For many years, Taiwan is one of the largest economic partners of Vietnam in trade and investment. In 2016, it ranked 4th countries making investment with 2,509 projects with a total registered accumulative capital of over USD$31.57 billion; was the 5th largest trade partner of Vietnam¸ reached nearly USD$ 13.4billion two-way trades, including USD$11.22billion exporting to Vietnam and USD$2.27billion importing from Vietnam. Up to 2016 there was cumulative 96,446 Vietnamese married to Taiwan nationals. There are more than 5000 Vietnamese students studying in Taiwan according to the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Vietnam.

In order to let student have more opportunities to learn more about Vietnam, Taipei Tech offers Vietnam culture and language course that focus on including their economy, culture, tourism and people with special emphasis on the use of the language for communication. Dinh Dung, who started to teach this course at Taipei Tech since 2013, said that learning Vietnam is a plus for people who want to work there. Many Taiwanese businessmen own factories in Vietnam such as in furniture and clothing manufacturing industries. Mrs. Dinh also noted that the grammar of Vietnamese is similar to Mandarin; it won’t be too difficult for students to learn the language once they know the alphabets and pronunciation. Mrs. Dinh gave high recognition to Taipei Tech students’ hardworking spirit mentioning that they practice a lot and learn very fast.

Yu-xing Dai, sophomore at the Department of Industrial Management noted that he practices vocabularies he learnt in class whenever he got some spare time such as in a shower. The neighborhood where he lives in, Banqiao District, has many Vietnam residents and he also took the chance to make conversation with them.

Ya-fang Shi, sophomore at the Department of Industrial Management noted that the class is more interesting than she thought. During class, in addition to standard learning, they will do cultural activities including watching Vietnam movie and making Vietnamese spring rolls.

Zi-jun Gao, sophomore at the Department of Mechanical Engineering, noted that it made his mother who is from Vietnam happy when he use Vietnamese to talk to her.

Taipei Tech also launched an Integrated Academia-Industry Education Program in furniture and carpentry that plans to send students to Vietnam for internship in the future. Vietnam is an important partner for Taiwan, but overall, we want our students to have international mobility in this globalized environment and can live up to their potentials no matter which country they are in the world.