It’s long since dark outside—it’s a cold winter’s evening, late after eight o’clock—and the school corridors are yawning with emptiness. Nevertheless, it shines in them and in several classes. What can be happening here so late?
If we ran into school children inside, it wouldn’t be so surprising. Taiwanese urban children, like their counterparts from China, Japan or South Korea, stay in their desks until ten in the evening.
However, when we approach one of the lit classrooms and look into its wide open door, there are no desks or schoolchildren sitting in them.
Yes, they are learning inside. However, the students do not sit at tables, but on the floor, if they sit at all – someone quickly grabs a bandage, another lies limply on the floor, others try to move his motionless body to a nearby couch.
In the classroom, flesh-colored rubber cylinders are set up that look as if someone has cut an ax into them; in the corner there is a meter-high pile of warm blankets.
And teachers are expertly involved in this. But you would look for shirts with collars on them in this classroom just as in vain as children in school uniforms. Everyone here, students and teachers, are adults, and if there is a dress code that unites them, it is the dark blue T-shirt with a large white inscription that some of them are wearing. The inscription on the T-shirt is I Can Help.
Welcome to Civilian Self Defense Training in Taiwan. In the country where