【IB-GHRM】《111-1_SA》Monkey Tour: An Adventure at Shoushan
This past Tuesday, October 25th, 2022, the Student Association members recruited an expert monkey-tour guide, Ms. Lin Mei Yin(林美吟), well known as the Queen of Monkeys, to educate students about the monkeys' lifestyle and their environment. This unique experience occurred at a beautiful hiking trail in Shoushan, the lively nature near campus. Twenty-five people participated, including nineteen degree and exchange students, two Belgian professors, three student association members, and a skillful photographer.
It is aimed at understanding the ecology of Taiwan macaques and learning how to get along with and react to them since it is not rare to see the monkeys in our campus Throughout the entire trail, the tour guide conducted the tour in Chinese. In this matter, an interpreter assisted her in translating everything into English so that international students understood better what was being shared. Ms. Lin led participants closer to the monkey habitat and explained how these monkeys and people coexist. Her knowledge about these communities is immense and fruitful since she has studied monkeys for over 20 years. Monkeys are so familiarized with her to the point that they can recognize her voice and arrive at her calling. Therefore, she had a lot of knowledge about monkeys' lifestyles, feeding conditions, and sexual life, detailing how their bottoms get redder as they become ready to mate.
Curiously, monkeys are an essential part of the environment at National Sun Yat-Sen University. However, in many cases, monkeys are known for threatening people because they tend to interfere with students' daily activities by constantly harassing them around the dormitories, as well as stealing food on campus. Due to the lack of understanding of monkeys, students have prejudice against them. Nevertheless, this monkey tour made students realize that these animals are valuable to the planet and belong here. We should all learn to coexist with them in peace since this planet has no sole owner.
In addition, during the tour, students followed the principles of two Sustainable Development Goals from the United Nations. The first one includes goal #3, Good Health and Well-being, where students exercised through hiking and kept hydrated. The second was goal #5, Life on Land, where students enjoyed nature and interacted harmoniously with monkeys and their environment. Students were reminded of the importance of following these goals and were encouraged to continue applying them in their daily lives.
The event was a total success. Students took plenty of pictures and selfies with monkeys. They felt joyful watching how they interacted, gathering into family groups where the females cared for their babies, and the males were more intimidating and ferocious. Students gained better understanding and could be more open-minded to get along with these creatures after the tour. The student association felt warm-hearted as participants felt satisfied with the tour and showed greater respect for the monkeys.
In this modern world, intercultural knowledge and sharing are more important than ever. As international students, we are always happy to share what we know and what we can give to younger generations. In October 2022, three international students accepted the invitation from Fu-Cheng High School to come over for two sessions, meet with some of the students, show them our cultures, and talk to them about sustainable development goals.
At the first session, international students from National Sun Yat-sen University, Alejandra from Honduras, Honza from the Czech Republic, and Rebeka from Slovakia, met with the students of Fu-Cheng High School and introduced their customs, food, and places to visit in their home countries. Ice-breaking games were also part of the introduction—it not only helped us to get to know the students better, but also students got to know each other among themselves since they all didn't come from the same class.
After the introduction session, students were divided into three groups where international students were in charge of each of them. We chose different topics to talk about—teaching the students songs from our country, saying some common phrases in our mother language, and the most important parts and the crucial component and subject of these two sessions, sustainable development goals introduced by the United Nations. In 20 minutes, we briefly introduced our topics, encouraged students to speak and actively participate in the conversation, and asked them to fill out the worksheet at the end of the session. As merit points for participation and appreciation for communicating with us, we gave the students stamps to collect, and in the end, the team who won the most stamps won a prize.
Even though the first session was an introduction to sustainable development goals already, the second session was purely about water consumption, water pollution, and talking about our potential to preserve and improve water quality across the world. This session had a practical part this time as well—after the introductory presentation about the environment and water consumption (SDG number 6), we, with the help of the teachers who were overseeing the smooth flow of the event, prepared the materials for the students so they could try to build their own water filter.
Thanks to its simple construction process and availability of the materials, it was very easy and educational at the same time to show the students the effect of water filters and the fact that they can actively contribute to environmental preservation. The students were very keen to learn how to make the filter, everyone tried their best to achieve a good result, and everyone (more or less) achieved the goal to filter out the dirt of the water.
The event was very successful—students were very handy and tried hard to achieve good results as well as to cooperate with us, and we believe that they were leaving the classroom with new knowledge that they will use very responsibly and very effectively both times on October 26th and November 2nd. We would therefore like to thank Fu-Cheng High School who organized this event and asked NSYSU to help, as well as the members who guided us through the event and helped us whenever we needed—林玟伶、林育妃、張瓊云、吳碧華、周梅如. Thank you for making this great event happen and we hope we can collaborate on more meaningful events like this in the future.