We are very glad to have the chance to introduce  “Gone with the wind” team regarding our “Love Nature” video contest, our GHRM MBA student Le Ngoc Bich Thuy (Sam)and IBMBA student Truong Lam Huong (Mashi) team video not only won a second prize but also a special Social Media Prize for getting the most amount of “views”. Let’s discover how they create the creative video and messages they aim to bring to our society.

“I bring cashew nuts for monkeys every time I do hiking. I love the connection and interaction I have with them. For me, I don’t feel any threat or uncomfortable. They are quite nice and patient, very cute in the way they ask for more nuts”. Mashi said.

Since I started to study at NSYSU in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, I heard a lot of comments about how naughty and aggressive the monkeys here are. But I do not mind much. I noticed that monkey often come down in the morning, waiting outside of the tunnel, where many students and people walk through this way to enter the school. They will try to catch some food from students’ breakfast. People often put food inside their bags and walk pass by them quickly to avoid troubles. For me, whenever I see a monkey there and if I have something with me, I will give it to them. It might violate the school’s rules as you will see the sign there, and friends often make fun of me or warning me not to feed them anymore. But actually, I don’t see them often, just sometimes, and I don’t mind to feed them some small snacks if I have as long as we are cautious and can keep ourselves safe.

Monkeys therefore become our unique icon in this university. It does not matter what concepts people have in their minds about them, maybe good, maybe bad, but I know it’s always there and play an indispensable role in our areas. So we came up with the idea that we need to have a monkey as a main actor in our video, and having a real monkey seems impossible so we borrowed a stuffed one from our Department. Thanks for their supports; we’ve added a great factor in our video.

I saw the monkeys snatch food from other students few times, might unlucky for that person but kind of funny for me. They climb really fast up to the wall above the tunnel after that and sit there, look down on us and enjoy their booties.  That’s when we came up with the scene about giving food to them unconditionally or being forced after they chasing behind us.

Recently I and my friend, Sam from GHRM MBA had joined in a school contest named “Love Nature”. Our team’s main idea for the content based mostly on our observation and perspectives since we live and study at NSYSU.

Surrounding by mountain and ocean, the school always amaze us every day by its unique location in the South of Taiwan. It gave us an idea of a must to introduce this great scenario, let people know more about this place. That’s why you can see in our video a combination of mountain, ocean, school properties, bus, motorbike … we aim to make people feel like we are showing them around in a school tour. You can find our video here https://www.facebook.com/SA.NSYSU.KAOHSIUNG/videos/2483352518642349/.

When I have free time, I often do hiking on Shousan Mountain which located behind the school with my friends. I like all the paths for hiking there. They are nice, safe, clean and eco-friendly designed.  I always see many monkeys along to the hiking paths but they are so calm and friendly to human. I was surprised when realize that they do not scared of people, even there are many climb up to the mountain every day. They feel safe because they know no one want to catch attack or harm them. The scene you will never see in my country- Vietnam. Monkeys in front of people like that, if not turn into food will be put in cage as pet or zoo. You never can approach them so close like the way people are doing without panicking them or make them feel being threatened.

The more I do hiking in Taiwan, the more I realize that Taiwanese have very high awareness of preserve and protect environment here. It moved me a lot. It teaches me a lesson that when we put effort to protect nature, it is also protecting our future. Mother Nature will nurture us back, give us what we need to be healthy and happy.

I also really love all the big banyan trees that we have around the University, which barely see in my country if you not going to deep inside the jungle. The peaceful vibe was created between people and animal in this area make me feel calm and fresh everyday go to school. From the janitor, hardly sorted out all the trash every time after lunch, to the gardener, taking care of flowers and branches, make them always look healthy, organize and beautiful. Besides that, there are many local people come here to do exercise, have some tea, chatting to each other every morning or spend their time to feed dozens pigeons every afternoon. All of those things paint out nice pictures for us to keep in mind. We want to put all of them in our video, to keep as unforgettable memories for us in next period of time, and to show how much we appreciate what they did, to make us have a great environment to enjoy our studying here.

The diversity of international students at NSYSU also impressed me a lot. Through studying here, I’ve had more chances to meet friends from different regions/countries, and learned a lot of new things from them, share to them more about my country in reverse also. Due to exchange students program, I’ve made many friends and one of them is from Germany that you could see in the video. We became good friends, even after she went back to her country and could not join me this semester.

At the video, you would also see that we collected several students from different countries and suggested them to say “I love NSYSU”, put together in the video. Due to time limitation, we can not show much all nationalities that we have here but just some. We want to highlight this aspect to help students have a general view about our school that might encourage them make wise decisions to join us in the future. And together, I hope that we can keep enhancing our abilities and responsibilities to make this place always being a great place for our community. This would be one of our most important goals through this video.

I hope you enjoy watching our video. Through filming process, we had a lot of fun, even nearly get attacked by real monkeys around the tunnel area because they thought we kidnapped their partners. We know that there are improvements still and will do our best to be better next time, if we still have another chance to join in the next contest.

Thanks a lot for all of your support, caring and kindness through share and comments, helping us get the second prize in this contest.

Much Love.

S & M team (Le Ngoc Bich Thuy (Sam) and Truong Lam Huong (Mashi))