A group of high-school students in Hualien knew the consequences for being late to an early-morning study session, but decided to risk the wrath of their teachers to help an old woman up an 800m slope on Monday last week.
Hualien’s Jhongzeng Road ascends Meilun Mountain (美崙山) and climbs 30m over about 800m.
Every morning, Hualien Senior High School students can be seen speeding up and then taking off in a burst of frantic pedaling in an attempt to make the climb, but on Monday a netizen with the username Wu Yi-xuan captured a different scene.
Photo courtesy of Wu Yi-xuan
According to student Deng Kai-wei (鄧愷威), his classmate Cheng Yu-kuang (鄭予光) was the first to notice the elderly woman trying to push a tricycle loaded with eight or nine plastic bags up the hill.
Deng said he estimated the cart weighed between 40kg and 50kg.
Cheng asked the woman what she was doing and the woman said she was on her way to the Mennonite Christian Hospital to get some medication.
Cheng and Deng said they took a bag each while three other classmates pushed the tricycle uphill for the woman, adding that they parted ways with the woman after they reached the top of the slope.
By the time the five students arrived at school, they were nearly 30 minutes late for the study session, Cheng said.
“I did not know it felt this good to do a good deed,” said Chen Hung-you (陳泓佑), one of the students who helped the woman.
The school’s student affairs division director Huang Ko-ying (黃科贏) said the students’ homeroom teachers had only learned of the event the following day after seeing clips on the Internet.
While school regulations require students to be in class before 7:30am and they are issued a warning if they are late 10 times, Huang said the students’ actions were more important than rules.
The school is considering giving each of the students a merit point, Huang said.
The video footage of the students is titled Kindness Everywhere in Hualien and can be seen on Facebook, where it has received more than 2,000 “likes.”
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