The tangerines have turned red, and the joy of harvest warms your heart and mine.

Text / Chen Ching-Chun

Editor's note: This article is excerpted from "Not a Single Hand Can Be Let Go: Principal Chen Ching-Chun, Who Turned the Tide". Principal Chen Ching-Chun has won numerous education awards; he turned Yunlin Gukeng Huanan Elementary School, which was on the verge of closure due to its remote location and population outflow, into a star school. This book is the fruit of his ongoing efforts to promote ecological and life education.

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Strolling through the Huanan mountain area, everything seems novel: you can spot the rare rock-dwelling begonia on the cliff walls, and you can also see purple butterflies (Euploea) passing through in flocks along the air currents.

But what put me at ease was not these beautiful sights, but the unique warmth of the people here. You might run into an elderly woman at a traditional three-sided courtyard house who invites you in for watermelon, or meet an old fellow with mud-covered hands who pulls up a whole bunch of vegetables and puts them in your car, all because of the unique feeling among people in the mountains.

Spending time in such a warm community, you find that time flies by, until the camphor tree on campus suddenly shoots up by half a story.

Principal, can you lend me 50,000 yuan?