Maintaining contact

To ensure that the program can continue every year, Yang takes part in the selection of volunteers from mainland universities, choosing about 20 from the hundreds who apply.

Before the COVID-19 epidemic, the chosen volunteers traveled to Taiwan to accompany the students as they cycled around the island for about 10 days, building up mutual trust during the journey. Later, they traveled to the mainland for another 10 days riding in different cities.

Zheng Zetong, a graduate student of medicine at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, became a volunteer in 2018, and she made her first visit to Taiwan through the activity.

Recalling the trip, she said that one morning she was tasked with buying breakfast for the whole team, but she was unable to buy enough food because she didn't have enough money.

After learning about the program, the shop owner gave her the extra food for free. "She wanted to thank us for taking Taiwan children to see the wider world," she said.

Zheng said she was also moved by the changes she saw occur in the students and teachers from Taiwan during the journey to the mainland.

She recalled one moment when she focused her camera on an introverted student and was surprised when the youngster beamed back a sweet smile.

"Although it was just a tiny thing, I believe the kids felt the kindness of their older brothers and sisters from the mainland," she said.

After the journey, Zheng kept up with the students via messages from the teachers in Taiwan. "It was heartwarming to receive postcards from Taiwan printed with recent photos of the students and some details about their lives," she said.

"Sometimes, we also received gifts the students had made."

Some of the students later came to the mainland on university exchange programs and a number became volunteers for the program, she said.

In recent years, Zheng has been managing the mainland student volunteers. "Becoming a volunteer in the charity program was attractive to many students because it allowed them to travel to Taiwan and experience cross-Straits exchanges," she said.

Online classes

An online teaching project was launched at the end of 2019 as the team realized that the students used the tenacity they had developed through cycling in their studies, helping them overcome the disadvantages of living in isolated areas and gain entry to good high schools.

The volunteers provide the participating students with extracurricular lessons — including Chinese, English, writing, outdoor sports and cycling skills — throughout the year.

Since 2020, when the cross-Straits cycling activity had to be suspended because of the COVID-19 epidemic, the online teaching program has become the main form of interaction between mainland volunteers and Taiwan students.

Yang and the students rode around the island that summer, while the mainland volunteers, who could not travel to Taiwan, simultaneously helped local students undertake the cycling program in the mountains of Sichuan province.

Chen Binghang, a student at Xiamen University who volunteered for the program in 2020, said although the volunteers are unable to visit Taiwan at the moment, they can communicate and share their feelings with the Taiwan students via online meetings held at night during the dual cycling trip.

Although the team has encountered many difficulties, including unstable online communications caused by network problems, and linguistic differences, the feedback from the Taiwan students shows that they are happy to attend the online classes, he said.

To cultivate the students' sense of beauty and learn more about them, the volunteers have recently developed photographic courses.

"We hope to see the world from their perspective through the photos they take," Chen said.

He added that if conditions permit, they hope the cross-Straits cycling project will return to normal soon so the two sides can meet in person once again.

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