The Taiwan Academy: Exploring the Full Scope of Chinese Culture
reshipment/The Taiwan Academy
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In 1966, China’s government launched the Cultural Revolution, the “attack by reasoning, defend by force” campaign, and the Down to the Countryside Movement, roundly criticizing China’s traditional moral and ethical views and destroying many of China’s cultural relics and historic sites. With this ten year purge, the traditional ceremonies, customs, and religious beliefs of China had virtually disappeared from China by the end of the Cultural Revolution, while they remained whole in Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, and Hong Kong.
During the same period in Taiwan, to spark a Chinese cultural renaissance, the Republic of China government launched an ideological and cultural campaign, calling for the integration of culture by creating a democratic, scientific social blueprint for a new China based on the Three Principles of the People.” Books were sorted and texts made easy to understand; overviews of Chinese culture were compiled and published, as well as texts on 100 great Chinese thinkers throughout history, detailing their philosophies and the influence of their works; Beijing opera was promoted, with classic scripts compiled and related talent cultivated, and various artistic and cultural exchange events were held, laying a solid foundation for the preservation and promotion of Chinese culture.
Technology has developed rapidly in Taiwan in the 21st century, and according to the Global Information Technology Report 2010-2011 recently released by the World Economic Forum and INSEAD in New York, 2011, Taiwan’s level of networked readiness was virtually neck-and-neck with that of the United States in 2011, ranking sixth worldwide. It was atop Taiwan’s dual foundations of technology and accumulated culture, that the Council for Cultural Affairs launched the Taiwan Academy to promote Taiwanese culture, with three locations unveiled in New York, Houston, and Los Angeles on October 14, 2011.
The Taiwan Academy started from Taiwan’s existing special characteristics and advantages, utilizing Taiwan’s advanced information and digital technology, integrating the three major aspects of Chinese language education and the promotion of traditional characters, Taiwan and classical Chinese studies, and the cultural diversity of Taiwan into the creation an information platform to represent the cultural character of ethnic Chinese people. This platform is to be an important medium for interactions between Taiwanese culture and international society, and a platform for international society to become familiar with what our country has achieved in its general development. The main headings on the website are “Culture Exploration,” ”Language Learning,” “Taiwan/Sinology Studies,” and “Treasures of Taiwan”, integrating rich, specialized digital archives databases for the use of interested users worldwide, allowing them unlimited and free usage of the platform, showing Taiwan’s strengths as a global creator of technology and business opportunities.
