After concluding an interview, pony-tailed Yang Ting-yu donned a respirator mask and NT$10,000 iron gray dustproof overalls to pose with a spray paint gun. The 22-year-old smiled brightly for the camera, not the least bit self-conscious or anxious.

For just over the past month, Yang has grown accustomed to flashes and spotlights because of her exploit in the second half of August.

It was at the biennial WorldSkills competition, dubbed the “Skills Olympics,” held in Kazan, Russia, that Yang made her mark.

Over four days and 16 hours of competition, Yang defeated 26 international competitors in the car painting category to win the gold medal, the first ever for Taiwan in the discipline. One of two Taiwanese women among the country’s five gold-medal winners at the WorldSkills event, she was also selected as “Best of Nation” for Taiwan, called “Chinese Taipei” in Kazan because of international convention.

During the event, participants never knew what problems they would have to solve until setting foot in the competition venue, though the tasks generally involved manually painting a car to test their ability to deal with unforeseen situations. Judging standards covered everything from dismantling panels, cleaning, applying fillers and sealers, and spraying to the detail demonstrated in each process.     

Ending up with gold was completely beyond Yang’s expectations. 

                       

“I was totally surprised!” she says, remembering how she felt when the results were announced. Though it was raining at the venue, Yang still eagerly draped herself in the competition’s flag and raced to the podium.

She is not the first woman to represent Taiwan in the car painting category but has established herself as the most accomplished. Her meteoric rise to the limelight took only a year and a half from the time she began studying car painting, to participating in regional competitions and then national competitions, to taking part in the WorldSkills event on behalf of her country. To prepare for the event, she took a year off from school and moved to various counties and cities in Taiwan to get training.

Currently in her third year in a joint industry-academia training program in National Taipei University of Technology’s Department of Vehicle Engineering, Yang interns at a car repair shop during the day and attends classes at night. 

It was not how Yang saw her future as a youngster. When she was in elementary school, she loved bread and at one point aspired to be a bread master. 

During her time in school, Yang’s grades were generally middle of the road, but “I realized I didn’t like sitting in a classroom studying.” It was clear that a typical high school was not for her, and in her final year of middle school, she decided to go for a vocational high school stressing practical knowledge and hands-on training.

Her challenge was to pick a department from the many on offer. Open to anything, Yang thought about studying business or the in vogue disciplines of hospitality or tourism, and she even gave a thought to nursing after seeing reports in the news about nurse shortages. 

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Her father Yang Chao-hung had a technical education background, having studied air conditioning, and he had some other ideas, pointing his daughter in a completely unexpected direction – vehicle engineering.

“You actually learn a lot in the vehicle engineering department. It covers things like machinery and electronic and electrical engineering, along with auto body sheet metal and spray painting. Dad felt there was a lot of room for development,” Yang says, explaining why she went with her father’s advice.

Her father believed that his daughter’s grades would have gotten her into her fourth or fifth choice of high schools, decent enough. But rather than see his daughter follow a path that would eventually require her to beat out hordes of competitors in claiming a precious spot in an elite university, he felt it would be wise for Ting-yu to try a different direction. He thought the vehicle engineering department offered better opportunities than some of the other departments she was considering, and if it did not work out, Ting-yu could test again to get into a good high school.

Because of her choice, however, Yang Ting-yu initially underwent considerable hardship. Science was never her strong suit, and in her first year, her performance in both theoretical and technical subjects was average at best, and her father had to hire a private tutor for her. In her second year, the hands-on Yang vied to become a car repair competitor and represent Taichung Industrial High School in an engineering skills competition. Her teacher struggled with the decision before giving her the go-ahead.     

During her training, Yang combined practical training, such as dismantling engines and transmissions, with classroom learning to understand concepts she had never mastered in the past. Though her performance in the competition was disappointing, it propelled her academic advancement dramatically forward.

Her second year at college was a real turning point for Yang academically. As an intern at BMW general agent BMW Yi-Der Motor, she originally wanted to pursue what she studied in school – car repair – but on the day of her interview, she opted instead to learn about spray painting. 

Yang had been interested in spray painting during her years at her vocational high school, but because she focused her energy on car repair classes and the teacher responsible for the category did not have time to give her instruction, she let it slide. At her university, however, she had the chance to briefly get exposure to spray painting, prompting her to give it a try with the BMW agent.  

Asked why she likes spray painting, Yang answers half-jokingly, “There’s a sense of achievement! But [such a simple answer] probably makes it harder for you to write [the story].” 

Further explaining the attraction, she cited the bright colors of the paint, saying that just as people need to wear clothes, cars need coats of paint. Also, spray painting and car repair are similar disciplines – “there are many variations, many different situations, so you never get bored.”

A month and a half after Yang started at BMW Yi-Der, the company decided to lease a venue as one of the places where national spray painting competitors could train.

“Our manager felt that since we wanted to rent out the space, why not have our people pit their skills against each other,” says Yang mentor and Yi-Der senior paint technician Chen Yu-lun.   

That hands-on experience may have given Yang a leg up in Kazan. BMW Yi-Der aftersales manager Jason Chang said the WorldSkills competition traditionally announced the problems competitors were to solve three months before the event, but this year for the first time, the problems were only announced at the competition venue. The topics were also more practical, he said, favoring those like Yang who had some practical experience in the industry. “That’s why she wasn’t as nervous as other competitors,” Chang says.

Yang’s ability to stand out in what is normally a male-dominated discipline has gone beyond her practical experience and knowledge acquired at school. Just as important is her irrepressible motivation to learn and devotion to honing her skills. 

Chen, who is both Yang’s teacher and friend, often works with her from 8 in the morning to 11 at night, to the point where the technical guidelines in the repair manual have become second nature to her.

“There are times when I see how hard she works, and I start to worry about her,” Chen says. But he later discovered that the generally optimistic Yang is able to relieve stress more quickly than others, which gave him comfort.    

Chen observes that Yang’s curiosity far exceeds that of her peers. “She continually asks me why things are the way they are, hoping to find an answer through me,” and she keeps asking questions until she fully understands the reason behind each instruction before going on to the next step.  

This desire to understand everything thoroughly reflects how Yang was raised at home, where learning rather than grades was emphasized.

Yang and her younger sister were never punished for poor grades by their father.

“Even if they got a 0, it didn’t matter. I just made sure they knew where they came up short,” explains Yang’s father. Knowing where one was wrong and correcting mistakes was the focus of the learning process in the Yang household.

Patience has also been a key virtue from someone like Yang who persists in asking questions and spends 12 hours a day practicing her craft. Having seen his daughter go from a vehicle novice to a WorldSkills gold medalist, Yang Chao-hung says humbly that his daughter is not yet able to be on her own. With her life just getting started, the parents’ main responsibility, he says, is helping her find a job she likes.

“As long as your job is consistent with the goals in your life, even if other people make fun of you, it doesn’t matter. Being happy at work is most important,” the father says.     

Following a road that most young women would never think of pursuing, Yang draws on her own experience to encourage people who avoid the mainstream of society.

“You have to believe in yourself. For things that few people do, there’s more of an opportunity to stand out as long as you don’t give up.”

No matter how many setbacks and how much frustration she has experience while learning the ins and out of painting cars, Yang Ting-yu has never given up, as car painters from 26 other countries found out in Kazan in August. 

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Translated by Luke Sabatier
Edited by Sharon Tseng