Where there is light, there is life. Many touching stories have been told and passed from generation to generation about the land we inhabit. If we can understand deeply how our environment evolves, we will love this land even more.

On the first and third Sunday of every month, set aside just half a day and participate in the Tataocheng walking tour organized by the Hsiahai Cheng Huang Temple in Taipei's Tihua Street, to get an opportunity to understand the beauty of this land. Participants can look forward to a worthwhile experience because the guide for the walk is Professor Yeh Lun-hui, whose description of Taipei shows that he knows the place like the back of his hand. Yeh often tells his tourists: Taipei's city wall is constructed from stones mined from the quarries at Neihu's Mt. Chinmian; the mortar was pounded from sticky rice, brown sugar, and lime; the city's first department story was the seven-story Kikumoto department store, built of reinforced concrete in 1928 on Sakae-cho (now Hengyang Street), and otherwise known as "Seventh Heaven"; buying shoes led one to the "Shoes Street" on Yuanling street, where 72 footprints and shoeprints made from copper are inlaid into the road surface; next to the Chungshan Hall is a half-century-old ice cream shop that serves 72 flavors. The 89 steps of the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial match exactly the number of years the former president spent on earth.

The Tataocheng walking tour was started on July 6, 1997, and takes place twice every month. The visitors to the events have exceeded 10,000, with many arriving by train from central and southern Taiwan. For more than six years neither winds nor rains have kept volunteer tour guide Yeh Lun-hui from attending. In addition to this job, Yeh is also director of the Customs Museum operated by the Ministry of Finance, and teaches a course to train Taiwan historic tour guides at National Taiwan Normal University's Research Center for Humanistic Education. During working hours, Yeh is a normal law-abiding public servant; after work, however, he becomes animated and confidently urges tourists to "give me half a day, and I'll move you for a lifetime."

When asked why he is a volunteer tour guide, Yeh says that everything he does is purely for the benefit of the museum. The Customs Museum was established on Taipei's Tacheng Street on November 14, 1996. Unlike other traditional museums that operate on a sufficient budget and are run by an adequate staff, the Customs Museum is affiliated to the Directorate General of Customs, under the Ministry of Finance. After witnessing the closure of the Museum of Drinking Water in 1997, Yeh was worried that the Customs Museum would suffer the same fate. In the same year, when he read that Hsiahai Cheng Huang Temple was preparing to launch guided tours in the Tataocheng area, he realized that the sites to be visited by the tours did not include the Customs Museum. Its exclusion of the museum made Yeh very nervous. He sought out event organizer Chen Wen-wen, and offered his services as a volunteer guide, which was unhesitatingly accepted. From that time, and in a grateful frame of mind, Yeh has explained every facet of Taipei City to tourists from all over.

Initially Yeh researched the Tataocheng area, but later found out that studying one area is not enough, because the developmental evolution of every corner of Taiwan is related.

"Cultural history is like a song. Historic sites are the most touching notes of this song, and if these disappear from our history and culture, we can no longer go on singing the song," Yeh says, and at this point his voice changes to an emotional tone. "We read about the Yangtze River, the Yellow River, and the West Lake, but how many people know the source of the Tanshui River? And how far can boats travel up this river?"

Yeh especially treasures this aphorism from the Indian poet-philosopher Tagore: "We live in this world when we love it." Yeh adds: "We should love this land like a lover, for the land has brought us up."

Yeh for many years has used this love to minutely understand and unearth this land, pass on its story and beauty, putting it down in writing and allowing it to thrive forever.

From the process of the construction of Taipei's river embankments, Yeh Lun-hui can further sketch the interdependent history of the Tanshui River and Taipei City. He says that the first Tanshui River embankment was built alongside Tihua Street, because at the time the people who lived there were the richest in all of Taipei, so their lives and property were considered the most worthy of protection. When Yeh came to Taipei to study at high school in 1960, Yunghe and Chunghe were the areas along the Tanshui River that were most prone to flooding. Later the area was settled by many national legislators, and the authorities built embankments along that stretch of the river; but this sent the floods downstream to Sanchung. After dikes were built to protect Sanchung it was the Minsheng neighborhood that would flood. Then when embankments were built for Minsheng, Hsichi became the next victim. Finally, after embankments were constructed for Hsichi, the floods came right on back to downtown Taipei.

To explore the present and past beauty of Taipei, Yeh for many years has been touring the city on his bicycle, which takes him into the narrowest alleys in quiet neighborhoods. The bicycle was a present from a man who shared Yeh's convictions, Cheng Yu-feng, who runs the Tsuyou Temple in Sungshan District. Chen and Yeh were strangers until the publication of Yeh's Sungshan Story, which moved Chen deeply. Chen was prompted to pay for a 10,000-copy reprint of the work to help Yeh realize his ideal of allowing many people to partake in the fragrance of this land through the written word.

Yeh Lun-hui was born in 1947, and graduated with a degree in Chinese from NTNU. He grew up in Taoyuan County's Hsinwu Rural Township. The Yeh family typifies the farmer-scholar family of a traditional Hakka village. Yeh's parents attached great importance to education, and believed that education is the best way to improve one's financial condition. Unfortunately, Yeh was a lazy student at the prestigious Chengkung High School, failed the university exam and went into military service. This major setback resulted in his resolving, during his military service, to study hard. After military service, Yeh didn't feel right in spending his father's money for study and took a recruitment test to become a contract worker at the Board of Foreign Trade, under the Ministry of Economic Affairs. Later he passed the NTNU night school entrance exam, and worked his way through night school until he graduated. Among the artifacts on display at the Customs Museum, the piece that moves him the most is an Angolan million-dollar bill that shows a child studying hard under a lamp. Yeh says that this note appears to remind people that the best method to change poverty is through education.

Thinking back on his childhood, Yeh says that his father often used the free time outside the busy farming season to recite Chinese historical serial novels to his neighbors. Yeh was deeply influenced by his father and loved reading. Under the supervision of NTNU professor Tang Tsu-chung, he read a lot of biographical literature. For this reason Yeh learned that modern Chinese history is made up of heroic figures whose successful deeds were all made possible by "idealism, hope, and determination." This realization convinced him that if only he worked hard, he would surely be able to teach more people about this land. For these many years, Yeh has diligently searched and collected different materials, arranged and analyzed them, and conducted on-site investigations, to bring back in writing the aura of historic Taipei, and express Taipei's new life.

Along with his interest in being a tour guide, Yeh is putting renewed vigor into the Customs Museum, by undertaking the organization of the narrative on the country's lighthouses. Yeh said that Taiwan is the only country in the world where lighthouses are operated by the customs authorities. Taiwan currently has 34 lighthouses left, each with its own characteristics. The earliest was Wangkao Tower in Tanshui, which no longer exists. A related inscription can still be found near the Fuyu Temple located in the old part of Tanshui. In order to familiarize people with Taiwan and the Customs Museum, whenever Yeh travels or undertakes on-site study in Taiwan or abroad, he distributes the promotional brochures he carries around, hoping that people will visit alternative historical sites and museums, which are often not on the beaten track. Then they will realize the truth of the saying that "when historic figures have faded away, the city will remain.

Yeh Lun-hui has been steeped in traditional culture from an early age. Our picture shows him dressed to officiate at an ancestral temple ceremony. (courtesy of Yeh Lin-hui)