HISTORIC ACHIEVEMENT:Lee Ya-hsuan and Hsu Ching-wen both won their reverse singles rubbers to secure a spot in Fed Cup World Group II next year

Taipei Times
Date: Apr 19, 2016
By: Dave Carroll / Staff reporter

Taiwan will play in Fed Cup World Group II for the first time next year after they

completed a 4-1 victory over Poland in their playoff on Sunday.

With the teams tied at 1-1 after the first two singles rubbers on Saturday in Inowroclaw, Poland, Lee Ya-hsuan and Hsu Ching-wen secured victories over Paula Kania and Magdalena Frech respectively in the reverse singles to secure promotion.
While the hosts were also without world No. 2 Agnieszka Radwanska and Magda Linette, who both pulled out with injuries last week, nothing can take away from the achievement of captain Wang Shi-Ting’s young team.

However, the day did not start well for Lee, who was broken in her first service game and went to lose the first set against Kania, but she bounced back, saving two match points on her way to a 2-6, 6-3, 9-7 victory in 2 hours, 35 minutes.     [FULL  STORY]

Taipei Times
Date: Apr 18, 2016
By: Dave Carroll / Staff reporter

Taiwan and Poland were locked at 1-1 after the first day of their Fed Cup World

Group II playoff on Saturday in Inowroclaw, Poland.

Fed Cup debutant Hsu Ching-wen got the visitors off to the perfect start, recovering from a break down in the first set to claim a 6-3, 6-4 victory over Paula Kania in 1 hour, 16 minutes in the first singles rubber.

The Taiwanese saved two of four break points and converted four of eight, hitting 19 winners on her way to claiming 64 of the 107 points contested to put promotion-seeking Taiwan 1-0 up in the best-of-five tie.

“I was thinking too much,” the 19-year-old Taiwanese told the Fed Cup Web site of her initial wobble.

“I wanted to win fast, but I lose the control,” she said.     [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2016/04/17
By: Chao Li-yan and Evelyn Kao

Taipei, April 17 (CNA) National Geographic Channel (NGC) on Sunday apologized for an English typo made on an advertising board for a fun run it hosted in Taichung, central Taiwan that day, on which the name of “Taiwan” was written as “Taiwam.”

The National Geographic’s Earth Day Run kicked off at the Taichung Metropolitan Opera House, attracting thousands of runners.

Some Internet users spotted the typo displayed on the advertising board placed at the starting point and uploaded pictures of the board online, sparking discussion among netizens.

However, the event organizer said while it had discovered the error before the event started, it did not have enough time to fix the problem.     [FULL  STORY]

SERIES LEVELED:Patrick O’Bryant and Liu Cheng combined to produce a 5-0 run in the third quarter, which helped Taiwan Beer overcome a 39-34 deficit at halftime

Taip;ei Times
Date: Apr 18, 2016
By Paul Huang / Contributing reporter

Holding Pure Youth Construction to just eight points in the third quarter, Taiwan

Beer rallied from a five-point, first-half deficit with a superior second half, stifling the Builders with a final score of 81-72 at the Kaohsiung Feng Shan Gymnasium last night to take Game 2 of the championship finals.

The victory not only cooled off the Builders, who seemed well on their way to win the game with a solid first half, but more importantly evened the best-of-seven series at one apiece as another loss by the Brew Crew would have put them in a hole.

Liu Cheng broke out of a scoreless slump in the first half with 16 points in the second half, 10 of which came during the decisive fourth quarter to corral his club past the four-time defending champions.

“I just tried not to let [his scoreless first half] bother me and kept shooting the ball if the shots were there,” Liu said after the game.

His timely surge could be trouble for Pure Youth now that the series is essentially a best-of-five.     [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2016/04/16
By: Stanley Cheung and Romulo Huang

Hong Kong, April 16 (CNA) Taiwan’s table tennis player Chen Chien-an (陳建安)

grabbed an Olympic spot on Saturday after defeating his rival Tanviriyavechakul Padsask from Thailand in the finals of the Men’s Singles Draw C at the second stage of the 2016 ITTF-Asia Olympic Qualification Tournament being held in Hong Kong.

