[Characters of Baiyue] The wild child who reached the top, Lu Zhonghan

[Characters of Baiyue] The wild child who reached the top, Lu Zhonghan

Text: Xueyang/Picture: Lu Zhonghan

On a gloomy morning in December, I rode across the Zhuolan Bridge. The distant peaks of the snow-capped mountains were still bleary-eyed in the dark clouds, but the message from Lu Zhonghan was already vibrating in my pocket. On this day, we made an appointment to meet in Zhuolan, Miaoli. His always warm and hearty voice, coupled with his enviable white teeth, swept away the gloom above his head like the sun.

Lu Zhonghan, 35 years old this year and known as "Ago" by his friends, is currently a physical education and outdoor teacher at the "Full Person Experimental Middle School" outside the institutional system. In fact, he is the person with the most experience in climbing the 8,000-meter peak in Taiwan without using oxygen bottles. The first person. He has climbed four 8,000-meter mountains including Gasherbrum II, Broad Peak, Manaslu Peak, and Nangapaba Peak. He has the most summits in Taiwan today. He also created the first Taiwanese to climb without oxygen. Records for summiting these mountains.

In the history of mountaineering in Taiwan, this is an unprecedented achievement.

During the chat, he talked about his climbing plan for 2019, "We plan to go to Makalu first, and then climb K2. If we have enough funds, we may also climb Mount Everest, and finally go to Cho Oyu in October." In the minds of ordinary people, Mount Everest, which is portrayed in movies as a matter of life and death, is just a drop-in in the life of a real mountaineer, as natural as going to Yushan.

Although he is known as "Taiwan's No. 1", Aguo has no airs. He is kind and enthusiastic. He also considers himself not a god, but just loves sports. From a wild boy who didn't like reading and spent all day running and jumping in the fields of Lukang as a child, to Zeng Zishi who transferred to Wulai and followed the aboriginal teacher every day to travel across mountains and rivers, and later entered a holistic middle school and devoted himself to all kinds of favorite sports. Contact with mountaineering... In Aguo's life, "sports" are the majority of life. And he was never a professional athlete. He failed in the college entrance examination after completing his service and spent seven years in society. Before returning to school to teach, his major was "carpentry". Coincidentally, he set multiple world records, including the late "Swiss Machine" Ueli Steck's career, too.

But unlike Ueli Steck, "When I climb mountains, I am not pursuing the summit or the limit, but enjoying the 'process' of climbing. That is the best part. Without using an oxygen tank, I just want to enjoy the purity of climbing." , what I want to express is that mountain climbing does not have to be so hard, and it saves money (laughs). "Moreover, I must live well. I hope to do something for Taiwan, so that Taiwan can truly cultivate its own mountaineering culture and outdoor culture." Culture." Aguo said with firm eyes. "If it weren't for the education outside the system and the fact that I couldn't study, I might just be an ordinary worker or even a gangster now." This heartfelt emotion comes from the fact that he was once a child who did not adapt to the system's education, but under the care of his uncle On the advice of the teacher, I transferred to a school outside the system, which changed my life. Under the enlightenment of each teacher, I found my own path and life while constantly expressing my passion for sports. The health, physical fitness and familiarity with the body accumulated through sports came to fruition when he participated in the Oduna 14-meter 8,000-meter project, allowing him to fall into the arms of the world's 14 8,000-meter peaks, and then became the first person in Taiwan. , until today.

The path of education touched him deeply. I felt the enthusiasm from Aguo to "follow the children's wishes and do everything possible to help them." That is a sincere desire to benefit from the system. The kindness of foreign education was the love he spent his whole life conveying to more people; it was also the touching reason that drove him to return to his alma mater to work as a teacher, and was even willing to donate part of his salary to support its operation when the school was in trouble.

In Taiwan's contemporary mountaineering community, Aguo is like a pioneer on the mountain peaks, stepping out in the snowstorm step by step, hoping to help those behind to keep up. If the danger of climbing an 8,000-meter mountain is to gamble your life against the mountain god, and the winner takes it all, then Aguo is a cautious gambler, cautious; because he knows that in his world, the real winner is He was not the one who reached the top of the mountain, but the one who could push Taiwan's mountaineering culture forward and go further and further. He became the teacher, the wild boy.

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