Huang Chao-ying--Words of Wisdom

After discussing the work schedule with his workers, the head of Shengyuan Construction Company, Huang Chao-ying, finds a grassy seat in the shade of a Chinese juniper and brews up a pot of good tea with some water from Lake Tsui. With the fragrance of the tea in the air, Huang talks about his taking on the high mountain renovation project. The story begins with a high-school sophomore who loved to climb mountains.

Huang Chao-ying was born in 1957 in Miaoli, where he passed the senior high school entrance exam for the department of mechanics at National Miaoli Agricultural and Industrial Vocational High School. He originally wanted to study forestry or agriculture so asked to switch departments, but met with school and family opposition. He forced himself to study for one year and then arranged to take off for a while. During this time he climbed Mt. Tapachien with the China Youth Corps. The first time he climbed into the high mountains he was hooked. Less than two weeks later he attacked the summit once again with three of his friends.

Huang attended high school intermittently for five years and upon graduation passed the entrance exam for United College of Technology (precursor to National United University) in the departments of resource engineering and mining. Now his studies and interests coincided, allowing him to further indulge his passion for mountain climbing. In a few short years he conquered some 50 out of Taiwan's highest peaks. He had his first encounter with Lake Tsui in Shei-pa National Park when he was 20 years old. At that time the shelter there was already in disrepair and he had to pitch a tent. He stayed at Lake Tsui for 18 days and became enamored with the tranquility and primitive beauty he found there.

After graduation, Huang Chao-ying became a mining engineer, then a quarry foreman. Although he was still an avid climber, after marriage and the birth of a child, his family began to oppose his mountain climbing-but his passion continued unabated. Then one day in May 1986 when he was putting on his backpack and preparing to go and lead his climbing team, his little daughter, who had just learned how to walk, suddenly grabbed him tight around the legs and would not let him leave. The rainy season had just begun and it was raining ceaselessly. The mountain trails were in very bad shape and danger signs were all around. Taking everything into consideration, he bit the bullet and called off his travel plans. From this time on he "closed his knapsack"and did not climb again.

In 1995 Huang Chao-ying organized his own construction company. Afterwards he learned that the Shei-pa National Park intended to rebuild the Lake Tsui shelter. The wonderful memories of the time he had spent there came flooding back to him. Thinking of that dilapidated, tumbledown shelter, a thought flashed through his mind: Why not build a sturdy emergency shelter for climbers going there? Immediately he joined the contract bidding. In March 2001, after winning the tender for the Lake Tsui shelter project with a bid that was made without regard to costs, Huang put on his climbing boots that had been gathering dust for 15 years and once more set out for his beloved high mountain forests.

Both a contractor and a person who loves mountains, Huang Chao-ying not only builds shelters in the most environmentally friendly way with minimal disturbance of the surroundings, he also hopes that climbers will understand how to take care of public facilities. For example, when the shelter's lighting breaks down, rather than go and try to fix it yourself, inform the officials who patrol the mountains or make a report to the visitor center after you get down the mountain. Some climbers rip out the solar batteries to charge their cell phones. "Locking them up doesn't do any good." It's really a major headache. There have even been some climbers who couldn't stand the cold so they ripped out the wood planks between the sheet-metal covering of the shelter and burned them to get warm. Now when the shelters are rebuilt, the walls have to be completely sealed shut so climbers "have no place to get started."

Huang Chao-ying makes a plea that under no circumstances should uneaten food in cans be left in a shelter. If there is leftover food, it must be buried so that wild animals do not become overdependent on human food; it also pollutes the environment.

"In the beginning, to make it convenient for climbers to cook food, 369 Lodge had a kitchen. Because it was difficult to manage, however, the kitchen got piled high with leftover food. The place was a mess, just like a trash dump!

Another thing difficult to manage was the toilet facilities. Huang Chao-ying says the Shei-pa National Park currently has two ways to handle waste. In places with a water source, such as Chika and 99 lodges, water is fed into a tank which then washes the waste into a septic tank. In places without water, like 369 Lodge, the "bacterial reduction method" is used. Here waste is stored in a tank, and at regular intervals volunteers or mountain patrol personnel visit the site and dump in chemicals and wood chips. The results of the bacterial reduction method are limited and the process is slow. During a busy period when some 200 to 300 people roll in, there's no time for the reduction process to do its work and the air is filled with some peculiar smells.

"Based on the limited capacity of the shelters, Shei-pa National Park restricts the number of climbers to 500 to 600 a day, but the toilet problem has not yet found a satisfactory solution." Huang Chao-ying hopes that when climbers releive themselves out of doors they will, whenever possible, take along a small shovel and bury their waste. Also, they must bring their trash bags down the mountain and return nature to its original, pure state.

"Also unmanaged, mountain shelters in Japan are kept in use for decades. Taiwan's shelters are more beautiful but have a shorter lifespan." Huang Chao-ying hopes that climbers in Taiwan can show respect for the new shelters, so that his workers' efforts will not have been in vain.