Chen, who is ranked 64th in the world, won the six-game encounter 4-2 (11-6, 11-6, 10-12, 13-15, 15-13 and 11-7), becoming the only Taiwanese table tennis player to qualify for the Rio Olympic Games in August.

Athletes from 23 countries and territories are participating in the Olympic qualifying tournament, which commenced on April 13 and will run through April 17.     [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2016/04/16
By: Lee Yu-cheng and Romulo Huang

Manila, April 16 (CNA) Two Taiwanese Taekwondo athletes secured Olympic qualification for Rio 2016 on Saturday after defeating their rivals in the semifinals of their respective weight divisions at the Asian Taekwondo Olympic Qualification Tournament being held in Manila, the Philippines.

Liu Wei-ting (劉威廷) got past Mahmoud Abdelrahim from Qatar with 4:2 in the semifinals of the men’s division under 80 kilograms at the qualifying tournament and clinched an Olympic spot.     [FULL  STORY]

SPLIT SECOND:A three-point shot from Taiwan Beer’s Chiang Yu-an was counted out by 0.1 seconds, leaving the defending champions with a close victory of 73-70

Taipei Times
Date: Apr 17, 2016
By: Paul Huang / Contributing reporter

Overcoming several misses from the free-throw line in the fourth quarter, Pure

Youth Construction held off a late-game rally by Taiwan Beer to collect a 73-70 win in Game 1 of the championship finals at the Kaohsiung Feng Shan Gymnasium last night to take a 1-0 lead in the best-of-seven series.

Tsai Wen-cheng came up huge with three clutch baskets and as many defensive rebounds in the final quarter to lift the four-time defending champions past a feisty Brew Crew, who nearly turned the tide with what would have been the game-tying three by Chiang Yu-an that missed the final buzzer by 0.1 seconds.

“We needed a big break to help us get through the first one and that was exactly what we got tonight,” Tsai said after the game.

He more than lived up to his two-time championship finals-MVP billing by connecting on shots that either gave his team a multi-possession lead or stopped a Taiwan Beer run in the final quarter.     [FULL  STORY]

Taipei Times
Date:  Apr 16, 2016
By: NY Times News Service

Kuei Hsiu-chen waited until her husband and three sons had gone to bed one

night before surreptitiously beginning work on an ambitious personal project.

As they slept, Kuei, 48, a stay-at-home mother from San Jose, California, hunkered down at her computer and began poring over highlight videos featuring Charlotte Hornets guard Jeremy Lin, her favorite NBA player. She fumbled around on Final Cut Pro, a video-editing program, splicing together the specific clips she had sought. She did this for six straight nights, three hours each night.

On April 5, Kuei uploaded her finished product, a 6.5-minute video, to YouTube. She called it: Jeremy Lin: Too Flagrant Not to Call.

Piecing together clips of Lin being whacked in the face, clotheslined, bleeding, tumbling to the floor — all without ever drawing a flagrant foul — Kuei tried to convey that Lin, an American-born son of immigrants from Taiwan, was the target of excessive physicality from opponents and insufficient protection from the league and its referees.     [FULL  STORY]

Taiwan Today
Date: April 15, 2016

Taiwan’s record medal haul of 10 golds, four silvers and two bronzes saw it

finish second overall at the recent International Abilympics in France, underscoring the success of the government in providing vocational education and training opportunities for the disabled.

Team members defended their golds in basic dress-making, computer programming, cooking and pottery, while bagging first-time golds in advanced data processing, advanced electronic assembly and tailoring. Other first place-getters were in cabinet-making, advanced and basic, as well as silk painting.

At a ceremony April 12 at the Presidential Office in Taipei City, President Ma Ying-jeou described the medalists at the ninth edition of the world’s biggest workskills competition for persons with disabilities as representative of Taiwan’s world-class talent pool.

“They are testament to the effectiveness of developing vocational skills through education and cross-sector collaboration,” he said. “Over the past eight years, the government has earmarked NT$25 billion [US$771.5 million] for continued upgrade and transformation of Taiwan’s technical and vocational education.”     [FULL  STORY]