Taiwan has to learn the power of silence

The world's oldest sports meet for athletes with a disability began as a loud and clear answer by the hearing impaired to a world that, in the Deaflympics organizer's words, “viewed deaf people as intellectually inferior, linguistically impoverished and often treated us as outcasts.”

The Deaflympics, in this sense, is an 85-year-old challenge to the hearing people to truly listen and understand the life of the deaf.

The 2009 Deaflympics is the biggest international sports event Taipei has ever hosted and the first time the meet is being hosted in Asia. As a country in real need of international exposure, Taiwan has every reason to proudly wear this event as its crown jewel.

And so it has. Since being chosen as the host of the 2009 Summer Deaflympics, Taipei has gone all out to publicize the “Power of Silence,” the Chinese-language theme of the 2009 games, dabbed the “Pride of Taiwan.” Celebrity spokespersons hand gestured to promote the sports meet in commercials that blanketed the airwaves. The Taipei Stadium was given a multimillion-dollar reconstruction to guarantee a memorable opening of the games.

Yet, three years and billions of Taiwan dollars later, the Taipei Deaflympics are reminding people how relevant Rubens-Alcais' challenge still is in our time and how difficult it is for a society to listen.

The Taipei Deaflympics has been dotted with numerous hiccups since its opening in Sept. 5: the sub-standard eight-lane swimming pool beside the Taipei Stadium, the frustratingly puzzling and uninformative official Web site as well as the inconvenient transportation between the 36 hotels accommodating the athletes and the games venues in the greater Taipei area.

Less than comprehensive preparations and communication between the Taipei games organizer and International Deaflympics governing body have resulted in problems such as a lack of volunteer training and adequate translators, the disqualification of a Taiwan handball player for having better hearing than allowed and the debacle of the Iraqi flag that had trouble flying in the air at the opening ceremony because of the heavy white patches used to cover up an outdated pattern in a last-minute “upgrade.”

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