If ecological poet Liu Ka-shiang envisions Mt. Shamao as a green ladybug, then Hushan Elementary at its foot must be one of the ladybug's colorful spots.

At the Beitou MRT station, you take a little bus up Mt. Yangming and get off at Shamao Bridge. Then you hike up an incline steep enough to leave you out of breath until you reach the end of the road. If it weren't for the characters for Hushan Elementary written on a sign, you'd think you'd accidentally stumbled into a private mountainside garden.

Hushan Elementary is in a lake basin on the western side of Mt. Shamao in Yangmingshan National Park. Its elevation is around 250 meters above sea level, second in Taipei City only to Hutian Elementary near Zhuzihu, at 650 meters. Both are specially-designated schools that take students from outside their districts. As many as 80%, or nearly 100 students, come to Hushan from metropolitan areas down the mountain.

On the Hushan Elementary campus, everywhere you look there is nature, everywhere you look there is beauty.

Nourishing stream

Back on September 8, 2006, Mt. Yangming had a light morning rain, bringing everyone at Hushan Elementary out in raincoats and boots to the muddy area next to the calisthenics yard. This was an exercise in experiential learning. There had once been a concrete bed laid down for the stream there, which the school had broken up and removed, leaving only mud, and the kids were stomping it all down, having a blast as they did so.

An excited little girl told a television reporter at the time: "We're creating a layer of 'puddled clay,' so the water won't all soak away into the soil." The school's principal, Ho I-chun, took the chance to give a lesson. She said that in old times, people made storage ponds by mixing clay and regular soil together and then having their oxen trample on it to compact it and make it waterproof. "Nowadays we can't find any oxen so we had the kids experience it for themselves with their own feet!"

Today, academic director Leo Chen recalls the sorry state of the concrete stream bed of three years before. It was so cracked and fractured that the stream water would leak right through, taking fish and shrimp along with it. Also, plants had nowhere to take root in the cement. "At that time, you could only describe it as barren," he says.

The year after the clay bed was completed, the school let the stream, which had been cut off while work was underway, flow back into the school grounds from near the school's back gate. Students and teachers voted on a name, and rechristened it "Hushan Stream." The "resurrected" stream came to flow like the Tigris through the Fertile Crescent, nourishing the school grounds.

Now, flourishing in the organic soil along Hushan Stream are duckweed, prince's feather, ferns, lizard's tail, marsh pennywort, roughseed bulrush, Taiwan yellow water lily, and even Taiwan water leek, a species unique to Taiwan and transplanted from Menghuan Lake.

Along one part of the stream within the school grounds, specially-cut semicircular stones make up a platform over which less than a centimeter of water runs. Kids squat there and examine the fish and shrimp as they swim by. Dragonflies also touch upon the water. In this observation area specially designed for very small children, there is no danger of falling into the water.

This area is also the school's base for raising fireflies, though unfortunately no great results have been seen in over a year. The teachers think the problem is that the water is not clean enough, so they have been trying to persuade farmers upstream to go organic and quit using pesticides. The exciting thing is that organic farming has been popular with local residents. The school is now envisioning a community organic vegetable market, to benefit the community economically.

The power of a drop

Though Hushan Elementary sits among abundant mountain forest resources, it also places great emphasis on energy conservation. The design of its grounds is like a mountain ski resort. The stream, as it winds through the school grounds, goes through a drop of 30 meters. "Don't think there's not much water," says Chen. "The kids can learn to dye cloth in it, they can wade in it in summer, and it is a source of electrical power."

The lowest point of the grounds is near the front gate. With help from the parents, the school built a waterwheel here the size of a truck tire. It uses the energy from the stream water to make electricity. Every night it can light a three or four watt bulb for five hours.

"The waterwheel doesn't make much electricity, but it has pedagogical significance," says general affairs director Yan Shiting, who records the amount of electricity and water used by the school every day. When the amount is higher than usual, he immediately looks to find where water is leaking or which light hasn't been switched off. Since he started keeping records, the monthly electric bill of NT$40,000 has been cut in half and the water bill of NT$16,000 has been slashed to NT$1,300-a savings of 90%.

"The school's construction is all about education," says Yan, whose son is a Hushan student. He gives the example of the hot spring foot bath on campus. Though the water is taken for free from an underground bicarbonate spring, the school still informs the students of the amount used each day. "In addition to learning to cherish natural resources, the kids also have the opportunity to learn how to estimate the flow of liquids and the capacity of containers," he says.

The first time visitors to Hushan hear an announcement saying, "Fourth and fifth-grade students, please report to the sweetgum trees for class," they shouldn't find it odd since there is only one class for each grade. As such, it is common for outdoor events to cross age groups. Just over a month ago when three crested serpent eagles were circling overhead, Chen called all the students outside and took the opportunity to teach them about recognizing bird species.

Yan Shiting, who's been at Hushan for 13 years, says, "A happy school is one in which all the kids can sit down and take a rest anytime, anywhere." By this standard, Hushan is certainly a happy elementary school.