Each child a work to be curated
For Ku Yu-chun to transform 5-Way House into a venue for diverse learning for rural children, a lot of work needed to be done. Adults and children worked together to repair the walls; there were no display shelves, so they had to make do with cardboard boxes; and they reassembled salvageable parts of discarded furniture to make three good tables out of five broken ones.
Children who work at 5-Way House can earn points that they can exchange for daily necessities or opportunities to take part in activities. For instance, several children wanted to learn to play the guitar, so 5-Way House found a student at Dong Hwa University to come out and teach them, and the children could exchange points for guitar class time. 5-Way House and the children work together to find practicable ways to build kids’ ability and courage to pursue their dreams, and not merely wait around for assistance because they were raised in a poor, remote area.
Last year Ku won a “Global Highlights for the Future” educational fellowship from the Sayling Wen Cultural and Educational Foundation, and this September she will go to Australia to tell the 5-Way House story. Ku has turned the fellowship into a study activity for the children, giving them the chance to go with her and speak about 5-Way House themselves. Those who wish to take part must first put in a written plan, then give an onstage presentation. Kids jokingly compare Ku Yu-chun with a demon guarding a gate—you can only go to Australia if you pass her tests.
Many of the kids who come to 5-Way House are from broken homes, and have to move around between relatives’ families; or their parents have no regular work or income…. These issues manifest themselves in various ways: children may be poorly motivated to study, or emotionally unstable. Ku uses the metaphor of an exhibition curator to describe her relationship with them: “Each child is like a work of art, and based on the given child’s form and nature we try to enable them to be recognized anew, understood, and appreciated. We are not ‘repairing’ them, nor are we ‘molding’ them into something more attractive.”
For example, many people ask Ku how to stop a child from stealing. She says: “It’s not only children who steal. 5-Way House also has customers who come specifically to steal things.” First, she sets aside the idea of “correcting” the child’s stealing. “Each time an incident of theft occurs involving the child, we will discuss with them their connection with stealing, and from there we can better understand and know the child. We turn the theft into a life experience that can feed back into the child’s maturation process. After that we continue to stay with the child as they grow older and then one day, their ideas straighten out and they no longer steal.”
The three villages of Fengshan, Fengli, and Fengping in Hualien’s Shoufeng Township were together formerly known as Fengtian (“Toyoda” in Japanese). It was a community for migrants from Japan during the era of Japanese rule, and even today it still retains the checkerboard street pattern and rich cultural ambience of those times.