Ma said at the celebration ceremony that he was highly touched by 451 invitation letters issued by students, and therefore decided to take time out to attend the significant event and help students realize their dreams of seeing the president show up at the celebration ceremony.

As some news media reported that some student parents allegedly criticized the “one student, one invitation letter (to President Ma)” practice initiated by Tanzi Elementary School as a kind of practice to “idolize Ma as a god,” Ma noted that the politicized criticism is unfair to the school. “If the school invites Lin Chi-ling (super model) or Wang Chien-min (famous pitcher) to attend the anniversary, no one would say the school is flattering Lin or Wang,” Ma said.

During the ceremony, Ma, Taichung County Magistrate Huang Chung-sheng and Tanzi Elementary School principal Chen Shih-ming jointly cut a cake marking the 100th anniversary of the school, and also joined a massive exercise performance by students, making them very excited.

Ma also encouraged Tanzi Elementary School to attend international Web page design competition, saying that before departing for the school, he accessed the Web site of the school and found that the Web pages are well designed.

The president said Taiwan students have won over 50 out of a total of 128 awards in an international exposition of school Web pages, including 12 platinum awards, 25 gold awards, 14 silver awards, and two special awards. “They have really done a very good job in this regard,” Ma said.

Ma also affirmed the school's great contributions to the nation by having cultivated many outstanding talents, including former Vice President Chen Meng-ling of the Control Yuan.

He encouraged all the students to develop a good habit of doing exercise and pursue a balanced development of five major education sectors — virtue cultivation, wisdom development, physical exercise, group life training, and esthetics education.

On the same occasion, Taichung County Magistrate Huang said that there are as many as 106 schools in the county with a history of over 100 years. Huang encouraged Tanzi Elementary School to cultivate more outstanding personnel in the beginning of second century of the school.