{"id":69257,"date":"2025-02-01T09:05:26","date_gmt":"2025-02-01T00:05:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/feb\/01\/taiwans-next-generation-takes-on-its-fear-of-the-deep"},"modified":"2025-02-01T09:05:26","modified_gmt":"2025-02-01T00:05:26","slug":"taiwans-next-generation-takes-on-its-fear-of-the-deep","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=69257","title":{"rendered":"Taiwan\u2019s next generation takes on its fear of the deep"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A cocktail of protectiveness, fear and superstition has led many Taiwanese to stay away from the ocean, but that is starting to change, one swimming class at a time<\/p>\n<p>A dozen excited 10-year-olds are bouncing in their chairs. The small classroom\u2019s walls are lined with racks of wetsuits and water equipment, and decorated with posters of turtles. But the students\u2019 eyes are trained on their teacher, Tseng Ching-ming, describing the currents and sea conditions at nearby Banana Bay, where they\u2019ll soon be going.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cToday you have one mission: to take off your equipment and float in the water,\u201d he says. Some of the kids grin, nervously. They don\u2019t know it, but the students from Kenting-Eluan elementary school on Taiwan\u2019s southernmost point, are rare among their peers and predecessors.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/feb\/01\/taiwans-next-generation-takes-on-its-fear-of-the-deep\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A cocktail of protectiveness, fear and superstition has led many Taiwanese to stay away from the ocean, but that is starting to change, one swimming class at a timeA dozen excited 10-year-olds are bouncing in their chairs. The small classroom\u2019s walls a&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4601,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,467,74],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-oceans","category-taiwan"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4601"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=69257"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69257\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":69258,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69257\/revisions\/69258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=69257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=69257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=69257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}