ZA SHARE: The Free Exhibition That Wiped Out Its Founder's Savings — 11 Years Later, the Vice President Opened It

30-second overview: ZA SHARE is Taiwan's alternative education carnival, running since 2015. Its predecessor, the "Not-Quite-Good Education Festival," was launched by Su Yang-chih — an advertising curator by trade — one year after the 318 Student Movement. The first edition was free, drew roughly 30,000 visitors over two days, and ultimately lost NT$7 million. In 2016 it was renamed ZA SHARE and began selling tickets. In 2017 it took over the entire Huashan 1914 Creative Park with over 500 education innovators exhibiting. In 2019, Vice President Chen Chien-jen, Digital Minister Audrey Tang, and Deputy Education Minister Fan Shun-lu shared the stage at its opening. In 2024, for its 10th anniversary, it co-hosted IDEC (International Democratic Education Conference) as the "Education World Expo," bringing over 500 education leaders from more than 50 countries to Taiwan. In 2025 it rebranded as EDit and moved to the Taoyuan Convention and Exhibition Center. Su Yang-chih's own verdict: "A total commercial failure, but a tremendous spiritual success"¹. But after 11 years, the first half of that sentence is no longer true.

Confucius, Not Quite Good

Hey, did you know — on May 9, 2015, the walls of Halls 2B, 2C, and 2D at Huashan 1914 Creative Park were plastered with an image of "Jolin Confucius"².

The main visual turned Confucius into a series of internet-celebrity avatars, mashed up with pop-culture symbols. This was the signature memory of the inaugural Not-Quite-Good Education Festival. An advertising man had taken "the most hijacked icon in education" and turned it into a rallying cry for rebellion: "Confucius proposed the concept of 'education without discrimination' over two thousand years ago — that's exactly the spirit of our 'not-quite-good.'" Su Yang-chih later told INSIDE¹.

Two days, free admission, roughly 30,000 visitors. No ticketing mechanism, no business model, no sponsorship arrangements. "I invited everyone in Taiwan who had a wild idea about education to set up a booth for free."¹ According to Huashan 1914's exhibition records, the first edition actually occupied only a portion of Halls 2B, 2C, and 2D³. But the people who packed in over those two days included experimental educators, homeschooling families, veterans of education reform, and parents ready to fight the system. Su was a new father — his child was just over a year old. "Being a dad made me feel like education was something I had a stake in. I should stand up and fight for something."¹

The Not-Quite-Good Education Festival was an alternative continuation of the 318 Student Movement, one year on. The people had left the streets, the Legislative Yuan's proceedings had reverted to routine, but something hadn't dissipated: the distrust of institutions, the impulse to rebuild the social contract from the bottom up. Su's version was to package it as an exhibition.

Lost NT$7 Million, and I'm Fine With That

Su Yang-chih's day job was advertising curation, not education. He graduated from the Graduate Institute of Plastic Arts at the National Taiwan University of Arts, earned a master's degree in Imaging and Graphics Technology from Pittsburg State University in the US in 2006, and first tried entrepreneurship in 2004 by opening an advertising design company in Shanghai — a total failure that drove him to the edge of suicide¹. By his own count, he had failed six times before the Not-Quite-Good Education Festival; ZA SHARE was his "seventh startup"⁴.

The seventh attempt began with NT$1.5 million in design-firm profits: "I took NT$1.5 million in profits from the design firm I was running at the time to put on the exhibition, and ended up losing NT$7 million."⁵ A 2018 interview in Ubrand was headlined "Wiped Out His Savings." A decade later, looking back on those two days: "We pulled it off — losing money was worth it."⁵

But "worth it" is a strange phrase in Taiwan's education context. The standard questions in Taiwan's education culture are "Did you pass the exam?" "Which school did you get into?" "What was your score?" — all premised on the assumption that you cannot afford to lose. Su's "losing money was worth it" isn't defeatism; it's a counter-question: if you can get 30,000 people to walk through a rebellion fair in the rain at Huashan, the meaning of that event isn't captured on a balance sheet.

This is also what set the Not-Quite-Good Education Festival apart from the label "education startup." Teach For Taiwan (TFT), founded around the same time, took an organized recruitment route⁶; ZA SHARE took a carnival route. The former was a talent pipeline for education services; the latter was an open site for educational imagination. Both found an audience willing to see each other in post-318 Taiwan, but their methods were entirely different.

