Cheered on by her classmates, 11-year-old Wu Ting-yu (吳婷諭), who has achondroplasia, climbed Hsuehshan’s (Snow Mountain, 雪山) 3,886m summit last month.
Eleven sixth-year students from Taipei Municipal Zhongshan Elementary School’s special needs class climbed Hsuehshan as a field exercise in their “mountain and wilderness education” course, whose challenge level was designed to incrementally increase as the pupils age, teacher and expedition leader Tsui Te-lung (崔德龍) said.
Wu’s congenital disorder is commonly known as dwarfism and she is just under 1m tall. She routinely experiences poor balance when walking, which made her ascent to the summit — which took four days and three nights — particularly challenging, Wu’s mother said.
Photo courtesy of Taipei Municipal Zhongshan Elementary School
“She spends twice as much energy and time as her peers,” Wu’s mother said about the climb, adding that her daughter had very close ties with her classmates and that she loves a good challenge.
“[Wu] came home and complained that she was tired and said that she is never going to climb another mountain again. However, as soon as she recovers from soreness, she will be all about taking up new challenges,” Wu’s mother said.
She said she was touched to learn that her daughter’s friends waited patiently for her and encouraged her throughout the expedition.
Mountain climbing has helped other pupils in the special needs class, parents said.
Siao An, another student in the class who has a mood-related disorder, has seen improvements in her condition thanks to climbing, developing her tolerance to frustration and her ability to stay on tasks, while reducing her phobia of heights, her mother said.
Although she considered pulling Siao An out of the Hsuehshan expedition, she is now glad that her daughter soldiered on to reach the summit, Siao An’s mother said.
The students have a wide variety of developmental issues, ranging from Asperger’s syndrome to autism, epilepsy and mood disorders, with the lack of tolerance to frustration being the most common problem, Tsui said, adding that mountain climbing gave students a means to address them.
“I kept reminding them that they should think about things they are not good at and that Siao An is slower because her condition is unique,” Tsui said.
The expeditions start for the special needs students in their fourth year and the school this year gave commendations to all of its students for their successful ascent to Hsuehshan’s summit, Tsui said.
The school said that a mountain climber who encountered the students during the climb, has sent a photograph picturing them in front of the sign marking the summit.
Starlux Airlines, Taiwan’s newest international carrier, has announced it would apply to join the Oneworld global airline alliance before the end of next year. In an investor conference on Monday, Starlux Airlines chief executive officer Glenn Chai (翟健華) said joining the alliance would help it access Taiwan. Chai said that if accepted, Starlux would work with other airlines in the alliance on flight schedules, passenger transits and frequent flyer programs. The Oneworld alliance has 13 members, including American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific and Qantas, and serves more than 900 destinations in 170 territories. Joining Oneworld would also help boost
A new tropical storm formed late yesterday near Guam and is to approach closest to Taiwan on Thursday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. Tropical Storm Pulasan became the 14th named storm of the year at 9:25pm yesterday, the agency said. As of 8am today, it was near Guam traveling northwest at 21kph, it said. The storm’s structure is relatively loose and conditions for strengthening are limited, WeatherRisk analyst Wu Sheng-yu (吳聖宇) said on Facebook. Its path is likely to be similar to Typhoon Bebinca, which passed north of Taiwan over Japan’s Ryukyu Islands and made landfall in Shanghai this morning, he said. However, it
Taiwan's Gold Apollo Co (金阿波羅通信) said today that the pagers used in detonations in Lebanon the day before were not made by it, but by a company called BAC which has a license to use its brand. At least nine people were killed and nearly 3,000 wounded when pagers used by Hezbollah members detonated simultaneously across Lebanon yesterday. Images of destroyed pagers analyzed by Reuters showed a format and stickers on the back that were consistent with pagers made by Gold Apollo. A senior Lebanese security source told Reuters that Hezbollah had ordered 5,000 pagers from Taiwan-based Gold Apollo. "The product was not
COLD FACTS: ‘Snow skin’ mooncakes, made with a glutinous rice skin and kept at a low temperature, have relatively few calories compared with other mooncakes Traditional mooncakes are a typical treat for many Taiwanese in the lead-up to the Mid-Autumn Festival, but a Taipei-based dietitian has urged people not to eat more than one per day and not to have them every day due to their high fat and calorie content. As mooncakes contain a lot of oil and sugar, they can have negative health effects on older people and those with diabetes, said Lai Yu-han (賴俞含), a dietitian at Taipei Hospital of the Ministry of Health and Welfare. “The maximum you can have is one mooncake a day, and do not eat them every day,” Lai