The Mandarin Center of the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas, and Wenzao Ursuline University of Languages in Kaohsiung is the first Chinese-language program launched under a joint U.S.-Taiwan education initiative. It seeks to bringing language learning and cultural knowledge to St. Thomas students and the broader Houston community, as well as start to fill the gap left by the closure of Beijing-operated Confucius Institutes in the U.S. TaiwanPlus got an inside look.
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00:00Okay, so please say ah.
00:03Ah.
00:04Okay.
00:05Taiwanese national Zoe Zhuo is the sole Mandarin instructor at this language center in Houston.
00:11A native of Taoyuan in northern Taiwan, Zhuo came to Texas through a Taiwanese government program
00:16that sends qualified teachers overseas.
00:19But this is far from her first posting in the U.S.
00:22When I was in third grade, I went to a Chinese primary school in San Francisco to teach Chinese for about a month.
00:29At the time, it was a summer camp.
00:32Other than that, I also taught at an Air Force school in the U.S. and a military school in Xi'an.
00:40The center Zoe teaches at is a collaboration between Houston's University of St. Thomas
00:45and the Wenzhou Ursuline University of Languages in Kaohsiung in southern Taiwan.
00:50It's the first of four centers established under a joint U.S.-Taiwan education initiative
00:55aimed in part at filling the gap left by the closure of China-run Confucius Institutes across the U.S.
01:01Those centers, targeted by the previous two U.S. administrations over their ties to the Chinese Communist Party,
01:08once numbered around 100, but have dwindled since 2019 to fewer than five, according to a 2023 government report.
01:16The director of St. Thomas' Mandarin Center, Ye Yaoyuan, says Beijing poured significant resources into the Confucius Institutes,
01:24something Taiwan has not been able to match.
01:27He says the Taiwan-initiated programs have to be practical about what they can achieve.
01:32We want to fill the void, but most likely, currently what we're doing is we're trying to supplement
01:38to the Mandarin education or Mandarin teaching capacities across the world.
01:47Ye says a large part of the center's mission is to bring Mandarin education not just to St. Thomas students,
01:53but to the larger Houston community.
01:55To that end, it offers free classes on weekday evenings to anyone interested in learning the language.
02:00Still, the courses in Houston are not the center's only focus.
02:04Rather, it's flagship program, sending students over to Wenzhou University in Kaohsiung for language exchange.
02:11Jade Batista and Carla Silva-Mendez, both seniors at St. Thomas, were part of the Summer 2023 group.
02:17They say studying in Taiwan helped them better understand the complex cross-strait relationship,
02:22something that may not have been possible had they gone to China instead.
02:26I didn't know much of Taiwan or the tension between Taiwan and China going into this program.
02:31And so while I was there speaking to people from Taiwan, hearing their side of the story,
02:35hearing how they were feeling about it, it made me want to learn more about the conflict.
02:40Because during this program, I realized I officially wanted to go into international studies.
02:44Though still growing, the center is already making a big impact,
02:48helping develop language skills and cultural knowledge among a new generation of learners.
02:53Devin Tsai, Leslie Liao, and Jeremy Olivier in Houston, Texas for Taiwan Plus.