Taipei City Government

On November 2, Mayor Ko Wen-je attended the inauguration ceremony for the Luxue Building at Mandarin Experimental Elementary School. The event also serves as an occasion for the city government to share its new physical education development strategy outline for Taipei City’s elementary and middle schools with the public.

During his speech, the mayor pointed out that building a quality campus environment for sports has always been one of the priorities for the Department of Education. An outstanding sports environment is important for training talented athletes. Taipei City has been relatively successful in the past few years, as demonstrated by local athletes such as Tokyo Olympics badminton gold medalists Wang Chi-lin and Lee Yang; karate bronze medalist Wen Tzu-yun; and table tennis player Lin Yun-ju. Of course, there’s also the members of the Jingmei tug-of-war team who competed and shined at the World Games.  

Ko pointed out that in the past 8 years, over NT$17.2 billion have been allocated to the upgrade of school infrastructure, including NT$13.2 for newly constructed or overhauled activity centers; NT$1.1 billion for sports venue refurbishments, and NT$2.6 billion to the revamping of playgrounds at 175 schools. 

Due to its small campus size, the Mandarin Experimental Elementary School is desperately in need of an ideal venue for sports activities. He expressed his gratitude to all those who made it possible for the building to be completed on schedule, despite challenges such as the pandemic, inflation, and labor shortages. 

The mayor also discussed the five major highlights of the strategy outline for sports development, focusing on areas such as “quality improvement of physical education,” “professionalization of sports facilities,” “practicalizing activity design,” “science-based competitive sports training,” and “elaboration of international exchanges.”