Mothers with children entering the World Trade Center are, obviously, not there for international commerce. Their concerns, rather, accompany them, each toddling in on two short legs to a unique "parent-child center" within.
On a Sunday afternoon, the center itself is a controlled bedlam. In one area, kids race about, scampering up and down ladders, leaping into what looks like a pool filled with orange-sized plastic balls. It is the fulfillment of a childhood dream—jumping like that and sinking into something that can't hurt. The balls are like deep piles of autumn leaves, or soft sand. Undoubtedly, only adulthood's dry self-restraint keeps their parents from jumping into the ball-pool too.
Established only last July, the Chin Tzu Kuan (Parent-Child Center) has been featured in local newspapers, magazines, and on public TV, receiving more coverage in the process than any other Hsin-I Foundation project.
"We need the publicity," admits the center's director, Yu Shu-fen. To offset expenses, including high monthly rent and maintenance, the center needs to attract a larger paying membership; it counts less than 2,000 at present.
Before last July, all center resources were strictly for adults. "We consider parents' education of top importance in connection with preschool kids," explained Chang Hsing-ju, Hsin-I Foundation director. "But then, if you provide a place where parents can be involved in the kids' learning—if parents keep learning, that's the most important thing for kids."
Known as the "Toy Library" when it first opened, the center does still have that, plus a children's library (books), and rooms for children's activities and classes. More than 300 different kinds of toys, many collected by Chang on trips abroad, can be borrowed from the toy library just like books.
The kid-pleasing, kid-proof environment was jointly designed by center director Yu Shu-fen—who has a master's in preschool education from the University of Missouri and a master's in library science from Queens College—and her husband, chairman of Tunghai University's Graduate School of Architecture.
"Children are most comfortable at home," Yu explained in a local Family magazine interview. "At home they learn language skills and gain experience. But the home is subject to the limitations of economics, the lack of playspace, and other factors. It can't offer children very organized, systematic training. The learning environment and toys at the Chin Tzu Kuan, on the other hand, are geared towards providing what's absent in the home."
The Chin Tzu Kuan was not intended to be just another place to let the kids loose in. It's also for the parents' education. "This is not a daycare center," says staff member Li Yun-chieh.
The collection of toys, all the weekly activities are designed to help shape the most important—and decisive—six years in everyone's life: The children will soon face the conformity and intense competition of public education. The preschool years are a rare time for development of creativity and that capacity for self-expression that must last a lifetime.
Though now specializing in preschool education, the Hsin-I Foundation wasn't originally established for this purpose. Started in 1971 by Ho Chuan, founder of Taiwan's largest paper manufacturing facility, the foundation first served direct charitable purposes: distributing food, sponsoring scholarships, donating money to schools, and the like.
But by 1977, a flourishing economy and sharply rising standards of living in Taiwan spurred the foundation to look in different directions. By that time, recalls director Chang, "people didn't need those kinds of services, so we put the money into something that would have a longer lasting influence." It was, in part, a personally motivated decision: Chang herself had two young children and was having trouble finding suitable resources in Taipei, a problem she knew was shared by many other parents.
From these somewhat inauspicious beginnings, Hsin-I started the process of collecting reference materials and planning programs which has since led to the establishment of preschool education resource centers in Taipei and Tainan, a children's activity center in Tainan, a publishing branch, and—most recently—the Chin Tzu Kuan in Taipei.
Hsin-I's plans are ambitious. The foundation's Institute of Preschool Education, which oversees all activities, was founded in 1977 with the following aims: "To encourage and conduct research into all aspects of preschool education; to provide the public with a wide range of knowledge and information concerning preschool education; to foster ties between research and practice; to stimulate overall innovation in the current educational system through the reform of preschool education."
The cornerstone of the foundation's Preschool Institute is its research and information division. Parents, teachers, and anyone else interested in preschool education can use the library and attend the various seminars, conferences, and lectures on aspects of child psychology.
The library offers a significant collection of books (in Chinese, English, and Japanese) on preschool education and related subjects, including the classics in the field—Piaget, Bettelheim, etc. The collection, though relatively small, is kept up to date with newer works in the area, and current magazines.
Next to the preschool library, a store filled with books and toys illustrates a more material side of Hsin-I's efforts. The publishing division, started in 1978, produces not only books, but toys, games, and teaching materials. There are books specifically for kids (delineated by age group), books for parents, and sets of teaching materials for educators. All the toys and books naturally have educational value; but they would be useless if they weren't specially attractive to kids in the first place.
In spite of the fairly wide range of topics, Hsin-I books and games focus on related themes: learning about numbers, for example, or learning about folk literature through songs.
For the number series, Hsin-I translated a set of books by Mitsumasa Anno, a Japanese illustrator whose children's books have been hailed for their imaginative detail and have also gained a following in the U.S. and Europe. Most of Hsin-I's publications, though, are by Taiwan authors.
One series of books, now numbering 36, designed for children from three to eight, won the Government Information Office's Golden Tripod Award for excellence in publishing last year. It's no wonder.
Illustrations are colorful, bright, and simple, as in most children's books, but there the similarity ends. Illustrators, not hampered by conventional expectations, were free to find their own styles, which range from fine lines and delicate washes to deceptively rough-looking drawings in rather muddy colors untrammeled by sharp outlines.
The texts, themselves, are good-humored and not so simple minded as to be condescending, and range in subject and style, as the following titles indicate: Mama, the first publication, quite naturally; Peach Blossom Spring, a traditional Chinese legend; Star in a Jar, Evening, A Mouse Is Eating My Candy; Toot Toot, The Rainbow Bird; Mud is Great (illustrated by the internationally known local artist, Chou Earthstone); and others.
Besides a newsletter keeping members informed about activities at each of the branches, Hsin-I also publishes a slender monthly journal, Preschool Education. Each month's cover features a pointed snapshot of a preschooler, often a baby, with one or more adoring relatives, and a descriptive bit of prose or fanciful poem about the photo by a local author.
The contents of the journal are more practical, covering topics as diverse as learning toys, breastfeeding, childhood health problems, exercise, child sexuality, play space, and the influence of TV.
For kids, there may be a bedtime story or pictures or puzzles to cut out.
If you're the mother or father of a typical—that is, bright, beautiful, creative, demanding, exhausting—preschool child; if you live in the middle of a crowded city or its immediate suburbs—a place with more telephone poles than trees, where heedless traffic has the run of the roads; and if you want to find a place your child can play in that is safe (but not dull), clean (but not sterile), not subject to the instability of Taipei's weather, and that offers play in a way that can, ideally, stretch his or her mind as well as muscles....
Or you're tired of rereading the same mechanical bedtime stories with the artificially bright and slightly skewed pictures of obtuse, lumpy-looking bunnies, ducks, and puppy dogs; and junior, too, is showing signs of disenchantment....
Maybe what you're looking for is something not so immediately tangible as books or a public playground, but better understanding of the now long forgotten, seemingly inaccessible world of childhood—and ultimately, how to be a better parent. How do you nurture, encourage, and guide your child's creativity and energy? Here in the Republic of China, Hsin-I is attempting to blaze the way.