Taipei City Government

Mayor Ko Wen-je attended the Outstanding Middle School Students Award Presentation Ceremony for First Semester of 2015 School Year in the afternoon on December 22.
During his address, the mayor admitted that he wasn’t sure about the exact definition of outstanding students. However, having recently conducted his own end-of-the-year self-examination, he proposed the following theory before the audience. Doing something you like well is nothing rare; however, doing something you don’t like well is very important.
Ko said he was quite surprised to learn that the Japanese language uses the Chinese characters “Mian Qiang“(勉強) as the Japanese phrase for “studying.” He remarked that studying is not limited to do things you like to do, and it is necessary to do an outstanding job for something you don’t like. He hopes that everyone can do what they like well, and what they don’t like even better.
A total of 365 middle school students with outstanding performance received the award at the ceremony.
When asked by the media about his thoughts on having to stand for two hours at the event and that 100-percent of the elementary school students responding to the survey indicated that they want to receive the award from the mayor, Ko says that if they want the mayor to present the award, he will be ready to hand it to the 360-plus students in person today.