Chinese Taipei has long been the official name for Taiwan, as long as we want to join the world-class events, sometimes we were not even allowed to participate in any sports games. Though some people from certain organization had tried to fight against this name by holding the referendum on changing the Chinese Taipei to Taiwan, it failed at the end with the lack of support by our government in 2018. This year, the Tokyo Olympics hosting country has offered a lot of help to us, not only provided the encouraging video for our team, but also arranged the appearance of Taiwan team by the order of Ta たcharacter not Chiち. When the Chinese Taipei entered the area after the opening ceremony, the NHK anchorwoman, Mayuko Wakuda, announced “Taiwan desu台湾です”, which triggered a lot of attention and touched many Taiwanese hearts.

The supporting groups

The Japanese groups kept saying Taiwan team for encouraging us, while our sports committee introduced ourselves as Chinese Taipei.

Controversial news

Before the departure for Olympics, the president confirmed that all the national team members should take business class on the plane rather than economic class, in order to let our athletes relax with enough energy to bring their talent into full play. However, the Chinese Taipei Olympic Committee arranged the economic class seats and three class hotel rooms for all athletes, while accompanying officers stayed at the luxurious hotel, suffering criticisms from all folks though the badminton player, Tai Tzu Ying, said that the hotel is very close to the Olympics which is good and considerate.

After the outbreak of news, the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in Japan quickly sent three assistants to help our team members, so they could stay there with warmth and support.

The first silver medal: Yang Yung-Wei

Yang Yung-wei is the Payuan native Taiwanese who grew up in Taichung with family members of Judo background. Despite the fact that he won the silver medal, he made Taiwanese proud of him with our first medal in Olympics. His Instagram account was followed by more than 70,000 people after the competition.

Continuing games

The Tokyo Olympics will keep going on until August 8th, so I hope every team member can do their best, not just Taiwan team, but also other teams from the world. The sports games bring us together and connect our hearts around the globe, wish all the best to those who join the Olympics. Also, many thanks to the hosting country, Japan, which helped us with name-change and that is the most important thing for us.