Taiwan Church News
3853 Edition
29 Dec, 2025 ~ 4 Jan. 2026
Weekly Topical
Rooting Taiwanese Deep and Wide, Distinguished Campaigners Granted World Taiwanese Culture Awards
Reported by Chen Hui-ya from Tainan
The ceremony of “2025 World Taiwanese Cultural Awards” was held in Taiwan Culture Hall of National Cheng Kung University at 2:28 pm on 28th December, 2025. This event is hosted by the World Taiwanese Cultural Forum and Hoat-Ki(remembering Mr Chiung Hoat-tai and Mrs Sun Iok-ki) Taiwanese Foundation.
The event aims to honor individuals and groups who had cultivated Taiwanese languages for decades and insisted to uphold the subjectivity of Taiwanese culture. Three remarkable contributors and two prominent groups were awarded in the ceremony, including Edward Greve, Tsioh Bok-bin, Dr Yang Szu-pan, Taiwan Church Press and Mosei Academy.
Mr Simon Cheng, founder of World Taiwanese Cultural Forum, said that this is the third World Taiwanese Cultural Award. “Annually we seek to work with different groups,” he said, “this year, 2025, we cooperate with HOATKI Taiwanese Foundation to grant rewards to professional persons and groups in various fields with social influence, as well as those who campaign for Taiwanese revival.” Mr Cheng expected that Taiwanese Cultural Award could become a significant force and efficiently contribute to Taiwanese culture.
In his speech, Prof Chiung Wi-wun, CEO of HOATKI Taiwanese Foundation and a NCKU faculty member in Department of Taiwanese Literature, specifically explained the plan of “Escorting Zhang Liang-zhe’s books back to Taiwan”, and called on the public to participate in this special event to preserve these extremely fragile and precious Taiwanese biblio-inheritance and documents.
Rev Fang Lan-ting, president of Taiwan Church Press, expressed his appreciation to receiving the award, but he also dealt with a heartfelt pain from inside: the award also meant that there were not much people awake to walk on the road of Taiwanese revival.
Although the weekly Taiwan Church News has increased its news coverage of Taiwanese up to two whole pages, he still cordially wished that “Taiwanese will not be limited to specific corners or treated like ‘charity seats on MRT’, i.e. honorable but not available to the public.”
In the future, he pledged, “Taiwan Church Press will delve into a fusion of logos, literature and lives and make the Taiwanese languages blended into every cultural dimension, so the readers can be served by our publications through mother tongues and all walks of lives.”
Mosei Academy was founded by a group of Taiwanese in Northern California, US. It was named after Professor Lin Mao-sheng (pen name: Keng Nam), a heroic pioneer in Taiwan’s western education. Ms Hô Phè-chin, representative of Mosei Academy, said “current academy’s focus is on the Taiwanese education of children utilizing a textbook “Tâi-gí ū Liàn-tńg” in Taiwanese class. Meanwhile, overseas Taiwanese Americans will also practice the goal of “living in Taiwanese” through physical assemblies every month.”
Having the professional expertise as a computer engineer, A-ióng (i.e. Edward Greve), an American who loves Taiwanese culture with passions, created a YouTube video channel called “A-ióng Tâi-gí”. “I have engaged in Taiwanese revival for 15 years”, he said, “although the recovery speed of Taiwanese is quite slow, but on the whole Taiwan society had made some progress.”
When Mr Tsioh Bok-bin served as chief executive officer of the Tainan Confucius Temple Cultural Foundation, he once curated Tainan Confucius Temple purely in Taiwanese and this curation brought him a big fame. He attributed his fluency in Taiwanese to the historic-linguistic treasures bequeathed by forebears and promised to carry on the education of Taiwanese inherited from ancestors to future generations. “I am very confident that if we continue to use and polish our mother tongue, great writers of Taiwanese will absolutely show up in future,” he said.
Dr Yang Szu-pan won the applause of the audience for his humorous speech and fluent Taiwanese. Within five minutes’ time, he used 84 slides to connect four poems of seven-character regulated verse to introduce his works in Taiwanese over the years. He had donated royalties of his two books, “The Books in My Life” and “There has to be someone”, to the public welfare and constantly purchased many books for school free. He is known as “A Guide in Reading.”
Translated by Peter Wolfe
