Syracuse hosts students from Taiwan at the mayor’s invitation

SYRACUSE, N.Y. (WSYR-TV) — Syracuse hosted some very special visitors at this year’s annual Taiwanese flag-raising celebration, 10 and 11-year-old students from Chiayi City who Syracuse Mayor Ben Walsh invited after he visited Taiwan in March.

All it took was one trip for Walsh to see the only difference between Syracuse and its sister city is distance.

“Chiayi City is receiving an investment similar to Syracuse in the county that they’re in. There’s another chip manufacturer coming into town, so the technological changes, the challenges, the infrastructure challenges, there’s a lot of similar challenges,” said Dan Feng, a representative of the Taiwanese-American Association of Central New York.

During the mayor’s conversation, Walsh found that they share a priority of education, a very reason this select group of students from Chiayi City decided to visit Syracuse.

“The school that they attend, they call it an experimental school,” Feng said. “They assisted the kids, but the kids made their own airline reservations, the kids made their own hotel reservations, the kids had to be prepared to ask questions to go through immigration to know those types of things.”

Landing in Syracuse with more confidence than ever.

“We had an audition and we had to introduce ourselves in English and our teachers would ask some questions and we had to answer them,” said one of the students. “There were like 13 people that auditioned and eight of us were selected.”

And the best part of their trip? Dinosaur Bar-B-Que.

“It was so good. It’s the best meal we had in Syracuse,” said one of the students.

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