to export Chinese language education in 2013.
Lai Yi-fan, a section chief from the MOE’s Department of International and Cross-Strait Education, explains that the MOE selects Chinese language teachers to promote the use of traditional Chinese characters abroad; partially subsidizes the costs of a round-trip airfare, teaching materials and living expenses; and sends them to nations in Southeast Asia, Europe, the Americas and Africa to teach.
The program placed 34 teachers in Vietnam in 2015, including Jian Wanru.
Jian, who was sent to Hanoi last September and teaches introductory Chinese at the University of Languages and International Studies there, says she makes a point of speaking slowly and clearly in class.
Jian is well liked by the dozen or so students in the class, most of whom are high-school graduates planning to attend university in Taiwan. Nguyen Ngoc Anh is pretty typical of them. Just 18, she plans to study restaurant management at Taichung’s Chaoyang University of Technology. But Vu Thi Thuy Trang, 22, is a little unusual. Already a graduate of the economics department of mainland China’s Chongqing University, she has begun studying traditional Chinese characters because she plans to return to the mainland to pursue a graduate degree in Chinese culture and classical Chinese. “Traditional characters are difficult. They’re so much more complex!”
Huang Yunling (front row, second from left), a Mandarin teacher assigned to Hanoi by the ROC Ministry of Education, poses with students at the Taiwan Education Center.