Incredible Mandarin不可思議華語

序一 Preface I

In 2009, I was very honored to arrange the former Minister, Dr. Ching-Ji Wu’s visit to India. It was the first time a minister from the Republic of China (Taiwan) visited India.

The former Minister, Dr. Wu and the former Minister of the Ministry of Human Resource Development, India (MHRD) had a meeting. Minister, Mr. Kapil Sibal asked Taiwan to send 10,000 Mandarin Chinese instructors to India. It was then we understood how broad a future Mandarin Chinese language education has in India.

After returning to Taiwan, National Tsing Hua University (NTHU) officially accepted the mission from the Ministry of Education (MOE), Taiwan, to establish Taiwan Education Centers in India (TEC). In the very beginning, I tried to contact sister universities of NTHU in India; however, the negotiation process was very challenging, as most were national institutions and there were no formal diplomatic relations between Taiwan and India. It wasn’t until 2011 that Mr. Rawat, former Representative of India in India-Taipei Association (ITA) then, introduced a private university, “O.P. Jindal Global University”, to establish the first Taiwan Education Center in India, known as TEC-JGU. In addition, it was very lucky that, in Dubai Education Fair, I happened to come across the son of the Founder of Amity University, the largest private university in India. This has led us to set up the second TEC in India, also known as TEC-Amity.

After two TECs in private universities in India have been established, with the help of Prof. T.C.A. Rangachari in Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI), the first TEC in national university was founded in May 2013, also known as TEC-JMI. Professor Rangachari speaks fluent Mandarin Chinese which he acquired in the Republic of China before 1949. Professor Rangachari was the former Indian Ambassador to Germany and France In the same year, 2013, the 4th TEC was established in Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IITM), also known as TEC-IITM. If it wasn’t for the MoU of sister universities signed during the former NTHU President, Dr. Wen-Tsuen Chen’s, visit to India in 2009 this would not have been possible.During 2015 to 2017, NTHU has further established TEC in Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), SRM University (Sri Ramaswamy Memorial University, which was renamed as SRM Institute of Science and Technology, SRMIST), and Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IITB). These three branches namely TEC-JNU, TEC-SRMIST, TECIITB.

Since 2011, one TEC has been established each year on an average (details shown in table 1). Later MOE suggested that we could slow down our pace. Nevertheless, Chitkara University contacted us in 2018, expressing that they would like to support NTHU to set up a TEC in their campus and offered to cover all the expenses required. The 8th TEC was still much supported by MOE in Chitkara University, and hence, TEC-Chitkara was established in 2019. The Ministry of Education altered its previous policy and acceded to NTHU to continue establishing TEC in India. In this regard, the 9th TEC in India in SRM University, Andhra Pradesh, was established, also known as TEC-SRMAP.

The establishment of TEC assists institutions around Taiwan to collaborate with the Indian universities. With the education of Traditional Chinese characters, it was possible to introduce Taiwanese culture to Indian students and helps them to have better understandings of Taiwan. The Indian-Taiwan bilateral collaboration has been fruitful with the partner universities’ support in providing our instructors’ staff quarters and other necessities.

After running TEC for about 5 to 6 years, we came to notice that there are no books from Taiwan in India. For one, the Indian government protects the press an