Taipei: Many countries around the world celebrate Father’s Day on the third Sunday of June.
In Taiwan, Father’s Day is celebrated on August 8th as the Chinese pronunciation for eight is ‘ba’, and “eighth/eighth” (8th day of the 8th month) in Mandarin Chinese sounds like “ba-ba”, very similar to the colloquial word “baba”, which stands for “daddy”.
Although Father’s Day in Taiwan is not a public holiday but is still widely celebrated. People often take their father out for a big meal or give their father a gift.
Taiwan’s World No. 1 women’s singles player, Tai Tzu Ying who won the silver medal at the Tokyo Olympics, took to her social media page to thank her father for his contribution to her success in badminton.
“Thank you for teaching me so many things over the years!”
Tai recalled when she started playing badminton at the age of 9, her dad often drove a van and took her and her older sister to participate in various local competitions trying to let her play against different opponents.
“Not only that you’ve taught me how to win, but you also taught me how to accept defeat. More importantly, you have provided me with the best support and comfort.”
Tai Tzu Ying mentioned in her post that even though she knew that her father had very high expectations of her, but he would not put too much pressure on her.
“He gave me a lot of confidence, and he wanted me to believe in myself. He always tells me if I believe in myself, everything is possible.”
Tai said there’re ups and downs in her badminton career, sometimes, she was doubting herself or was too tired and wanted to give up.
“But my dad always stays optimistic and lets me do what I wanted to do. This also makes me optimistic when I returned to the court.”
The 27-year-old revealed that her dad had hoped she could play in the Olympics when she grew up. Tai materialized the goal of playing in the Olympics when she was 18 years old at the 2012 London Olympics. She participated in her second Olympics at the age of 22 in Rio.
“I finally stood on the podium in my third Olympics,” added Tai.
Tai won Taiwan’s first-ever Olympic women’s singles badminton medal at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, after losing an epic 1-2 thriller to China’s Chen Yufei in the final.