The following year — November 26–27, 2016 — Su renamed it "ZA SHARE" and started selling tickets. Over two days, more than 63,000 tickets were sold, breaking Huashan 1914's single-day ticket sales record of over 10,000⁷. The "not-quite-good" spirit was still there, but the business model had caught up.

The Whole of Huashan — Is This Education?

October 20–22, 2017: ZA SHARE took over the entire Huashan 1914 Creative Park.

More than 500 education innovators exhibited, roughly 50,000 visitors over three days, billed as "Asia's Largest Innovation Education Expo"⁸. Early-bird tickets NT$300, online tickets NT$320, door tickets NT$350. The pricing was deliberate — it had to be worthy of an expo with that scale.

The physical act of taking over all of Huashan carried a political subtext. Huashan 1914 is a Ministry of Culture–supervised creative park whose mainstream positioning is "cultural and creative industries": exhibitions, markets, curated goods, lifestyle branding. ZA SHARE commandeering the entire park for an education carnival was a push to shift the "cultural and creative" narrative framework toward "education." A venue designed to showcase established crafts and branded products became, for three days, a public square for asking "why does education in Taiwan look like this?"

This was a territorial incursion through curation. It didn't ask "will the Ministry of Education give us a venue?" It asked "can a cultural park contain this issue?"

In 2018, ZA SHARE's theme was "DARE TO BE — Dare to Be Unrestricted," split into two audience-specific curations: "ZA EXPO" + "ZA EXPO: Children & Youth Pavilion"⁹. That April, Su and Huashan 1914 chairman Wang Jung-wen held a public dialogue on "the shape education takes is the shape culture grows into."¹⁰ This narrative thread embedded education within culture and culture within industry, pulling the education issue out of institutional discourse and beyond mere marketing rhetoric.

The 2019 theme was "Life Drag Show"¹¹. Rhetorically, it was a counterpunch to the "standard answers of the education pipeline": life shouldn't come in just one template. The cumulative numbers were also on display: over 1,400 education startup brands across five years, 200,000 paying visitors.

But what everyone remembered from that year wasn't these numbers.

The Vice President Came — Is It Still a Rebellion?

On the afternoon of November 28, 2019, Huashan 1914 Creative Park Halls 2A/B/C/D + 4A/B + West 1 were all taken over. "Life Drag Show" was printed on the backdrop. Seated in front were the booth holders of 1,400 education startups — among them self-learners, experimental educators, education-reform veterans, and people who had failed six times before finding their direction.

Vice President Chen Chien-jen stood at the opening podium, delivering remarks affirming education innovation¹². Sharing the stage were Digital Minister Audrey Tang, Deputy Education Minister Fan Shun-lu, and Legislator Su Chiao-hui. ZA SHARE's official website framed this image as a milestone: the rebellion site now had witnesses at the national level.

Four years earlier, Su had borrowed NT$1.5 million in design-firm profits to put on a free exhibition and lost NT$7 million. No one could have imagined the vice president opening it.

But this was also ZA SHARE's most "not-quite-good" move. It let "rebellion" take the stage, receive recognition, enter official rhetoric — and that act itself is a contradiction. The thing social movements fear most is co-optation: when the system gives you a stage, applause, and a vice-presidential opening, how much of the original "not-quite-good" stance remains?

Su didn't dodge this contradiction. In multiple interviews he repeatedly emphasized "a total commercial failure, but a tremendous spiritual success"¹ — a line that, by 2019, had started to sound less like a description and more like a rhetorical form of self-doubt. ZA SHARE was no longer a "commercial failure." It sold 60,000 tickets, occupied all of Huashan, and had the vice president at its opening. Its "spiritual success" now needed new criteria for evaluation.

In 2020 and 2021, during COVID, ZA SHARE did not hold a large-scale physical exhibition, continuing only with online content¹³. This forced pause actually gave it a window for reflection.

Crossing the Zhuoshui River

November 12–13, 2022: ZA SHARE brought its seventh edition to Chiayi.

