Department of Slavic Languages and Literature

On October 18th 2018, Mr. Representative Rumlar and Deputy Representative Ms. Taborska of the Czech Economic and Cultural Office in Taipei officially visited our Department of Slavic Languages and Literature. The purpose of this visit, in addition to strengthen the mutual academic cooperation and promotion, is mainly to hand over the two sets of Czech traditional costumes from the Centre for International Cooperation in Education in Prague (DZS/Dům zahraniční spolupráce) to our Department of Slavic Languages and Literature.

The DZS is a semi-budgetary organization, established by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport of the Czech Republic, performing tasks involved with ensuring educational, training and other relations with foreign countries. The organization supports Czech cultural heritage abroad primarily by sending Czech language lecturers to foreign universities. In 2014, NCCU became the host university for the first Czech teacher sent by DZS to Taiwan: Mr. Geppert. He came up with an idea to acquire a proper costume for students of Czech at NCCU performing at various events.

Prof. Bozdechova from the Charles University (Prague), who has been one of the keynote speakers at the 7th Slavic International Conference at NCCU in November 2017, proposed to DZS to deliver the Czech traditional costumes to the Czech lectureship in Taiwan. Thanks to patronage of Czechoslovak Foreign Institute (Československý ústav zahraniční) and the help of “folklore friends” from the region of “Slovacko” (Moravian Slovakia), Ms. Mahdalova and Ms. Busikova, one pair of traditional costumes from Moravian town Uhersky Brod could be finally delivered to Taiwan last month.

As known, the traditional costumes are the symbol of the folk culture and regionally based identity. Undoubtedly, these costumes will help to share the essence of the Czech culture which can be deeply cultivated not only in Taiwan, but Asia. On October 23, 2018, at the annual "Czech Knowledge Competition" held at the Department of Slavic Languages and Literature, our students put on for the first time the Czech traditional costumes and learned basics of the Czech folk dance. This ensured to our students not only to experience Czech language, but also witnessed the promotion of the Czech culture here.