| Walk With Me: Trekking the Coast of Taiwan | |||||||||||||||
| By Lin Jia-he. Translated by Tang Yau-yang. Photos courtesy of Taiwan Association for Marine Environmental Education. Used with permission of Rhythms Monthly Magazine | |||||||||||||||
He quit his job in 2008 and walked the coastline all the way around the island of Taiwan. Since that unforgettable journey, he has been leading people on trips to see Taiwan’s ocean landscapes, hoping to inspire in his fellow islanders a love for the oceans and to sow seeds of ecological preservation in them.
Rain was falling, but it was blown away by a howling wind before it could hit the ground. The crash of the rising tide breaking on the shore added to the noise created by the rotating blades of nearby wind turbines. This morning on the beach in Houlong, Miaoli County, west-central Taiwan, did not appear to be a good time for outdoor activities. But despite the rain and wind, a tour bus pulled over near the beach at around ten o’clock. A group of middle-aged people and a younger man, Guo Zhao-wei (郭兆偉), got off. “[Considering the strong wind,] I recommend that you proceed with a stagger—sort of going with the wind,” Guo told the group over a loudspeaker. As they walked on, Guo stopped to talk about things they saw on the path. He talked about the barnacles he saw clinging to a rock, and he picked up a few pieces of plastic garbage at varying stages of decay as he described the problem of waterborne refuse. Then he spotted some Sargassum horneri—a thick, weedy algae that can grow ten feet tall. He told his group that when the vessel Morning Sun had run aground in 2008, spilling heavy oil and fouling up a wide area of the coastline in northern Taiwan, it was this algae that helped clean up the pollution when human efforts fell short. Guo is the secretary general of the Taiwan Association for Marine Environmental Education (TAMEE), and he was one of the first people to walk the coastline all the way around Taiwan, a 1,400-kilometer (870-mile) journey.
He loves the ocean. Any mention of the word is enough to get him on his soapbox. Once he starts talking, he does so with supercharged and inexhaustible energy. Since his walk around the island, he has, among other things, guided group tours like this one. This group, coming from a continuing education class in Taipei, was there on the beach for a day trip covering a stretch of less than six miles of the shore, an easy job for Guo. Despite the short trip, he was able to educate the participants on topics ranging from sedimentary strata, coastal ecology, beliefs in marine gods, and salt cultures. He mixes science with culture in his tours. He seems to be able to talk on anything about the seas and oceans with amazing ease. His work is so easy for him that it does not seem like work.
The calling Guo was about to start his postgraduate study at the Institute of Marine Biology at National Taiwan Ocean University when he met Huang Zong-shun (黃宗舜), a PhD student at the same institute. The two men’s paths first crossed more than ten years ago during a research project about green sea turtles on Orchid Island. Huang was the man who changed the direction of Guo’s life. Huang used to teach in secondary school, but he was so concerned by the disproportionately brief coverage of marine biology in textbooks that he quit his job to pursue his doctoral studies. He knew that he could not promote marine environmental education under the constraints of the prevailing education system, so he left to find another path.
Huang persuaded the green sea turtle research team at the institute to add tour guide responsibilities to the work of its members. Providing free guides to tourists was a responsibility that suited Guo just fine. He had always been a people person. Guo and Huang shared a love for the ocean and a desire to get more people to care for it, so they clicked quite naturally. Huang believed that the best way to influence people’s opinion about something was to take them right into that thing. “When they experience it firsthand and see the problems for themselves, their conscience is aroused and they’re more ready to take action.” After Guo received his degree, Huang invited him to start an association with him with the mission to show people the coastline of Taiwan and to inspire in them a love for the ocean. “I’ve always loved to talk to people about the ocean,” Guo recalled, “so I went for it.” At the time, Guo was working somewhere else at a job that he did not enjoy. Despite strong opposition from his family, he quit his job and joined Huang in setting up the association. In the summer of 2008, he set out to do the first task for TAMEE after its opening: He shouldered a 30-kilogram (66-pound) backpack and started to walk the coastline of Taiwan. His mission was to explore and establish basic information about hiking routes. “TAMEE was very nearly penniless then, and of course it couldn’t make payroll,” Guo said. “I borrowed just about all the equipment that I needed. Even the maps were copied from an atlas that the Taiwan Thousand Miles Trail Association loaned to me.”
