Today (29), the Sports Administration held the 2021 Premiere of “Silhouettes of Angels” Promotional Video and Special Book Conference. For the video, five recipients of the 2020 President’s Education Award, Sports category were filmed, describing their life journey, overcoming of environmental obstacles and how they surmounted the frustration and challenge of family difficulties and physical disabilities far more challenging than those of their peers. Their achievements are not just displayed on the sports field, they also display “never-say-die” spirit.

Sun Yi-lun suffers from a rare disease that left him standing just 100 centimeters tall when he was in first year of Kaohsiung Municipal Dawan Junior High School; his spine has a 70-degree curve which puts pressure on his chest capacity so he needs to swim to widen his chest and prevent his organs being squeezed and causing death. Despite this, he is still positive and eager to progress. His greatest hope is that he can stay alive, become a computer program designer and invent a life assistive system for the physically impaired. Badminton player Shen Yan-ru of National Taiwan Sport University has been hearing-impaired since childhood and was only able to say Mother for the first time aged three years old. Relying on a hearing aid, when she was young she was extremely introverted because she couldn’t hear clearly and didn’t dare to speak. However, encouraged by her badminton-loving mother, she joined the badminton team of Shihu Elementary School in Kaoshiung. With her love for badminton and careful nurturing by family and coaches, she became the first hearing impaired badminton player to be promoted to Division 1 and also took two golds in the World Deaf Badminton Championships. Being crowned badminton queen at a young age shows her extraordinary fighting spirit.

Born in Changbin Township, Taitung County and a member of the Amis tribe, Hu sin is currently a student at Hsu-kuang High School in Nantou. His parents separated when he was young and he and his elder brother were brought up by their grandmother with an aunt who worked in Renai Township. Tall and slim, with a good physique, he trained hard and achieved good results in the National High School Games and many overseas competitions. Still at high school, he has already won a gold at the East Asia Cup Karate Championship. He hopes to repay his grandmother and aunt for their continual support through achieving more good results in future. Lin Chung-you is a judoka from a single-parent family who was raised by his grandmother. After entering National Taitung University Affiliated Sports Senior High School, he was selected for training by coaches Tsai Yi-fang and Chen Chia-feng and has taken part in many competitions in Taiwan and overseas. A watershed event for him was his defeat of a Japanese judoka to became Taiwan’s first gold medalist at the World Junior Judo Championships in 2019. Born to parents from Taiwan and Thailand, Lin Sin-huei’s parents seperated when she was young, making her proactive and independent. Moving to Taiwan from Thailand at elementary school age, she was unable to get involved in school life because of the language barrier but found a sense of belonging in football. Showing unusual sporting talent, she was selected for the adult national football team when was still in grade 3 at senior high school. Her team came 4^th at the Asian games in 2018. She says she plans to go to Japan for further study in the future and help people like her.

In this year’s plan, apart from making a promotional video, the “Silhouettes of Angels” special book that was well-received during the campus lecture tour was published again; this introduces 20 students who received the President’s Education Award for sports 2016-2020 through in-depth interviews, the mental journey of each recipient is described in full in the book. One of the subjects of the stories in the book was invited to today’s presentation meeting: Hsieh Hsiang-an, a student of Tainan University of Technology introduced this book using his ballet skills.

The Sports Administration hopes through the promotional video and special book to convey the journey of struggle of these Silhouettes of Angels. Seeing the efforts to overcome difficult circumstances of the subjects will give students and the wider public positive energy and allow them to learn correct life outlook and values and realize the true value and meaning of life.