Nine activity centers and twelve mountain villages scattered around the island serve as focuses of the CYC's Self-Reliance Program, which is always heavily over-enrolled. According to CYC, there were 450,000 applicants for 400,000 openings in the 1982-83 winter season.
In addition to such activities as sailing, skiing, and gliding, which students attend in swarms, the more-demanding Military & Battle Training Camp program is surprisingly popular.
Over some thirty years, the camps have been expanded from one to eight, including two on the off-shore islands. Activities have become more various. Besides basic training in such outdoor skills as wilderness survival, cliff scaling, and range shooting—two facilities, the Liangshan and Longchen Battle Camps, both in southern Taiwan, offer a parachute tower and modern sports facilities, respectively.
Once occupied by airborne troops, Liangshan now serves as training center for amateur parachutists. Within a five-day period, about 300 students, divided into three groups, take turns learning Liangshan's special lessons. While one group is in the nearby mountains being trained in such survival skills as hunting, and cooking without utensils, another two groups are testing their courage in different ways.
A strong rope cable runs tautly above a deep-set dried streambed. At the higher end of the cable, a little red flag is raised as a signal, and then a tiny black dot slides speedily down toward the cable's lower terminal. Onlooking students stare, fascinated. "Hurrah!" The valley suddenly echoes as the observers cheer a companion's adroit landing. Though most succeed in this effort, a few, perhaps due to excessive nervousness, miss their cue and fall away from the forked handle, which they are supposed to grip tightly while gliding down the rope. Such accidents never become tragedies, since the trainee is always firmly fastened to the cable. Other students, strictly trained for just such mishaps, immediately guide the jittery trainee safely to ground.
Computers exercise brains instead of bodies
Before the students get their chances to "glide over" the streambed, they are required to cross the gulley on a rope bridge, holding onto one rope while stepping along another. The students make the crossing sideways. Besides this "single-rope crossing," a "double-rope crossing" is practised. Instead of moving sideways like crabs, the students can walk facing forwards, holding onto parallel ropes and stepping, again, on a single rope. Some of the more timid co-ed trainees, too frightened mid-way to keep on moving, must be led from the front and encouraged in back, to complete the crossing.
The parachute tower is the tallest in the Liangshan area, standing about six-stories high. Before students are permitted to jump from it, they are required to undergo preparatory training. "These knots and buckles in the parachute gear can not only save a parachutist, but kill him," an instructor warns those impatient to get on with it.
After repeated drills in how to jump, drift, and land properly, the students make a few test jumps from a lower tower position, about two-floors up. Girls scream as they first fall, then swing in the gear, halted about five feet above the ground. However, both sexes share a common fright when they are positioned at the critical point of the tower. Experienced instructors know how to get them on their way at the last moment. "I was so nervous, and somebody told me to count from 5 back to 1 so I would relax. Right after I reached 3, I was pushed out," gasped a hard breathing co-ed, now eager to go through the adventure all over again.
The students appear to target themselves with equal concentration on the rifle and archery ranges...and on the products of the camp's kitchen ranges.
About 30 miles north of Liangshan is the Longchen Battle Camp, famed for its special sports training activities. Horse-riding, fencing, and archery—more and more popular in Taiwan—were added by CYC's Self-Reliance Program when the camp was converted from an abandoned military post three years ago.
A riding track and indoor fencing facilities are located near dorm-barracks, where the students live; targets for archery are nearby. Like the routine at Liangshan, within a five-day period, 150 students grouped in three teams train in turns at horsemanship and marksmanship.
Before dawn at Longchen, students waken to the soul-stirring sound of a bugle and, 30 minutes after, line up for the flag-raising ceremony. In their 30 minutes from wake up, they must have finished their morning ablutions, dress, and make their beds—especially, they must fold their quilts into a maddening tou fu (bean curd) shape, featuring sharp right angles on each side.
Many of the instructors at Longchen meet Olympic standards. The students attend them in phases. Though seven hours are allocated for field practice each day, the students are reluctant to wrap a session up. In heavy storms, however, all outdoor activities must be cancelled, and the students compete, instead, in a series of indoor "contests."
Dancing, singing, and acting as performance teams, the students become more familiar with each other during these indoor sessions and develop the rewarding fellowship that is one of the goals of the Self-Reliance Program. The misfortune of bad weather has proved a blessing in disguise.
The times at Longchen are memorable not only for the happiness obtained, but for the hardships never previously borne.
The tempo of life is forced and fast. Besides the morning rush, the students get five minutes for a bath, called the "battle bath!" Dashing out of the shower rooms, students drape dry clothes on dripping bodies.
Between each activity, they are given short breaks. But before each meal, as a piercing whistle vibrates through the barracks, they must run as fast as they can—from all directions—to the grounds outside the dining hall. After a second whistle, no one can move. At a third signal, a U chow line is completed by the students. Then, holding a bunch of objects in his hands, a drill commander shouts, "You all look carefully at this stuff, put in the wrong places by sloppy masters." The owners must step out of the chow line to take care of their gear.
School library-type regulations are applied in Longchen's dining hall, where students are supposed to eat soundlessly. If a wave of noise clicks from active chopsticks and bowls, the commander orders the diners to stop eating for a while. But the scene changes completely as the final camp meal is served. Then, in addition to being allowed to choose their own table mates, the students are free to move about, and the once "abominable" commander suddenly finds himself popular.
"We all preconceive that the battle camp programs will be exciting and challenging—the military discipline as well as the special skills training," one former trainee wrote. "We learn that when we devote our whole heart to something, the chances of success are maximum. It is you that made me perceive this. Many thanks for what you have done."
CYC's Self-Reliance Program has grown in reputation not only on the island, but abroad. In recent years, Korea and Saudi Arabia have sent people to Taiwan to experience the Self-Reliance Program and carry back their ideas for similar programs in their own lands. Perhaps this will be another item to proudly bear the export label "Made in Taiwan" in the not distant future.