Happiness and anger

On the walls of the four rows of prefabricated classrooms at Shinshe Primary School, Shinshe Village, are four murals depicting scenes of spring, summer, autumn and winter. Painted by a substitute teacher named Chang Wei in the creative style of splashed-ink painting, they make the campus look more lively and animated. With these paintings as a backdrop, even the children seem a lot more vivacious and energetic.

I toured the school and found Class 2B in the middle of a course on "Ethics and Health." It is a solemn subject, but the teacher and students seemed to have turned it into something full of happiness and joy.

When I first looked at the students, I thought that they were just a group of naughty children fond of play. But when I went into their classroom, I found that the topic of the class that day was "Happiness and Anger." What I had thought to be children's mischievous acts were actually part of the course.

In this picture, Lin Chao-yu makes a face, trying very hard to look angry, but in other people's eyes he seems to be more in pain. Chiu Hsin-wei, the girl next to him wearing a pleasant smile on her face, conveys very well the emotion of happiness.

The children re-experienced emotions of happiness and anger in this class, just as the September 21 earthquake had made them re-experience the meaning of life.

The slowest but the best

The prefabricated classrooms at Fukui Elementary School in Kuohsing Village, Nantou County, are the envy of everyone in the disaster area. Built of logs, the classrooms look more like country villas and are even warmer and more comfortable than the classrooms destroyed in the earthquake.

Because the prefabricated classrooms were built on garden land donated by local villagers, headmaster Hung Kuo-tsun cleverly thought of asking teachers and students to design their own vegetable patches and grow their favorite vegetables. Hence, one more interesting subject of study was added to the school curriculum.

On the day I visited their school, the students of Class 3A were learning to plant gourds, under the direction of the headmaster. Some students only wanted to dig holes and play with the dirt, but some were bent on learning how to plant vegetables and fruits. Students Lin Mei-chun and Hsu Wei-hou, for example, were seriously examining whether the hole their teacher had dug was deep enough to put a person's palm in.

Although it took Mei-chun and Wei-hou the longest time to plant their gourds, I have confidence that their vegetables will grow the best. Looking at them, I cannot wait to see the gardens growing all over with vegetables planted by the children.

The most beautiful accompanist

Compared with other schools, the Tungshih Elementary School Chinese orchestra is the smallest, but that did not prevent it from becoming the best. The success of the orchestra comes from constant hard practice.

For more than ten years, the orchestra has kept its top place in Taichung County. Although the September 21 earthquake seriously damaged the school and put the orchestra out of practice for more than two months, and although the student players had to be crammed into a small classroom to rehearse for the Taichung County Chinese Orchestra Contest, they still managed to win the championship.

On the day of the Taichung County contest, I sat in the audience and listened to the group perform the tune, "The Fisherman's Song." Conducted by their teacher, Yu Chih-feng, the students successfully used beautiful melodies and touching tunes to dispel the sadness caused by the earthquake.

When it was announced that the orchestra had captured first place, the one who smiled the most happily was Chan Po-ling of Class 5A. I thought she must be the leading player, but she told me modestly, "I play the chungren [an ancient Chinese musical instrument], which is only an accompanying instrument."

It is easy for one to be happy in a leading role, but not so easy for one to be contented as an accompanist or in a supporting role. Just because Po-ling was so contented, her smile looked all the sweeter.

Turning hate into love

Of all the places ravaged by the September 21 earthquake, Chungliao suffered the largest number of casualties in proportion to its population. Shuangwen, the most secluded village in Chungliao, is especially in need of outside help on its road to complete recovery as it is severely deficient in resources.

The students of Shuangwen Junior High School all come from farming families. Their economic conditions, already bad even before the earthquake hit, were made even worse by the disaster. With their homes ruined and the lives of their family members taken away, the one hundred and twenty students in the school looked grave and solemn when I first visited just after the quake. The disaster seemed to have brought a premature end to their youthful days. The atmosphere was so gloomy that even I felt disheartened.

Fortunately, the second time I visited the school, the gloom that had hovered over the school seemed to have dispersed a little, so I felt I could pick up my camera to take a few pictures. Teacher Kuo Fu-tien was conducting a computer science class in the only classroom for arts and crafts that had survived the earthquake. Cho Hsiu-ting, the only student in the school who owned a personal computer, was more adept than the other students at using the keyboard and mouse. I saw him deftly download several pictures of airplanes, cars, sports cars and fighter planes and then rearrange them into a new picture. It was as though he were drawing cartoons on the computer.

When Mr. Kuo passed him while touring the classroom to inspect the homework each student had done, Cho suddenly pushed a key on the keyboard and instantly the words "hateful teacher" sprang up on the screen. Instead of taking offense at this practical joke, the teacher even praised Cho for his dexterity with the computer. Their relationship was not at all like what the screen described.

Organizations such as the United Daily and Leo Systems Inc. will donate thirty-two new computers to Shuangwen Junior High School. More than NT$500,000 [over US$16,000] worth of computer equipment donated by Hewlett Packard has already been put into use. These computers provide the school with easy access to information via the Internet and help solve the problem of inadequate resources. I believe that when the new campus Tzu Chi is building for the school is finished, all its misfortune will vanish into thin air--Shuangwen Junior High will rise from the ashes and stand on its feet again. When that day comes, the students will no longer want to key in the word "hate." Instead they will find it more proper to enter "love."

