Despite the force of the earthquake, a flight of stone steps at the school gate and fourteen banyan trees that line the steps did not suffer the least damage. School principal Hsieh Pai-liang, who is full of ideals and enthusiasm for education, cleverly chose the location where the banyan trees made a pleasant shade to confer the diplomas on the graduates.

The branches of the banyan trees were festooned with strips of colored paper and cards carrying words of blessing. A desk and a whiteboard bearing the national flag and a picture of Sun Yat-sen, the father of the country, made up a makeshift podium. The 120 students of the school seated themselves on the stone steps facing the podium. The natural "hall" in which the graduation ceremony took place was simple but unusually magnificent. What decor and setting could be better than those provided by Mother Nature?


The valedictory address

Nantou city councilor Lin was among the guests who delivered speeches at the commencement. At one point during his speech, he was choked with sobs. When he came to, "You poor children who have suffered the panic and pain caused by the earthquake," tears filled his eyes as well as those of the audience.

This year's valedictorian was Lai Li-chuan of Class 3A. Counselor Wang Cheng-chung, who is fond of literature and good at writing, drafted the valedictory address. He compared the flight of stone steps that the students had to climb every day to school to the learning process, and the shade of the banyan trees to the shelter offered by the school. The last paragraph of the valediction went like this: "I know that this is not the last step of our learning process. Beyond the steps is the shade, and beyond the shade is the blue sky. There is a big world waiting out there for us to explore. There are more flights of steps waiting for us to climb to higher intellectual realms. Only by climbing higher and walking strenuously forward can we materialize Project Hope in our minds. We will work harder. Thank you all."

Li-chuan finished her valedictory address with tears in her eyes. When I was photographing her, a look of surprise crossed her face. Later I found out that it was because she had unexpectedly glimpsed her mother in the audience. Li-chuan had not seen her mom, who had remarried a long time ago, in quite some time.

Looking more like Li-chuan's sister than her mother, she presented a bouquet of flowers to Li-chuan. Laughing through her tears, Li-chuan brimmed with happiness and contentment. At today's commencement, Li-chuan bid farewell to her sorrowful past and welcomed hope into her life.


Putting down roots at Shuangwen

The Shuangwen Junior High School graduation ceremony came to a close at noon. Most of the students left the campus at that time, but graduating class 3A still lingered on in the prefabricated classroom, unwilling to say goodbye.

They wrote down blessings in each other's graduation albums and asked all the guests they met for their autographs. Most of all, they insisted that Counselor Wang write down some encouraging words for them.

Looking at Wang surrounded by the students, I understood that he must be very popular. Wang is a fine young man. Immediately after he graduated from school, he came to Shuangwen Junior High School to teach for one year. Then he went to Kinmen, a small island situated off the coast of mainland China, for two years' compulsory military service. When he had finished the military service and returned to Taiwan, the September 21 earthquake struck the island. Worried that Shuangwen might be badly affected, he rushed to the school the day after the quake.

The dismal scene of devastation he witnessed at the school made him decide to stay there. I asked him how long he would stay on, and he answered that he would be there as long as the school existed. I happily took a shot of him surrounded by the students of Class 3A. People say that a picture can capture a transitory moment and turn it into an eternity. I myself hope that this picture will bear testimony to Wang's decision to put down roots at Shuangwen.


Emerging from painful experiences

Li-chuan is a girl with strong willpower. Her father died in a car accident when she was six, and her mother remarried after that. She and her brother, two years her junior, had to live with their seventy-year-old grandfather, Lai Shih-chien, and sixty-year-old grandmother, Chen Chin-chu.

The grandparents make their living by growing ginger and plum trees. Although quite advanced in years, they still go to the mountains to take care of the crops. They spend three nights a week in a hut in the mountains. When they are away from home, Li-chuan has to take on the parental duties. She prepares meals and helps her brother with his homework.

We followed Li-chuan home from school. Her home is located in the remote, secluded village of Chinshui. She was particularly happy, as the four members of the family would all be at home that day. Her grandfather had just come back from the hospital after surgery for intestinal catarrh, but his physical weakness did not prevent him from being conversational. He talked vivaciously about everything from the surgical scar on his stomach to the intensive bombardments during the Second World War. He said that nothing could be more terrible than the war, except the September 21 earthquake, in comparison to which the pain of a small surgical cut was nothing.

While photographing the family, I noticed that Li-chuan looked especially beautiful that day. I believed it was because she had emerged from the painful experiences of an unhappy past.


A happy get-together

This time, the cultural worker who was invited by Tzu Chi TV to document Project Hope was Fr. Jerry Martinson, S.J. He has already paid three visits to Shuangwen Junior High School. Each time he visited he would talk to Li-chuan, and friendship and trust visibly grew between them.

The first time Fr. Martinson came to the school, he introduced himself to graduating classes 3A and 3B as follows: "My eyes are green, so there is Irish blood in me. My hair shows that I am of French descent. And the last three letters of my surname also reveal that I am of Swedish ancestry. My grandparents emigrated to the United States from Lebanon. So I am an American priest with four kinds of blood in me, but I have lived and worked in Taiwan for several decades and I regard this country as my second home. What an amazing karma it must have been to have brought us together."

This picture shows Fr. Martinson looking at a photograph in Li-chuan's room, which was taken when Li-chuan was still a little girl in the arms of her father. Li-chuan's impression of her father came largely from the image in this photograph.

Li-chuan's grandfather is Hakka, her grandmother Fukienese, and her mother a mixed blood between the aboriginal Bunun and Tsou tribes in Taiwan. Hence Li-chuan, like Fr. Martinson, is of mixed ancestries too. Because of the September 21 earthquake, she and the priest had the amazing chance to meet each other.

Thus on the day of the commencement, I captured an image that tells the story of an amazing destiny.