Chinese Name: 螢火蟲書屋
Established: 2016
Founder: Yeh Chia-hao (葉家豪)
Location: New Taipei City
Did You Know?
At the beginning of 2022, Firefly Bookhouse, founded by Yeh Chia-hao, obtained Social Return on Investment (SROI) certification from UK organization Social Value International (SVI). In September of the same year, Yeh was honored with the first Community Empowerment Innovation Award.
The founder of Firefly Bookhouse, Yeh Chia-hao, comes from 18 Chongxi (十八重溪) Village in Shiding District (石碇區), New Taipei City. The village was once a coal mining settlement, and at its peak, it had over seven thousand miners. Living conditions were quite bearable. However, as the mining industry declined and the labor force migrated, the village fell into decline, sandwiched between the mountains and the city fringe. Despite its low development, it retained abundant ecological resources. Yeh Chia-hao recalls his childhood village, with schools of fish and shrimp in the streams, Formosan blue magpies, whistling thrushes, and Taiwan barbets all returning here to nest. In nature, he could easily find a place to play all day.
In 2016, just after Yeh graduated with a master's degree from the Department of Agricultural Economics at National Taiwan University, he returned to his hometown during his free time, shocked by the sight before him: his childhood village had filled up with garbage and waste in the scant few years since he had left. On subsequent weekends, Yeh Chia-hao would return to Shiding to clean up the mountains. The garbage he picked up ranged from bowling balls and waste wood to gas stoves. His mother was heartbroken that her highly-educated son was hanging out with garbage in the mountains, and the neighbors gave him strange looks. More disheartening was the fact that no matter how much he cleaned, new garbage would always appear.
Then once, just as he was considering giving up, Yeh saw some fireflies slowly crawling out of the messy pile of garbage, surviving with the tremendous tenacity. This strength moved him, and he decided to summon his spirits and persist. Yeh began to recruit volunteers online to join him in cleaning up the mountains. From being misunderstood to gradually gaining support, his garbage cleaning activities even spurred nearby farmers and residents to participate.
With the gradual increase in volunteers, Yeh Chia-hao rented an old miner's house and transformed it into the Firefly Bookhouse, not only providing a space for volunteers to rest and store cleanup tools, but more importantly, to hopefully play the role of a local base in Shiding, where many activities could be conceived and held, bringing new changes to the area.
Firefly Bookhouse is not big, and sitting inside, you can smell the faint scent of cypress. This is because Yeh Chia-hao and the volunteers started with a piece of cypress wood from the garbage heap, turning the wood into chairs and bookshelves. They display kerosene lamps picked up from the old mining area and second-hand books collected from donations. There is also a map model of the old coal mining area in the remaining space. It took three years for him and dozens of university students from the Department of Landscape Architecture to slowly piece together and stack this 3D map model using discarded vehicle parts and power poles.
“I want to encourage local children not to give up even though they lack resources,” says Yeh. “This bookhouse was built from a garbage heap. As long as you're willing to work hard and dare to dream, there will always be opportunities." Educational resources in Shiding are relatively scarce, and Yeh hopes that the bookhouse can play a companion role in the area, providing a space for children to read and study, and planning after-school tutoring.
Firefly Bookhouse focuses more on environmental education. Besides volunteers guiding children to learn about ecology, firefly conservation, and other knowledge after school, they further lead children into farmland to learn about self-sufficiency and the value of environmental protection, hoping that they will have a deeper sense of belonging to their hometown in the future.
Thanks to the efforts of all the volunteers, the clean-up work based in the bookhouse is continually expanding. This young man from the mountain village, with an idea in his mind and his hometown in his heart, built a bookhouse from the garbage heap of his hometown, helped fireflies find their way home, and continues to tell the sustainable story of 18 Chongxi Village through the hard work of Yeh Chia-hao and his team.
(Photo courtesy of Yeh Chia-hao)