I have always been enchanted by the magnificent scenery of the eastern coast of Taiwan. On a sunny Sunday morning in early June, I went to Chingmei Village in Hualien County to interview Rev. Chin Ching-sun, the 54-year-old pastor of Chiawan Presbyterian Church, and to immerse myself in the daily life of the village. As I rode the train from Taipei to Hualien, I could see the immense Pacific Ocean on my left, proudly showing its sapphire beauty. On my right, there stood the splendid Central Mountain range, which looked so determined and inviolable. More than once I have envied those people who live with Mother Nature.

Most of the inhabitants of Chingmei Village are aborigines who are strong in their Christian faith. Standing in front of the church, some local people smiled at me politely and others talked to me exuberantly in the bubbling Trukuan language, as though we had already known each other for a very long time. The people were fascinated by my contrast with their big, bright eyes and dark, smooth skin. Even a swarm of tiny, black, blood-craving mosquitoes sensed the presence of an intruder-proven by the fact that after only ten minutes of exposure, my arms were covered with swellings. Finally, Pastor Chin showed up with a broad smile. He invited me to join the prayer service and then participate in an environmental activity that afternoon.

During the service, I rather felt like a foreigner because the prayer was conducted in Trukuan. I felt grateful to Pastor Chin for intermittently slipping in some short Chinese sentences to comfort me. "God grants us a beautiful community and we must take good care of it."

Most of the participants were elderly and women, which apparently form the majority of the population in the village. The youth leave their old folks behind to look for jobs in the major cities on the western coast. The Truku tribe, whose name literally means "mountain king," used to be known for its ferocity. Now, however, only the facial tattoos remain to recall the legends.

Unlike others who grew up to become only visitors to their hometown, Pastor Chin chose to return after finishing graduate school at Presbyterian College and Theological Seminary in Korea. In the fourteen years since then, he has devoted himself to serving his loving neighbors. A native himself, Pastor Chin was deeply aware that only by improving the villagers' lives could he purify their minds. More often than not, he reminds them to treasure their home, which once had the unenviable record of being the filthiest community among the nine villages in Shiulung Township.

No visitors dared to stop by until a group of Tzu Chi volunteers came to clean up the community in September 1996. Feeling ashamed of their filthy living environment, some members from the church women's club formed the Chingmei Community Environmental Protection Volunteer Team and kicked off a campaign of cleaning up the community every other Sunday afternoon, starting from October 1996.

In the afternoon, the elders and the women put on working clothes and straw hats and assembled in front of the church. When Pastor Chin shouted "Go," they started to sweep streets and clean gutters. Little kids took trash bags as tall as they were and collected small pieces of garbage.

A group of clamorous Chingmei Elementary School students and I hopped onto a truck which had been borrowed from a villager. "Why did you come here?" I asked the children. "If we didn't, we would have to do campus labor service at school tomorrow." They explained frankly that they had been pressured by their teacher. They all agreed that serving the community was a lot more fun.

In a very short time, the truck was so fully loaded with recyclable materials that we had nowhere to stand. "Well, what do you guys think now?" They paused from their laughing and playing and shouted in unison, "It stinks!" Even so, as the truck stopped by the last collection site, they raced off and returned with more recyclable resources in their hands.

"All set? Let's go," Chen Chao-kuo called from the driver's seat. Chen, a teacher in the school, was granted the additional unpaid job of truck driver and recyclable material collector. Why? "Ah, I'm married to the leader of the volunteer team," he said with a stifled laugh, pointing to Sister Hsu Mei-chih of the women's club, who also works as a nurse in Tzu Chi General Hospital.

"It was really tough for me in the first two months, you know!" Just recovered from heart surgery, Chen revealed his emotional ups and downs. In the beginning, some neighbors teased the couple for degrading their social status by working as janitors, and they even discouraged other people from joining the cleanup campaign. Fortunately, with his wife's strong support, Chen passed through all the frustration and won the respect of many more villagers.

In eight months, they had accumulated about NT$45,000 [US$1,600] as a fund for the poor and the elderly. "Can you imagine how many tons of recyclable garbage we've collected?" Chen remarked. In an empty field full of scrap metal, plastic items, aluminum cans and used paper, all neatly sorted, I saw the immeasurable power of their love and compassion.

"Take a break, folks." Pastor Chin called it a day and invited everybody to have some food offered by volunteers. Sweating and exhausted, the workers smiled with contentment and joy. Looking around the community, Pastor Chin and Sister Hsu once again felt grateful to Tzu Chi people for making a good start.

This praiseworthy, interreligious campaign was first set in motion by Brother Lin Yin-chu of the Tzu Chi environmental protection volunteer team in Hualien. When he visited a poor family in the village for the first time in May 1996, he found that there was a lot of recyclable junk, which to him was gold. So that September, Lin and other Tzu Chi volunteers added house-cleaning and street-sweeping to their home-visit activities in this community. Much to his surprise, local people took over the good work.

Pastor Chin observed, "Although we have different religious beliefs and cultural backgrounds, it's the era of mutual collaboration for all human beings." Indeed, Master Cheng Yen has said that every religion is like a stream which will eventually join with others in the ocean of universal love.

On the way home, a native villager stopped me. "Are you Tzu Chi people? Can you help my son?" He brought out his two-year-old baby boy who had a big bulge on his forehead. "I'm very worried about him, but I don't have money to take him to a doctor," he tried to explain in broken Chinese. Not waiting for my reply, he continued. "Hey, look at him. He's so beautiful. He's my baby." The proud but worried father looked attentively at his toddler.