"Rebels Education Festival." The name was more blunt than "ZA SHARE," translating "not-quite-good" into "rebellion"¹⁴. The venues weren't a convention center or a creative park — they were Chiayi City God Temple, the old prison, and four other sites¹⁵. Sixteen small-scale forums were scattered across these historically charged spaces. Speakers including Taiwan Rural Revitalization Foundation chairwoman Chen Mei-ling, Taiwan Youth Democracy Association secretary-general Li Hsin, and passionate civics teacher Huang Yi-chung traveled south to participate¹⁶.

Crossing the Zhuoshui River carries specific meaning in Taiwan's cultural politics. Alternative education, experimental education, and education innovation in Taiwan have long been Taipei-centric stories: resources, media, communities, and the occasions to see one another are all concentrated in greater Taipei. Bringing the exhibition to Chiayi meant the "alternative education" issue had moved from a Taipei minority's self-curation into the texture of local life.

The City God Temple and the old prison are two specific kinds of Taiwanese memory: folk religion and martial-law history. By embedding education issues into these sites, ZA SHARE was saying: education is about how an entire society's memory is housed — not just what happens inside school walls.

After Chiayi 2022, ZA SHARE's format entered a new phase. It was no longer just an annual Taipei-Huashan showcase; it had become a methodology for co-curating with local communities.

Endemic Species of Education

July 19–21, 2024: the 10th anniversary. ZA SHARE moved into the Taipei Expo Park's Fine Arts Museum area, themed "Endemic Species of Education"¹⁷.

The biggest difference from the previous nine years was the co-host. This year, IDEC (International Democratic Education Conference) was held in a Chinese-speaking country for the first time¹⁸. Founded in 1993, IDEC rotates host countries each year; Taiwan 2024 was the first Chinese-language host. Over 50 countries, more than 500 education leaders, nearly 150 applications, 73 selected, 55 exhibiting on-site¹⁷.

This international expansion route was actually different from what one might expect. ZA SHARE didn't open a branch in Tokyo, hold a satellite show in Seoul, or pursue outbound expansion. It brought global education leaders to Taiwan — an inbound strategy. A 2024 Ubrand interview noted: "Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, and other neighboring countries have come to Taiwan to study ZA SHARE's model and invited it to develop locally"¹⁹, but in recent years ZA SHARE chose to "let the world come see Taiwan's alternative education ecosystem" rather than exporting the brand.

This strategic choice has two readings. One is commercial conservatism: insufficient resources to run genuine multinational chapters. The other is curatorial confidence: Taiwan's alternative education ecosystem is itself a specimen worth 50 countries coming to see. The theme word "endemic species" happens to hold both readings simultaneously: an endemic species is one that can only survive in its native ecosystem and cannot be transplanted. ZA SHARE was asserting the uniqueness of Taiwan's educational species.

"Endemic Species of Education" also marked a leap in 10th-anniversary self-positioning. From "not-quite-good" in 2015 (an individual stance) to "endemic species" in 2024 (a species ontology), this narrative turn reframed ZA SHARE from "an exhibition" to "part of an ecosystem."

EDit: Treating Education as Editing, Not Production

October 23–26, 2025: ZA SHARE rebranded as "EDit — Education Innovation Taiwan" and moved to the Taoyuan Convention and Exhibition Center, with free admission²⁰. Theme: "Editing the Future Through Education."

The brand name "EDit" is quite telling. It fuses "Education" and "Edit" into one word, framing education as editing — a process of conscious selection, deletion, reorganization, and emphasis — rather than one-way production and indoctrination. This meaning actually aligns with Su's curatorial logic all along: he never came from education; he treated education as a curatorial object.

The role redefinition from "principal" to "editor" is also worth noting. Su is known in the scene as "Sweet Potato Principal." The "principal" identity was ZA SHARE's core framing from 2015 to 2024. But after the 2025 rename to EDit, the "principal" narrative was replaced by "editor." A principal is a rank within the system; an editor is a decision-making role within a creative process. This isn't a semantic game — it means ZA SHARE repositioned itself from "alternative school" to "cultural infrastructure."

Ticket pricing also returned to the inaugural free model, another signal. Over ten years, ZA SHARE proved it could sell tickets, but 2025 EDit voluntarily dropped the barrier. One reading is commercial strategy: free admission boosts participation numbers and expands social-impact metrics. Another reading is a return to the 2015 original intent: the lowest possible threshold so anyone who wants to come in can.

