Chinese students from Dornbirn, Bezau and Bregenz visited the partner school in Taipei.
Dornbirn. “Taiwan was one big impression,” said Severin Telser (17) when he was asked to describe his impressions of the trip to Taiwan at the parents’ evening. The seventh grader at the Dornbirn federal high school was one of 14 students who spent ten days gathering impressions of the Far East under the guidance of Qiaoshan Ye. The travel group was a mixed bag of students from BG Dornbirn, BWS Bezau and HTL Bregenz – they all had in common that they were learning Chinese with Qiaoshan Ye.
“We have had a school partnership with a school in Nanjing, China for over ten years – but this has come to a standstill due to Corona,” says Qiaoshan Ye, who teaches Chinese at the BG Dornbirn and the Bezau Tourism School. As a result, the regular trips by Vorarlberg students to their partner school in China fell through – much to the students’ displeasure. “The students kept asking why we didn’t go to China. Due to the zero-Covid policy, this was not possible and that’s how I came up with the idea of Taiwan,” says Qiaoshan Ye – an undertaking that was not entirely unproblematic for the mainland Chinese. During the Christmas holidays, she and her husband went on a private trip to Taiwan and made many local contacts. With the help of locals, a new partner school was found with the Dayuan International Senior High School.
During the Easter holidays, the time had come for the school group too – they went to Taipei via Munich and Istanbul. The young people spent the first few days exploring the sights, temples and museums of the Taiwanese capital. The program also included a visit to a tea plantation – the students could even make their own tea here. Technology fans got their money’s worth on a company tour at TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company), the world’s largest contract manufacturer of chips.
The Vorarlbergers spent the sixth day of their trip at the partner school, where they attended classes together with the Taiwanese students and taught each other tongue twisters in German and Chinese. The following day they were out and about together with their partner students and made a detour to the coast. Here they visited, among other things, the natural monument “Queens Head” in the Yehliu Geopark. Before heading back home to Vorarlberg, the young people enjoyed a sensational all-round view of the Taiwanese capital from the 89th floor of “Taipei 101”.
