April is all about kids: Taiwan celebrates Children’s Day on April 4, and this month we take a peek into the lunch bowls of Taiwan’s elementary school students.

Do you have any idea what our schools are serving up for lunch, or why nine-year-old British schoolgirl Martha Payne envies the lunches at ­Chiayi City’s Chia­pei Elementary School?

Compare the lunches served to Martha and other UK schoolchildren with those from Chia­pei Elementary: a small piece of bread, a slice of meat, a hot dog, 33 kernels of corn, three slices of cucumber and a cup of water at Martha’s school, versus a bowl of rice, baby bok choy, winter melon with stewed tofu, scrambled eggs with onion, hot and sour soup, and cherry tomatoes at Chia­pei. Filling, nutritionally balanced meals like those being served at Chia­pei are attracting global attention to Taiwanese school lunches.

For this month’s cover story, deputy editor Lin Hsin-ching explored the kitchens of 20-some elementary schools, middle schools, and meal-service contractors. Lin spent weeks traveling the length and breadth of Taiwan and shares what she learned on the front lines of Taiwanese education.

Her first discovery was that elementary-school lunches are very inexpensive. Where school lunches in the UK run £2–3 each (roughly NT$100), they are just NT$30 in Tai­nan City, NT$32 or so in ­Chiayi City, and only NT$55 even in pricey Tai­pei. Lin found that the secrets to producing healthy lunches that kids love include having production contracts with local farmers, buying in bulk, and reducing food miles.

Her second discovery was that it isn’t just school principals who obsess over school lunches. The head of Tai­tung’s Cheng Gong Township Farmers’ Association took on the challenging task of providing fresh, hot meals to rural schools in his area because he couldn’t stand the thought of local students not have access to decent lunches.

Her third discovery was that some lunch programs in central and southern Taiwan are getting kids out into the fields, giving them the chance to experience the sense of achievement that comes of harvesting their own rice and vegetables, and to gain an understanding of the agricultural lifestyle of their grandparents’ generation. These programs also have kids using (and cleaning) their own steel lunch bowls, making environmental awareness a part of their everyday lives.

Her fourth discovery was that the differences between northern and southern Taiwan extend even to school lunches. The fact that Tai­pei City can spend tens of millions of NT dollars on high-end kitchens and send students abroad for exchanges speaks to the enormous differences in northern and southern culture and resources.

Our photographic team shot more than 5,000 pictures while covering this feature, plastering our post-production area with photos of delectable meals and smiling, satiated children.

Grinning children are our hope for the future, and we found the same desire to bring joy to kids in the Paper Windmill Theatre’s plans to bring its second national tour to 368 cities, townships and municipal districts.

Taiwan’s political and economic situation hasn’t really improved much in the seven years since Paper Windmill launched its first national tour. But, as executive director Lee Yung-feng says, “Even if we can’t fix the big things, we adults can at least do a little something for the kids.”

To those of us with pets, our furry companions can be a bit like children. Unfortunately, these surrogate kids age much more rapidly than we do.

Cats and dogs generally have life expectancies between 10 and 20 years. When they eventually pass away, we mourn them just as we would a loved one. But as our society has changed, so too have the ways in which we deal with the death of our beloved little friends. Nowadays, there are services that can help us cope, which we also take a look at in this month’s issue.