Introduction
When we first saw Mr. Silence Hsu, he proudly introduced himself to us and showed us the bug bites he got from his adventure to the African forests a week ago. Mr. Hsu loves being in nature and is a promoter of environmental protection. He wants everybody to see the beauty and excitement of nature. Mr. Silence Hsu is the founder of the Society of Wilderness. This has been one of his childhood dreams he is dedicating his life to fulfill. In addition to protecting the nature, he also wants to portray the beauty of nature to people, which he does through photography. As you read on, you can see his thrilling and on-the-edge life he lives with no fear and regret in fulfilling his childhood dreams.

Childhood
As a child, Mr. Hsu grew up in Chung Ling (芎林), Hsinchu, not far away from us. However, his experience is very different from ours. During his childhood, Chung Ling was a cultivated farmland, full of unexplored mountains and rare animals. He did not live in a financially rich family; however, he lived in nature and has a handful of unforgettable memories and experiences from his childhood.
His childhood was very much connected to nature. He would harvest tealeaves and sell it for money or dry bamboo to sell it to people who made hats. He claims to know not only where all the fruit trees are in the mountains, but also which ones are edible.
As a child, Mr. Hsu had the heart of an explorer of nature. When he had free time, he would go exploring the mountains and simply sit quietly, waiting for shy animals to come out. Once he met a small tiger. Instead of running away, he stood quietly and stared at it while it quietly stared back at him for a full 10 minutes. In the end, it was the tiger that backed off. On other expeditions, he has seen thousands of ants fighting and snakes eating frogs. All of these left a strong and inspirational impact on him.
Once during an elementary science class, Mr. Hsu and his classmates were shown a documentary on how animals obtained food. After seeing this movie, he realized that he saw these scenes almost everyday of his life: snakes eating frogs and birds eating fishes. He was deeply touched by this movie, and knew that when he grew up he wanted to make a documentary of nature through his point of view.

Pursuing his dreams
Once, Mr. Hsu saw a newly made documentary in the United States. He sat there and watched the movie over and over again, admiring it and thinking over his dream. An old man came up to him and asked, "I noticed that you've been sitting here for a while, do you like this documentary?" It turned out that the old man was the director of this particular documentary. Mr. Hsu told the director of his dream, to which the man replied, "It takes many people to make a documentary. You need a crew to help you capture the events. You need a sponsor to finically back you up. You need a place to shoot an interesting documentary." He suggested Mr. Hsu to use photographs to capture moments. One photograph says a thousand words, Mr. Hsu thought. He came back to Taiwan, bought a camera, and started on his journey as a photographer.
In addition to photography, Mr. Hsu had another dream. He wanted to protect the natural environment that people were carelessly harming. He knew that he couldn't do this job alone and needed the help of others. He used his strong persuasive speaking skills and gathered a group of supporters. In 1995, he created the Society of Wilderness. It became the biggest environmental protection society in Taiwan after three years of establishment.
In this society, there are many activities that promote environmental protection. For example, Mr. Hsu would lead a group of children into the wilderness at night and leave them there, asking the children to find their way home in pairs. Of course, he had secret "spies" in the bushes, watching out for their safety. However, the kids didn't know of this. They would come back and boast of how they fought off the dangerous monsters single-handed. Each child had a success story of his/her own to share. Mr. Hsu believes that children should be able to have their chance to experience adventure and experience closeness to nature.

Mr. Hsu's Point of View
Mr. Hsu is quite the optimist. He likes to express himself with humor, which he gets from reading many different books. He also believes that it should not be required of children to attend school after completing elementary school. He thinks that some school subjects, like math for example, are taught in a quite senseless way. He says, "Since Math is taught to exercise the brain, why don't we just learn to play Chess instead?" He also thinks that languages can be self-taught, which he has proved. He can speak not only Chinese and English, but also Taiwanese, Spanish, Malaysian, Cantonese, Philippine, and Haka, all of which are self-taught.
To Mr. Hsu, "Life is a buffet." He thinks we should make the best of our lives while we can. Though he does not have much spare time, he plays tennis to keep himself in good shape since both stamina and flexibility are very important to an explorer. He can still beat his grown-up son in tennis! To him, life has to always be in action. He even thinks of his job as leisure.
From the viewpoint of an environmentalist, Mr. Hsu thinks that because of the excessive pollution in Taiwan, people have started taking notice, and therefore Taiwan is improving in preserving the environment. He thinks that the main conflict in preserving the environment is the economy. If we don't have a natural and healthy environment to live in, money is useless.
Mr. Hsu is a vegetarian. "A cow can feed maybe ten people. But an acre of wheat or rice can feed hundreds of people," he says. He thinks that being a carnivorous human being would only be a waste of food, and Taiwan people are big food wasters. There are 50,000 people dying of malnutrition or starvation, yet people in Taiwan are always on some type of diet. He says disgustedly, "Just eat less! Give the food to the people in dire need."
He believes that as students, we should start helping the environment by teaching our parents and the people around us. "It all starts from you." We should better ourselves first by reading more, so as to improve our ability to speak and persuade others. For example, many Taiwanese gamble by playing the lottery. This is Taiwan's so-called "economy." He says his son would never play the lottery, the reason simply being because he would never and he thinks only useless people need to earn his/her living by gambling. His influence is great enough to impact his son and family. This is how we students should start preserving our environment.

Conclusion
Pursuing his dreams was not as simple as it seems. When the rain falls on his tent in the middle of an unexplored forest, Mr. Hsu feels momentary loneliness without human company. But then he realizes that he is surrounded by a neighborhood of plants and animals, which are all full of life. He takes out his camera and goes into the rain to capture scenes that are prettiest after the rain has washed away the dirt. It takes much courage and optimism for a man to pursue such dreams.
Mr. Hsu ends the interview with a very strong viewpoint of his. "You have nothing to lose." There is no such thing as "failure," because you learn from mistakes, and therefore gain valuable experience, resulting in success instead of failure. He says he has never felt like a failure in his life, because he has absolutely nothing to lose. He's seen many things and he's grown up. He says," Do not be scared of taking chances because it is always a win-win situation!" To him, there is no such thing as failing in life.

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