Nor did the review panel of the Global Scripture-Reciting Education Foundation that sponsored its ninth annual concours until Chang Chi-han, an eighth grader in the county of Taipei, had done so.

She even recited an act in Shakespeare's "Midsummer Night's Dream" in its entirety.

The contest, sponsored by the Taiwan provincial government and the foundation, took place across Taiwan on September 20-21. Altogether 3,654 students took part.

Chang won the highest honors in the two-day contest in which she succeeded in reciting 42 of the 52 sections of English and Chinese classics.

Dr. Tsai Hsun-hsiung, minister without portfolio who doubles as governor of the province of Taiwan, presented the eighth grader with a citation at a ceremony held at the Chung Shan Girls' Senior High School auditorium yesterday.

The province of Taiwan now exists in name only.

Her mother, who was present at the ceremony, said she urged her daughter to memorize Chinese and English classics five years ago.

"She has a marvelous memory," said Mrs. Chang, who majored in English in college. "She memorizes classics both in English and Chinese faster than I could ever imagine," she added.

Does the daughter understand all those masterworks?

"At most 50 to 60 percent," Mrs. Chang said.

That may be overestimated. Not even a holder of a Ph.D. degree in English literature can fully understand William Shakespeare.

But she has a good beginning.

In imperial China, scholars were forced to memorize all the Confucian classics so that they might take and pass the civil service examination. Most of them did not fully understand Confucianism, and a few who really did began to understand years after their retirement from government service.

Well, that's why the junior high school girl had to recite most of the 31 sections of Chinese classics, including Tang poems, a couple of Buddhist sutras, and philosophic Taoist scripture in addition to the works of Confucius and Mencius.

She excelled in reciting more than a dozen of the 21 sections in English that involve, aside from Shakespeare's works, Plato's masterpiece and passages from the Holy Bible.

Mrs. Chang was happy not just her daughter won the contest. "What's more important," she said, "is that she has learned a way of self-examination from the scripture she can recite."

That indeed is a great asset the 14-year-old girl can hope to acquire.

Tsai also awarded citations to the two runners-up in the two-day contest.

They were Ho Liang-chin, a sixth grader also from the county of Taipei, and Chiang Yu-yi, a third grader from the county of Yunlin.

Ho succeeded in reciting 33 of the 52 sections and Chiang, 29.

Moreover, 107 other contestants successfully recited more than 10 sections.

Recitation may be of great help, said a retired diplomat whose grandson was one of the 107 contestants given special mention.

When George K. C. Yeh, minister of foreign affairs, met the Shah and Shah of Iran to solve a touchy question long ago, the retiree recalled, he recited almost in toto the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayam translated into English by Edward FitzGerald.

Yeh used to teach English literature at Tsing Hua University in Beijing, before President Chiang Kai-shek made him Taiwan's top diplomat.

The Rubaiyat is a group of quatrains in Persian. Persia is Iran.

So happily surprised was the Shah that he simply granted whatever request Taipei's foreign minister had made. Iran severed diplomatic ties with Taiwan in 1977 shortly before the Shah had to flee Tehran and the Ayatollah Khomeni took over.