📰 On April 24, 2025, OCAC News (僑新聞), the news site of Taiwan’s Overseas Community Affairs Council, published the English feature “Ready to Master Mandarin? Explore Jade Mountain, Hungary’s Premier Taiwan‑Backed Language School”. It follows our principal Li Yi-ying from her path into teaching and her move to Hungary to founding the school that became Hungary’s first Taiwan Center for Mandarin Learning (TCML).
Highlights from the report
- Hungary’s first Taiwan Center for Mandarin Learning (TCML) was established by Jade Mountain Mandarin School. It serves both second-generation overseas Taiwanese and adult learners, and promotes traditional Chinese characters and Taiwanese culture.
- Born in Kaohsiung, Li studied foreign languages in Taipei and worked as an editor, translator and at an internet company. On a trip to northern Thailand she saw children writing with their fingers on the dirt ground as a makeshift blackboard, and decided to become a teacher, enrolling in a post-bachelor’s teacher-training program at National Hualien Normal University.
- In 2005 she interned as an English teacher at a primary school in Hualien, introducing online competitions and international pen-pal exchanges. She later taught in Kaohsiung, met her Hungarian husband and moved with him to Hungary.
- Teaching Mandarin at a Hungarian primary school, she found that competitive activities made some pupils feel their friendships were suffering, so she adapted her methods to local norms. By the end of the semester many students felt their Mandarin had overtaken their English. In 2012 she returned to Taiwan for further training, then began teaching at a Hungarian university.
- In 2017 a “nationally recognized author from China” observed her class for a photo session. The following year her classes were moved to undesirable time slots, and she discovered the university had signed an agreement with Chinese authorities. Other universities told the same story, so she decided to start her own school.
- Together with Taiwanese families who wanted their children to learn traditional characters, she organized festivals, flea markets, traditional games and cooking demonstrations in cafés, and partnered with an art gallery to show works by Taiwanese calligraphers. At first, fewer than ten people enrolled.
- Jade Mountain Mandarin School officially registered in Taiwan in 2019, and in 2022 joined the OCAC program as a recognized TCML, Hungary’s first nonprofit of its kind.
- Staffing has always been a challenge. In 2022 Li invited a Fu Jen Catholic University intern to teach at weekends, which led to a teacher-training initiative with Fu Jen launched in early 2023; Soochow University joined later that year. Trainees start online and then teach in person in Hungary. Applicants must clear three hurdles: a teaching proposal, an evaluation by TCML students and a review by the teacher-training team. Li has also referred aspiring teachers to other TCMLs in Europe facing staff shortages.
- Li sold her house in Taiwan to devote herself fully to the school, joking that she will keep going “until another ‘crazy person’ takes over.” Her motivation comes from her students: an 80-year-old grandmother hoping to talk with her Taiwanese daughter-in-law, and a new mother in her 50s who signed up with her newborn.
Photos from the report
👉 Read the full article on OCAC News
Source: OCAC News, English News, April 24, 2025. Photos: OCAC News; cover photo shows Li Yi-ying (wearing red-rimmed glasses) teaching Mandarin at TCML–Jade Mountain Mandarin School.