He went on: “Before the trip, I only knew a few things about green sea turtles, so I was really scared. I wondered what I was getting myself into. I had no idea how to teach people about marine environmental protection.” He decided to learn as much as he could on the trip. He carried the maps for each day of his travel in his pocket, and he wrote down his observations directly on the maps as he hiked. He also asked people he met for help, which included directions, things he didn’t know about, etc. In this way, he walked, learned, walked and learned more. “The trip transformed me from uncertainty to confidence and taught me how to work towards the mission of TAMEE. I also discovered what I needed to learn more about.” He returned from that walk firmly convinced about his chosen career. However, he soon found out that it was one thing to truly want to do something, and quite another to actually do it. More specifically, how could they lead a group of people to walk along the Taiwanese shoreline, keep them entertained, prevent accidents, and feed and shelter them for days and nights on end? These challenges would be less daunting if there was a lot of money to work with, but they did not want to charge people too much for the experience. They reasoned that making the trips more affordable would encourage more participation. Though they decided they could spend less on food and lodging, they could not skimp on safety and basic supplies. They figured that if they would be in the red anyway, they might as well go for broke, so they set a ridiculously low price for participants and let the word spread for their upcoming journey. They wanted people to join them, and their low price reflected their desires.
The first TAMEE guided tour On April 17, 2009, participants of the first public TAMEE tour gathered in front of the rail station in Keelung, a port city near the northern tip of Taiwan. The group of about 50 people, ranging in age from the early 20s to late 60s, was split into two teams. One team set out down the eastern coast of Taiwan, and the other team started on the western coast. Their plan was to walk southward and meet at Kenting, near the southern tip of the island, 38 days later, on May 24.
Huang and Guo had collected entry fees from the participants. After making advance payments for supplies and services that the teams would need along the way, the two of them split the money they had left—3,000 Taiwanese dollars (US$100). Each of them ended up with only 1,500 dollars (US$50), and they had to make that last for the duration of the trip. “That was not even enough to buy a single meal for my group, so I was really scared,” Guo said. “But I led the procession off the starting line as if nothing was the matter, and none of the participants knew about our finances.” Things would have gone badly if Taiwanese hospitality had not come into play again and again. There were many occasions where the participants actually played hosts and picked up the tabs for meals at restaurants that were located in or near the towns where they lived. There were even times when local people just showed up on their routes to give food to the groups. These locals had gotten wind of the walk from media reports and wanted to help. Some participants, who had signed up for just a few days, extended their participation because they found the walk more interesting than they had expected. That brought in more funds for Guo and Huang to keep the walk going. After both groups had reached the destination and Guo and Huang had said good-bye to the participants, they settled the bills. They were prepared for the worst, even ready to wash dishes at restaurants if necessary to pay off the charges. “But we ended up with 800 Taiwanese dollars left over,” Guo said. “I still don’t have a clue how that happened.” Huang chimed in, “We were very much like mendicant monks all along the way, but we did it. Thinking back, I still can’t believe how daring we were to launch the trip.”
Different chords touched The participants of that first expedition were undoubtedly glad that Guo and Huang did not get cold feet and cancel that walk. It was the duo’s can-do spirit that had enabled them to conceive, plan and carry out the unprecedented coastal trip. Nearly 20 people completed the entire journey. Wu Ru-ling (吳如陵), 68 at the time, was the oldest participant. When he learned about the trip, he invited Xu Jun-qing (許俊卿), a friend since elementary school, to join him.
