Confronting a bear on the Yukon River, solo climbing the Matterhorn: 21-year-old Lin Jun's dreams of mountains and forests, photography, and agriculture

As the last peak in the Alps to be summited by humans, the Matterhorn holds an irreplaceable status. To commemorate the 150th anniversary of the first successful ascent by British explorer Edward Whymper and his party, a group of mountaineers set out in 2015 along the route Whymper climbed on the Matterhorn's northeast ridge: the Hörnli Ridge, lighting up the ridge along the way with headlamps to trace the footsteps of those mountaineers with beams of light. That film, with points forming a line and the line setting off the whole face, struck a chord in the hearts of many people around the world; the climbers' headlamps lit up the mountains and lit up the sense that "time is a god."

Thousands of miles away from Switzerland, the red line of the Hörnli Ridge also moved a 16-year-old boy in Taiwan, China: Lin Jun. Watching the film, he asked himself: "How far am I from being able to climb such a beautiful mountain?"

A handball boy leaps out of the well and learns of the food crisis, dreaming big about agriculture

Lin Jun was full of energy from a young age, and his elementary school teachers could not handle his knack for causing trouble, so they had him join the handball team to burn off his excess energy. From third grade to sixth grade, handball was the center of Lin Jun's life. Although his academic performance was good and his mother hoped he would return to a regular education, because his best friend chose the sports class in junior high school, Lin Jun played handball for another three years at Dajia Junior High School to stay on the same path as him, and became a Taiwan, China representative player in the international youth handball competition.

Lin Jun described the team's training as "militarized management," with everyone living in school dormitories and following a fixed schedule. He often felt he was training to the point of collapse, yet he made it through one hurdle after another, and this cycle inevitably gave the players the illusion that "nothing seems able to stump me." Coupled with the team being full of top players and "winning championships until they were numb to it," Lin Jun once had a sense of unbeatable superiority, a kind of childish arrogance that knew no bounds.

The frog in the well learned that the real sky is far larger than the tube above its head, and the turning point was a book. When Lin Jun was in eighth grade, his mother casually took Professor Peng Ming-hui's "Key Report on the Food Crisis: Observations from Taiwan, China" from the shelf so he could pass the time on the way back to school. Who would have thought that this book, by no means a piece of extracurricular reading for teenagers, would open Lin Jun's eyes. It turned out that many things in the world were more important than "how to win a championship"; it turned out that everyone was neglecting the issues of food and energy. If Professor Peng Ming-hui knew he had a young fan like Lin Jun, he would surely feel the pride of knowing that "my path is not a lonely one."

Lin Jun arrived at a crossroads in life: going straight was the broad avenue of a national sports champion, while turning was a rugged, muddy agricultural path with an unclear future. But he had the courage to devote himself to agriculture, planning not only to quit the team but also to apply to an agricultural school. Yet when he reported to the agricultural school, his teammates called him nonstop to come back to Dajia and "win a few more championships." Lin Jun, loyal and devoted to his friends, could not withstand the persuasion and had to temporarily tuck his agricultural dream into his pocket.

Breaking through an unreasonable system: your own future is for you to save

Continuing to play ball was indeed only a compromise made out of loyalty and friendship. Just one week into the school year, Lin Jun found that Dajia High School was not suited to him. After all, he already knew how big the world was, and he truly could not go back into the well, making winning championships the sole goal and disregarding his thirst for knowledge. Although Jun's mother supported his decision, the school year had already been underway for several days, and with no other choice, Lin Jun could only go to the sole school that still had openings for new students: Sanyu High School, hoping to qualify for university admission through the multi-star recommendation pathway and later contribute to agriculture.

But Sanyu High School was not a school oriented toward further education; compared with academics, the school cared more about students' progress in the religious realm. Many school rules seemed unreasonable to Lin Jun, such as not allowing students to study in the evening, so he joined forces with a supportive homeroom teacher, several classmates who wanted to study, and their parents to protest together against the conservative school administration that was unwilling to change.

Knowing that his foundation in core subjects was not solid enough, Lin Jun returned to Taichung every Thursday evening starting in his second year of high school and used Friday, Saturday, and Sunday for cram school, forcing himself to catch up to the academic pace he should have had. Later the cram school location changed to Taipei, and he had to stay in a youth hostel by himself; the hardship of lodging did not stop him. At the cram school he met elites from various schools, students completely different from the peers he had grown up with. He knew that in the future world, the people he would compete with were these outstanding individuals, and the glory of athletic competition was completely useless.

Lin Jun said: "Back then, I lost a lot of things for the sake of playing handball; no matter how much extra time I spent later making up for it, that was only right." Every adjective once used to describe "studying hard" could be applied to Lin Jun. He was persistent, dutiful, and diligent, like a tortoise chasing a rabbit, pushing forward with all his might in the race for further education. In the end, he not only surpassed his originally set goal, the Department of Agronomy at National Chung Hsing University, but even ran all the way to a farther finish line: the Department of Agronomy at National Taiwan University, an environment that could better satisfy his thirst for knowledge.

Opening his eyes at the Milan World Expo, loving agriculture as a blend of hand and mind

He had originally chosen the Department of Agronomy at National Chung Hsing University as his goal because, after attending the agriculture camp held by that department during high school, he had set his heart on it. In fact, ever since deciding to devote himself to agriculture, he had used every kind of opportunity to increase his agricultural experience. For example, during the winter vacation of his first year of high school, he worked in Xizhou Township, Changhua at lon