A principal at Jhongping Elementary School in Taoyuan’s Jhongli District (中壢) hopes to calm students’ minds with daily Chinese calligraphy practice.
School principal Liu Yun-chieh (劉雲傑) teaches half-hour-long classes on weekdays to prepare students to learn calligraphy and help them to calm their minds, he said.
“Modern people are too focused on their mobile devices, to the extent that they find no time for anything else,” Liu said.
Photo: Hsu Cho-hsun, Taipei Times
This has led to sloppy handwriting, even when writing in print with ballpoint pens, he said.
It is sad that schools have phased out the art of calligraphy, which used to be mandatory for elementary-school students, he said.
Another reason he instituted the program was to keep the most unruly students occupied, so that they can learn to calm their minds, if only for a brief moment, by observing, copying and, hopefully, learning to appreciate calligraphy, Liu said.
The program eventually gained a reputation among parents, who began asking if their children could enroll in the class, he said.
“Every stroke of the brush, regardless of what action you make with it, reflects the calligrapher’s nature and emotions,” he said.
Liu, a student of renowned calligrapher Chiang Yu-min (江育民), is proficient in the regular script of Chinese calligraphy and uses Tang Dynasty regular script master Ouyang Xun’s (歐陽詢) Sweet Water Ode at Jioucheng Palace (九成宮醴泉銘) as part of his teaching materials.
Ouyang’s work features many core concepts of the regular script, which could also express other ideas on how to comport oneself in life, Liu said.
“Ouyang’s script is orderly, eschewing flowery script and bearing with it an inner strength, the likes of which can only be recreated through diligence and concentration,” he said.
Many students do not truly appreciate the meaning of “giving it their all” until they try copying Ouyang’s scripts, he said.
A student surnamed Lin (林) said that he was impatient and usually wrote sloppily, as he often could not wait to leave the classroom.
After the course, he said that not only was his handwriting much more legible, but he was also much calmer.
A parent surnamed Lo (羅) said that Liu’s requirements for the class — to put everything in order before they are allowed to begin writing — has encouraged her child to adopt orderly habits.
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
RSS