“I took part in the walk just for fun,” said Wu, a seasoned walker. “When I first started, I wasn’t mentally prepared to finish it. I was very tired at the beginning, to the point of wanting to quit. But then we all got to know each other better, and we cheered each other on. I actually didn’t feel particularly fatigued when I finished it.” He was hooked after that trip, and he has since gone on almost all the other walks hosted by TAMEE. What might have made Wu forget the toll from endless walking? What hooked him and people like him to come back again and again for more? When people ask Guo what makes walking the shoreline so attractive, he often responds: “Just walk at your own pace to see and to know your motherland, and you’ll find the answer.” On TAMEE walks, Guo does not tell participants how to allocate their time during a given day. Every night, he goes over the schedule for the following day with the participants: the route, hours and locations of his guided tours, where they plan to stop for a group lunch and dinner, and where they will spend the night. Participants can take their time and arrange their own schedules, as long as they can be reached by phone and show up for meals or lodging. This arrangement has allowed participants to get the best of group tours and individual journeys. They may, for example, stay with the group for Guo’s tour of a spot and then go off on their own to explore something else. They do not need to make arrangements for lodging, meals, and other logistic matters, and they still get the freedom of an individual trip. TAMEE has developed new routes each year since that first trip in 2009. They vary in duration, from a few days to mega walks. In 2014 the association held its first round-island walk, which took 67 days to finish. After that trip, participants co-authored a book, Human Sounds on the Shore, which provided a daily chronicle of the event and collected the observations and thoughts of about 30 walkers. Xu Jun-qing, Wu Ru-ling’s schoolmate, was one of them. Before his retirement, he was an engineer on projects that included dams, levies, and other hydraulic engineering works. Like Wu, he has taken part in many walks hosted by TAMEE since the 2009 trip, so he has seen just about every inch of Taiwan’s shoreline. He does not like some of the sights he sees. In particular, he does not like the negative impact man has made on nature in the name of development. “Forcefully reclaiming land from the ocean and building unnecessary facilities on it have not created the promised economic benefits,” Xu said in the book. “I used to think that man could always triumph over nature, but now I see how mistaken I’ve been.” Hong Ling-ya (洪玲雅) came up with the idea for the book. She wrote in it, “TAMEE, true to form, firmly believes that when people get close to the shore, what they see and feel—good or bad—will make them ocean lovers.” Hong, a veteran in conservation, is a doctoral student at the Graduate Institute of Environmental Education at National Taiwan Normal University in Taipei. She observed that the 67-day walk had a transformative impact on participants far greater than she had thought possible. “I saw participants work to protect this island in their own way after that walk,” she said. “Some of them give talks about their walk, introducing to others the beauty and sorrow of the ocean. Some of them organize beach clean-up events, believing that marine environmental education starts with daily life. Others take part in surveys of marine life, hoping to gather more information on the current marine ecology and raise people’s awareness of it.” The list of how people respond goes on and on. Guo Zhao-wei has persisted year after year, walking the shores of Taiwan, one step after another. At first he was all alone, but now he has with him a broad array of people. They do not merely follow Guo, but, as Hong pointed out, they lead in their own ways in helping the earth. “This experience has given me a much deeper appreciation of environmental education,” Hong concluded.
Ocean—their lifelong mission The success of the shore walks put TAMEE on the map and put Guo more firmly on the path of his choosing. However, it has not been an easy journey. Any organization, however small, must attend to all sorts of things. That is particularly true for a new one like TAMEE. Guo has had his share of hard work as the association endeavored to establish itself.
“For more than a year, he was paid a pitiful $10,000 [US$333] a month,” Huang said of Guo. “However, he’s the kind of person that when he believes that something should and can be done, he just goes for it. The task called for a person like him.” Guo worked out of his room at his parents’ house when TAMEE was first established, but that did not sit well with his parents. They thought he was too much like a boomerang. “To them, working for an NGO isn’t serious work at all, but an odd job at best,” Guo remarked. “They’ve only begun to accept what I do in the last few years, since the association became more established.” TAMEE indeed has grown. It has been able to win grants and other external resources. Though its revenues are still unpredictable, Guo and Huang have been able to add two more workers. Chen Ren-ping (陳人平), one of the new workers, had studied fisheries science. He and Guo go back to their college days when they were buddies in a school club. To join TAMEE, Chen had quit a job “that offered stability, and honestly nothing else worthwhile” to him—the job of a public servant. He had wanted to do “something different.” Guo Fu (郭芙), the other new worker, used to study green sea turtles in the same lab as Guo. Once she learned about the grave ecological damage to the Taiwanese coastline, she wanted to help change that. She believed that change would come more effectively if it involved the public, so she decided to dedicate herself to environmental education. That is why she joined TAMEE.