Proudly sweeping the ground

Although the school buildings of Shehliao Junior High School, Chushan Township, were completely destroyed in the September 21 earthquake, the two rows of coconut trees at the entrance of the school still tower high and the nearby bamboo garden is still as green as ever. The school has always emphasized the importance of greenery cultivation and environmental protection. Now their efforts seem to have paid off.

Because there are so many trees on campus, there are lots of fallen leaves and additional care is needed to keep the campus clean. Schoolteacher Wu Kuo-chang came up with a good idea--he asked every student to "adopt" a tree and charged them with the responsibility of taking care of it. Since the idea was implemented, every tree has been duly watered, fertilized and tended to by the particular person responsible for taking care of it.

It was a pleasure to look at these students sweeping the ground. They wielded their brooms with a look of intense concentration, as if they were doing something of great consequence.

Yes, one can look so proud when sweeping the ground. I wanted to present them as awe-inspiring and imposing in my pictures, because it means even more to be able to do a small thing to perfection than a great thing.

Kalimachiau

Hsu Hao-ching is the only Taiwanese aborigine among the 1,100 students of Tali Junior High School. He came with his parents from remote Taimali, Taitung County, to make a living in the city of Taichung.

Tali Junior High School pays a lot of attention to the lessons and discipline of its students. Although the September 21 earthquake wrecked a large part of the school and its 800-meter-long [2,640 ft] perimeter wall, the discipline and order of the school stand firm. The new prefabricated classrooms are immaculately clean. No noise can be heard in the course of a class, as all the students are absorbed in their teachers' lectures. And when the students are reviewing lessons on their own, it is so quiet that you might hear a hair drop.

Because of the strict demand for cleanliness and discipline, laughter seems a rare thing on campus. But this does not prevent students there from being creative. The "Dance of Mirth," which Hsu choreographed for the thirty-second anniversary of the school, was in my eye a rare and exceptional achievement.

Hsu did not want to provide any run-of-the-mill program featuring pop songs, so he thought of a folk dance of his own Rukai people (an aboriginal tribe in Taiwan) at home and decided to incorporate it into his program. He went back to his hometown during holidays and asked his grandmother to sew costumes for him and teach him to sing. He then rearranged the folk dance and taught the steps to his classmates. Together they performed a dance full of aboriginal life force.

The whole event taught Hsu how important it is to understand one's roots, and it also helped children of different ethnic groups to know and appreciate each other better. In the Rukai language, Hsu's name is Kalimachiau, meaning "as strong as a bull." In fact, he is not only strong in body, but also strong in mind.

A different history class

Liu Jui-chen of Chichi Junior High School conducts her history class in a very different way. In addition to the regular curriculum, she asks her students to write research reports on subjects not covered by the textbooks. Miss Liu thinks that history should begin at home--one's childhood, the pasts of one's father and mother, and the stories of one's grandfathers and grandmothers are all history worth recording. In response to her demand, these students had handed in papers which were both special and interesting.

In the picture, Miss Liu is praising Chen Yu-chieh of Class 2A for the homework she had done. On the paper Chen is holding are three pictures with captions. The first picture presents a ninety-year-old coconut-fiber raincoat that her great-grandfather had left to her grandfather. In the second picture is a porcelain vase her maternal great-grandfather had passed on to her great-grandfather--it was really fortunate that it was not broken in the September 21 earthquake. The third picture shows the horn of a bull that belonged to Chen's maternal great-grandfather, who had been a veterinarian. Because he failed to cure his own family's bull, he was so sad that he cut off its horn to keep as a souvenir.

Miss Liu praised Chen for her wonderful work. "Our school is the highest level academic institute in Chichi Township. If one day you leave the town and people ask you what your hometown is like, what will you answer? We have to understand our own hometown so that we will grow to love it. Only when we love our hometown will we want to come back to it."

Chichi has become famous as the town that was closest to the epicenter of the September 21 earthquake, but I believe one day Liu Jui-chen's students will make the place famous in another way.

Capturing hope

Class 2S of Tungshih Junior High School is a special education class. Students especially chosen for this class have eight dance sessions every week, in which ballet, modern dance, folk dance and extemporaneous dance are taught. The students must have nice figures as well as good grades to be allowed into such a class. Therefore every student in the dance class looks smart, bright and full of confidence.

Because Tungshih Junior High School was seriously damaged in the September 21 earthquake, the whole school will be rebuilt on a new site where the Tungshih Forestry Office is now located. As over 2,300 students will soon take leave of this fifty-year-old school, there is not much time left for the students of the dance class to practice on the old school fields.

It was on a cold day that I visited the school. A chilly wind was blowing and the shadow cast by the earthquake seemed to be still lingering on the campus. But when the students from the dance class stood out in lines and rows, preparing to practice their dance, the campus seemed to brighten up again.

The "Dance of Health" performed by the students is a remarkable combination of energy and beauty. The spirited students looked even more sprightly and beautiful through my camera lens. When the most attractive looks flashed across the faces of Chan Hsin-yu and Lo Huang-chia, I instantly pressed my shutter button in an attempt to capture "hope" as well as "beauty" in my picture. When the film was developed, I looked at the prints and knew that I had indeed captured hope.