On the Friday night before some important school exams, the library/office of the Taitung Educational Development Association is bustling: a dozen or so ninth graders stream in, bringing with them the fried chicken and milk tea they bought on the way there. The youths are participating in an alternative afterschool program sponsored by the Ministry of Education, which aims to raise the scores of junior high students on the Basic Competence Test.

A student named Ah-Qiang is in no hurry to eat. Instead, he picks up the guitar at his side and begins diligently to strum. "Long, long ago, you left me to soar far away.... The outside world was wonderful, and I felt helpless there..." "The Outside World"-a song that Chyi Chin made famous years ago-accurately describes the longing that 15-year-old youths have for the outside world, and singing provides a release for Ah-Qiang's boundless, youthful energy.

"With their dreams only half realized, how can one simply decide to leave?" Ah-Yuan originally came to the community for a vacation more than a year ago. Seeing the children's needs, he decided to stay and help them "hatch their dreams."

Flying in the classroom

"If you push them too much, children will run away," says Chen. "If you're too easy on them, they'll grow lazy." Every evening the class is a "tug of war" between Chen and the students.

During this 90-minute tutorial, Chen uses every method at his disposal to hold the attention of his young charges, whose energy is flagging at the end of the day. Studying the Northern and Southern Song dynasties, they cover everything from the Chenqiao Coup to the Jingkang Calamity. Chen describes how Zhao Kuangyin's officers made him emperor and how the emperor subsequently took away the military powers of those same officers. Chen has a lively presentation, and from time to time he inserts jokes to hold the attention of students who are about to nod off.

But there is something here that makes one curious: Why does the class not focus on the typical problem areas for students-namely Chinese, English and math?

Chen acknowledges that he starts with history and geography, which have a lower bar in terms of difficulty, partly because he has a better handle on the material. But he explains that the main reason he does so is that these children have quite honestly too weak a foundation: textbooks for English, math, physics and chemistry are extremely difficult for them; it is easier to engage them by describing the emperors, generals, heroes and beauties of history.

In the same vein, Chen Junlang goes all out thinking of ways to hold these kids' attention. He plays tapes of a dramatic television series about ten Qing-Dynasty emperors. And running counter to the way that history is taught in school, he first gives the students a clear understanding of timelines and then makes links between Chinese history and Western history, letting them know that Alexander the Great's empire coincided with the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods in China.

Despite knowing junior-high-school teaching materials like the back of his hand, Chen only has a high-school education. So that he could teach children, he spent more than a year studying in detail all of the middle-school textbooks on the market. He discovered that there was little difference in the content: they were all stiff, fragmented and lacking in connections. Consequently, Chen decided to write his own set of educational materials-interesting and inspiring texts that begin with history and geography and move on to language, math and science. He aims to use hands-on, experiential methods to raise children's willingness to learn. For instance, they built a model of the kind of wheeled catapults used in the film Lord of the Rings. The project created understanding about axles, levers, parabolas, and mechanics.

Chen's plan to write "Flying Classroom" teaching materials earned a grant of NT$1 million from the Johnny Walker Keep Walking Fund. Apart from offering financial assistance, the grant also served as a kind of affirmation.

Since he was already helping his son (second from left) with his homework, why not help other children in the community? The Jianhe Library was born from Pa Chen's (right) "butting in."

Battle for hearts and minds

The area near the famous Zhiben Hot Springs in Taitung is sparsely populated, and the whole area only has a total of 1007 students at all levels. The Taitung Educational Development Association, which was founded by Chen Junlang, who serves as its executive director, has helped 400 students in elementary school, high school and junior high school in various communities there.

In truth, when Chen first returned to the community, he never expected to become so deeply involved in community education. Eight years ago, he had a business in Taipei but was neglecting it to take care of his family. In order to save his marriage and make up for his regrets about being distant from his children, he decided to close the business and return to his hometown. He planned on taking the civil service exam so that he could become a court clerk and spend more time with his children as they grew up. It wasn't until he returned home that he discovered, much to his surprise and dismay, that all around him were children living in broken homes. No one at home was showing any concern about their schoolwork. With the idea of "doing as you would be done by" he "butted in" and offered some support.

Originally, he just helped some neighbors' kids with their homework. He'd chat with them and teach them guitar. If they were hungry, he'd give them something to eat. Slowly but surely, the children began to listen to him.