Both readings have merit. ZA SHARE's 11 years have always been a tension between "commerce" and "rebellion" — never one side overwhelming the other.

What Hasn't Fully Grown Yet

Placing ZA SHARE's 11 years on the timeline of Taiwan's education history — what has it solved?

It hasn't changed exam-oriented education. Taiwan's mainstream education narrative remains the GSAT, school placement, top universities, and employment. ZA SHARE's 11 years of exhibitions haven't shaken this structure. It hasn't made experimental education a mainstream choice. According to Ministry of Education statistics, the number of students participating in experimental education in Taiwan remains a minority; ZA SHARE's exhibition foot traffic doesn't equal an enrollment surge for experimental education²¹. It hasn't truly entered the system either: ZA SHARE hasn't become a standing seat at curriculum advisory meetings, nor required content in teacher training.

But it did something that gets less attention: it pulled "alternative education" from a marginal issue into a visible cultural event.

In the past, Taiwan's alternative education — experimental schools, homeschooling families, learning communities outside the system — had limited information flow between them. A homeschooling family in Kaohsiung would have had a hard time knowing that Yang Yi-fan, an eighth-grader at Yilan Jenwen Junior High, started filming the documentary Why Do We Learn? at age 14²². An alternative education entrepreneur in Taipei might not have known that someone next to Chiayi's City God Temple was running a place-based learning space. As an annual gathering point, ZA SHARE gave these scattered people a moment of recognition: "You're here too."

In social movements, this moment has a name: "collective presence." The knowledge that you're not a solitary minority, that you're part of a larger group. For Taiwan's alternative education ecosystem, the accumulation of this collective presence matters more than any single exhibition's ticket sales.

Of course, 11 years in, there are unresolved tensions too. The more commercialized ZA SHARE becomes, the harder the original "not-quite-good" stance is to maintain. A free exhibition became a ticketed one; the vice president came to open it; the brand was restructured into a viable IP — each step made the "rebellion" narrative harder to sustain. Su himself is aware of this tension. In a 2024 interview he said, "Za (雜, 'diverse/mixed') is what the world originally looks like; everyone is unique."¹⁹ The line reads more like a self-reminder — a warning to the brand not to forget why it existed in the first place.

The 2025 rename to EDit is a fresh start, and possibly a farewell. The three characters "ZA SHARE" carry the rebellion memory of 2015 to 2024; EDit is the beginning of another brand cycle. If we look back ten years from now, 2025 may be seen as the closing chapter of the ZA SHARE IP. Or maybe not. Maybe EDit carries ZA SHARE's core into the next decade, translating "not-quite-good" into "editing," continuing to find exits from the margins of Taiwan's education landscape.

Su told INSIDE Side Chat E376: "A total commercial failure, but a tremendous spiritual success." Eleven years on, the first half is no longer true — ZA SHARE now sells 60,000 tickets, occupies Taipei Expo Park, co-hosts IDEC, and has rebranded as EDit. But the second half has also become harder to verify. When the Trojan horse of education truly enters the city, when the vice president comes to open it, when the Ministry of Culture provides the 10th-anniversary venue — how do you measure "spiritual success"? There's no answer to this question, but the most interesting thing about ZA SHARE's 11 years is that it keeps leaving the question on stage.

"Not-quite-good" began as grievance and protest against the system. But after growing into Asia's largest, best-selling education expo brand, is that spirit still there? This may be the most important question ZA SHARE leaves for the next decade — and the question everything in Taiwan that once wanted to rebel, and was later absorbed by the system, needs to answer.

Further Reading:

• Education System and Exam Culture — The object of ZA SHARE's rebellion: how Taiwan's exam-oriented education is structurally reproduced
• Teach For Taiwan (TFT) — A post-318 alternative education startup from the same era; TFT's organized recruitment route and ZA SHARE's carnival route represent two different curatorial methods
• The Making of a Teacher: Taiwan's Teacher Training System — How teachers are trained within the system, and where ZA SHARE's "principal" identity fits in this comparison
• Sunflower Student Movement — ZA SHARE's historical backdrop: how the 318 Student Movement continued as extrainstitutional social practice after the streets emptied
• Education in Rural Taiwan — Another front line of educational inequality, forming the opposite pole of Taiwan's education landscape from ZA SHARE's "alternative" position

References