Approaches In addition to leading walks along the shoreline, the TAMEE team also visits schools and organizations to promote the importance of marine environmental protection. During their presentations, they often have their hosts play FishBank, a computer-based game that simulates the interplay among stakeholders in marine ecology. TAMEE has also reinvented the game with simple props so it can be played without a computer. Even little schoolchildren can have fun while learning from the game.
Through role-play, the games show players the need to balance fish harvests and marine ecology, and give them a chance to appreciate the importance of and the difficulties in managing marine resources, given that stakeholders invariably have conflicting interests. “Negotiations are very important in playing the games,” Guo said. “Like in the games, fishing negotiations between nations are happening for real as we speak. If good, sensible agreements are struck and everybody holds up their end of the bargain, sustainability is indeed possible.” Guo went on to say that though the games have been played hundreds of times, so far only one team has ever succeeded in reaching the goal. “If one player didn’t over-catch or cheat, others surely would, and in the end many of them lost their shirts. That was then an opportune time to reflect on and discuss the games. It’s been very effective.” Besides shoreline walks and visits to schools and organizations to promote marine environmental protection, the association has started putting the Japanese concept of satoumi into practice. Satoumi is defined as marine and coastal landscapes that have been formed and maintained by prolonged interaction between humans and ecosystems. Guo found an ideal location for satoumi: Wangan, the fourth largest island in Penghu, an archipelago of 64 islands and islets in the Taiwan Strait between China and the main island of Taiwan. During the summer, TAMEE holds ecological tours and camps on Wangan. Just like in their shoreline walks, they emphasize the harmonious interaction between marine ecology and humans. The team holds activities concerning the preservation of green sea turtles, traditional fishing methods, and local cultures and customs. These have one thing in common: They are all rich in locally abundant ingredients. “Our operations have evolved into a pattern,” Guo said, as he reviewed the TAMEE calendar. “We do shore walks in spring and autumn, we reach out to other organizations to speak in winter, and summer is for Wangan and satoumi.” He wants to conduct responsible eco tours at Wangan and help make this small community a showcase for sustainable island community development. “I think Wangan is the best place in Taiwan to experiment with satoumi, just as Taketomi Island is in Okinawa,” said Guo. “We’ve been quite successful in what we’ve been doing in Wangan.”
Here is the sea While the association seeks new conduits through which to connect people with the ocean, walking Taiwanese shores remains an important part of the team’s work. After all, it is the foundation upon which TAMEE has been built. “A thorough knowledge of our seashores is an advantage that we enjoy over other groups. We even know of changes that have taken place over the years,” Guo reflected. Beyond the obvious point—seeing things firsthand—what does shore walking do to an average person? To that question, Guo offered a somewhat indirect answer: It changes you without your knowing it. TAMEE has put in a lot of effort to promote reducing garbage and waste in oceans. According to Guo, the best and most effective method to achieve that is to cut down on the use of plastic products. Once participants of the walks see for themselves the pollution along the shorelines, they reflect on their daily habits and on the quantity of garbage they produce every day. Guo said that after taking part in TAMEE walks, people realize that every day a person just needs a little clean food and water to subsist and a shoulder-width of floor space to sleep on. Once people realize that they can live so simply, they might reduce their desires for the unnecessary trappings of life, which could in turn lead them to take more civic-minded actions, such as producing and throwing away less garbage. Picking up garbage on beaches is what most Taiwanese people do when they feel like doing the earth a good turn. This all seems well and good, but Guo warns, “After all the garbage has been picked up from the beach, another big wave brings more right back to the beach in a heartbeat.” Guo believes that picking up garbage on the beach is far less effective than producing less garbage to start with. Participants are often transformed during shore walks, and they learn to live more eco-conscious lives. “Bicycle riding is all the rage now,” Guo said. “I hope that one day soon shoreline walking, like bike riding, can be what people consciously choose to do, and that it will become part of their lives.” “The ocean is right there, so please help yourself,” Guo continued with his signature smile. He suggests that people pick a holiday, get out their backpacks, throw in some water and snacks, jump on a bus or a train, get off at their destinations, and walk the beach they have picked. “Walk and walk, quit when you feel you’ve done enough walking, then find a way back to a road and figure out a way home. Getting close to the sea is just as simple and uncomplicated as that.” |
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