Volunteer Journey in Northern Thailand (C4 - How to say it)

Have you ever heard of Golden Triangle (金三角)? Please raise your hands. Golden Triangle is the area covering national borders of Laos, Myanmar, China and Thailand. It used to be the largest poppy farm in the world. Poppy is not a "cute little dog" but the plant to produce opium (鴉片). Today I am going to tell you my story of being a volunteer teacher in Northern Thailand (泰北). The content will include the little town I visited, the school I served, the people I met and the gifts I received.

In 2005, without planning the next step of my life, I decided to resign my previous job and to be a short-term volunteer teacher. I went to a little town near Golden Triangle in Northern Thailand with my best friend and my younger sister. The little town is surrounded with tropical forests and mist in high mountains. it has a dazzling name, Pile of Stars (滿星疊). Only hundreds of people live there. Chinese, the descendants left behind the civil war in 1950s, comprise more than 60 percent of the population. The rests are refugees from Myanmar and China or the ethnic minority in Northern Thailand.

We served at Da-Tung Junior High School (大同中學). It provides Chinese learning from kindergarten to junior high. Students have to go to Thai school for obligated education in the daytime till four p.m., because they are Thai citizen. After school, they go to Da-Tung from 4 pm to 7 pm for further learning in Chinese. Da-Tung can only exist as an extension school. Students learn Chinese, Math, English and other subjects. The main purpose is to learn Chinese with the benefits of reviewing their homework. Due to the shortage of resources, some of the classrooms do not have windows and students use textbooks as their family heirloom, generation after generation.

Principal Ming-guang Chang (張明光校長) used to be a guerrilla when he was young. Now he leads about twenty teachers educating those children. During the 18 days in Pile of Stars, mostly we supported as substitute teachers. I taught English. My sister taught Chinese. Kids there are very warm and sincere. They would loudly greet us with big smiles when they see us five meters away on the streets. Even with the limited learning resources, they treasure the opportunity to learn Chinese and live in Chinese Culture. Even in a difficult living environment, they try hard to be connected with the mother country, Republic of China.

Now I would like to show you some pictures we took.

Back to the story, what are the gifts I received? First, be contented and thankful of what we have now. We are very lucky to be born in Taiwan with abundant educational and living resources. Second, try to help others in need. We can contribute one afternoon in weekends for volunteer or donate the secondhand daily supplies, such as clothes and books. At the end, I would like to conclude my volunteer journey in Northern Thailand with the following sentence, "The one who gives is the one who receives."