In Zhiben, there is a mix of mainlanders, Hakka and Minnan Han Chinese, as well as Aborigines. Although Chen, who is of Minnan ancestry, is a local, he certainly isn't an Aborigine, and by showing concern for other children who were outside his ethnic group, he quite unintentionally stirred up a controversy about who should have the right to educate Aboriginal kids.

"Children would listen to me, not listen to their families," Chen says, "and some Aborigines thought that Han Chinese were cultural plunderers." These Aboriginal parents worried that the children's values and attitudes would be affected, and that they would begin to oppose their parents at home. Hence, they forbade their children to go to Chen's library. Some parents even came to his house to express their dissatisfaction. One, who emboldened himself with booze, came to give Chen a piece of his mind while holding a machete.

Since he was already helping his son (second from left) with his homework, why not help other children in the community? The Jianhe Library was born from Pa Chen's (right) "butting in."

Tribal tragedy

In the Zhiben area of Taitung, Aborigines make up about 40% of the population. The Jianhe Community is a lowland tribal community, consisting of only about 2000 people. Family problems-including unemployed parents, alcoholism, physically abusive fathers, and mothers who have left home-are common.

According to a survey conducted in February of 2008 by the community's Chihpen Junior High, 72.4% of its children come from "disadvantaged families"-meaning, for instance, that they live with grandparents or a single parent.

"The mission of the library is to help children to grow despite the adversity they face, so that they can take a path in life that is different from their parents," Chen says. Because they have long received special treatment, the children from disadvantaged families gradually lose their ability to compete. When this goes on for too long, they even have "disadvantaged dreams."

"Aboriginal children have tuition assistance and they get points added to their scores on educational entrance exams. But when they go out into society to look for a job, the competition there will show no mercy and treat everyone the same. If they have an attitude of holding out a hand for special treatment, these children will meet with one frustration after another and go down the same mistaken paths as their parents."

"The library offers a 'second chance,'" says Zheng Heyuan (Ah-Yuan), who used to be a clerk at Fubon Financial Holding in Taipei and now is a member of the library staff. Before coming on vacation to distant Taitung, he had never expected that he would stay. He's been there about two years because he saw the need within the tribal community.

"Have you eaten yet?" is the first thing that Ah-Yuan asks the children as they enter the library. The answer he always gets is a silent shaking of the head. To deal with this problem, the library provides dinner every evening, so that those children who lack money and can't find their parents at least don't have to go to bed hungry.

"There are some children here who lack even the bare necessities of warm shelter and food," Ah-Yuan says. "How can you expect them to muster the energy to worry about keeping up with their schoolwork?" He himself last year helped three junior-high girls prepare to take the basic competency test, and was surprised to find that they had difficulty even performing division at a third- or fourth-grade level. And that was only half a year before they were going to take the exam.

Pa Chen (front row, far left) put on a barbeque celebration for the kids who finished the Hualien Bicycle Challenge. Apart from enjoying themselves, the children also agreed to participate in next year's challenge: bicycling across the Central Mountain Range.

Local after-school program

After spending time with children for five years at his own home, Chen, with the support of the Frontier Foundation, rented a warehouse for the Jianhe Library. He also established a weblog about the library. Quite unexpectedly, it made a big splash. Contributions of books came from all over. New stacks of boxes arrive before all the books from the last batch have been put on the shelves. Here in remote Taitung reading materials are generally lacking, but this outpouring of support shows that "all that is needed is a call for help-and the need will be filled!"

Education has always been grassroots work-something that progresses bit by bit over time. When the children started to make a turn for the better, gangs in the community disappeared, and problems with fighting and drugs decreased. Slowly, the attitudes of many community residents changed from suspicion to support.

Today, the library has become something of a "day-care center" and "after-school program" for the community. When children get out of school, they go to the library to read books or do their homework, enjoying "free tutoring." And Aboriginal members of the community have started to participate themselves, coming to the library to make dinner for the children.

Pa Chen's example has also brought more and more people into the ranks of the tutors. One after another, people have joined the organization's core staff: Yang Huijing (Ah-Niang); Jiannong Community Association director Tang Yucheng; Ah-yuan; National Taitung University graduate student Zhang Mingshan; Papa Nian, the director of Zhiben's Meili Library; Papa Yan of the Meihe Community; and others.

The scope of the library's concerns has gradually broadened and now includes 13 separate programs in the greater Zhiben area. Not only does it run an alternative afterschool program under the auspices of the Ministry of Education, but it has also organized two samba drum groups, four bands and a bicycle team.

So long as one works hard, dreams are attainable! The Young CEOs-the Jianhe Library's first band-perform at Jialulan in Taitung. Don't they bring to mind Ah-Jia, the lead character in the film Cape No. 7?

