Photo：Ambassador Tien Chung-Kwang with Indian students awarded Taiwan Scholarships & Huayu Enrichment Scholarships

A ceremony awarding Taiwan Scholarships and Huayu Enrichment Scholarships was held at the Taipei Economic and Cultural Center (TECC) on July 15, 2014. 20 Indian students were formally presented with one of these two scholarships to go to Taiwan to study for a degree or to learn Mandarin. The scholarships are funded by the Ministry of Education in the Republic of China. In the last 10 years, TECC has awarded such scholarships to more than 200 Indian students in various academic fields.

Mr. Yi Ta Chen, the acting director of the Education Division, invited Ms. Nidhi Baranwal, one of the 2013 Huayu Enrichment Scholarship recipients, to attend the ceremony and share details of her studies and experiences in Taiwan. She really motivated this year’s the recipients and made them comfortable and confident about studying in Taiwan, assuring them that there was no need to feel any hesitation.

Mr. Amarnath Chegu Badrinath, whose Taiwan Scholarship application was considered the most outstanding of those this year, gave a short presentation about his motives for selecting Taiwan as his study destination, sharing his excitement about receiving a scholarship to do so with the other students present. He is a researcher at the Indian Institute of Technology in and hopes to obtain a PhD degree at National Taiwan University, and be able to become a professor.

This year there are over 50,000 foreign students in Taiwan, of whom 638 are from India. The Taiwanese government is encouraging foreign students to study in Taiwan, and India has been designated a priority country. The two programs awarding the scholarships mentioned above provide excellent education opportunities for Indian students and at the same time expose them to the rich culture of Taiwan.