Tired, but not fallen

From simply wanting to be a good father to his own two children, Chen Junlang has become "Pa Chen" to 400 of the community's children. He receives no salary for the time and energy he puts in, and has to rely on his own parents for food and shelter. Sometimes all he has to eat is white rice and pickled tofu, but he suffers these deprivations happily.

"It's not easy to find what you really want to do in life," Chen says. He now has a group of companions around him who don't care for fame or fortune, who are doing what they want to be doing, living without regrets and "in good conscience." They could "die tomorrow without regrets." It's a really good feeling!

"The ones who benefit most are the children," Chen says. He has a relationship with his sons like that between good friends. Moreover, from a young age, they have learned that one ought to help people: "Having gained this knowledge from experience, they won't grow into selfish, short-sighted adults. They will surely be 'OK'!"

"We tire, but don't fall down," Ah-Yuan says. "Slow, but don't stop." There's truly no greater reward, he says, than seeing the children change for the better.

What changes are the children experiencing?

"You can't put numbers on how children change," Chen says. There may only be so much they can do in terms of raising these children's test scores, but the children are also acquiring some basic common knowledge, and are cultivating skills to learn by themselves and are thinking about how to pursue their ideals. That's quite a lot.

Out of 402 students at the Chihpen Junior High School, 140 get some help from the library. Leo Li, the director of curriculum at the school, agrees that the library has had a positive impact: after the children had a place to go after school where they would be supervised, the amount of roaming around and troublemaking markedly declined!

Ah-Qiang's intense guitar playing provides a release for his youthful thoughts and feelings. Even the loyal dog at his side seems able to feel the passion.

Finding an outlet

In fact, not only the children, but the parents too, are changing. One of the best examples is the story of Ah-Niang, the first volunteer at the library, and her son Ah-Qiang.

When Ah-Qiang was in fifth grade, his father came down with fulminant hepatitis and suddenly passed away. His mother brought Ah-Qiang back to Zhiben, where she was from. What with the huge change in family circumstances, and the neglect alternating with high pressure that characterized his mother's parenting style back then, Ah-Qiang closed up and gave up on himself. He became antagonistic toward his mother and would frequently leave home when he wasn't supposed to.

In his first year of junior high school, Ah-Qiang met Pa Chen and began to study guitar with him. The music gave him an outlet and a source of comfort.

"Guitar was Ah-Qiang's point of entry for starting life afresh," Chen says. Because he 'adored' the way Chen played guitar, Ah-Qiang gradually began to listen to what he had to say. After studying guitar for a year, Ah-Qiang formed a band called Chemical Formula. He would get up and perform without any stage fright, and now he has become a "junior teacher" of guitar himself within the community.

"The way I was raising and treating my son before was all wrong," says Ah-Qiang's mother, Ah-Niang, who remembers vividly how her once-lost son found his way back. "I want to sincerely repent for my son." Even if he first parks himself in front of the computer to play video games when he gets to the library after school, even if he prefers guitar to his schoolwork, even if he is a problem child in the eyes of his schoolteachers, the chasm between mother and child is beginning to close, and Ah-Niang knows that with Pa Chen's help, mother and son have moved back on track from a perilous situation.

Not someone who is authoritarian or imposes a lot of rules, Pa Chen-in the eyes of children-is "on their side."

"Just do it"

During New Year's vacation, Jianhe, along with the neighboring communities of Daqiao and Tai'an, organized a "Hualien Challenge" bicycle tour. Forty staff members and 30 children bicycled to Hualien through the rift valley, and then returned along the coast. The trip took three days and two nights and covered a total distance of 300 kilometers. It was a great challenge of the children's endurance and willpower. Children who finished the trip garnered certificates of completion. When they received the certificates-no matter if they were blushing from embarrassment-you could tell that they felt it was an incomparable honor.

Chen, who is already middle aged, is still energetically planning how to help his community's children challenge themselves and work toward realizing their dreams. Next year, he plans on taking the children on a bicycle ride across the Central Mountain Range. The following year he wants to circumnavigate Taiwan in a sailboat with the children.... Chen says that all of these efforts are to prove to the children that "where you have the will, you'll find the way!"

The tribal village environment seems so innocent, so unlike the city with all its potential traps and temptations. But there are serious problems here: children being raised by grandparents, unemployment, domestic violence, absent parents.... What sorrows these children, who appear so happy and carefree on the outside, must hold within!