By: Genevieve Balance Kupang
Puli, Nantou, Taiwan · May 6, 2026
The Campus That Teaches Before the Conference Begins
The campus of National Chi Nan University is home to a feathered treasure called 台灣藍鵲, the Taiwan Blue Magpie. It is regarded as one of the most exquisite birds in the world. It is endemic to this island, as Vice President Dr. Yung-Ping (Emilio) Tseng kindly told me. The law protects it. The Taiwanese people love it. And so do their foreign guests like the HLU conference participants.
On the morning of May 4, 2026, two days before the 6th Hanseatic League of Universities Annual Conference and WURI 2026 Global Rankings Ceremony was to open, the Taiwan blue magpie appeared outside my window at the NCNU Campus Inn, where I stayed. It was blue-gray with white and black markings, its beak and feet a striking red tipped with yellow. It stood there, unbothered by my presence, as if to say: You are welcome, Genevieve, and all the delegates. You are valued here. It knew it belonged. I was the curious visitor who still needed to be oriented.
I took this as a sign. I have attended many conferences in several countries. I have never been greeted by a national bird before breakfast.
This is the quality of welcome that National Chi Nan University offers. It is a welcome that precedes a registration desk and a lanyard. The Puli land itself makes every delegate feel it. The campus in Puli, Nantou County, situated in the geographical center of Taiwan and embraced on all sides by mountains, is one of those rare institutional environments that does something extraordinary: it teaches you before you enter the conference halls.
Coming earlier, days before the conference opened, allowed the WURI historian to learn far more than what the conference halls alone could offer. As an applied cosmic anthropologist, I found myself drawn into the cosmic abundance that NCNU’s landscape artists and gardeners have so lovingly cultivated. For delegates who arrived only for the conference itself, here is what you may have missed: the beauty of the Cassia javanica trees, the Pink Shower Trees that many guests mistake for Sakura. What follows is what I gathered from Vice President Dr. Yung-Ping (Emilio) Tseng and from my own walks and morning jogs around the campus.
Its grand tree-lined avenues stretch toward vanishing points framed by peaks and clouds. It’s Cassia javanica trees, the Pink Shower Trees that visitors consistently mistake for Sakura, that drape NCNU’s landscapes in cascades of soft pink blossoms. Its bronze sculptures and carved 景石 scholar’s rocks mark the paths with meaning. The insects hold concerts after midnight that make me feel, more than once, not like a conference delegate in a hotel room but like a scholar camping at the edge of the wild. And its student hosts attended to every delegate’s needs with the kind of hospitality that feels not like a job function but like genuine pleasure in having guests.
When I wrote about the 5th HLU Annual Conference in Dumaguete and Siquijor last year, I described the Philippine institutions that hosted that gathering as setting a standard for cultural warmth and intellectual generosity in the HLU network. NCNU has also met that standard. It has added a mountain range, a forest, a chorus of birds, and a campus so abundant in living beauty that I wrote an entire companion article trying to do it justice and still feel I have not said enough.
But the conference was about to begin. And the mountains, generous as they are, were not the only thing waiting.
If you missed the first article on the 6th HLU Conference, it is available on Pressenza: https://www.pressenza.com/2026/05/the-6th-hlu-conference-and-wuri-2026-global-rankings-ceremony-at-national-chi-nan-university/. Stay with us. The Opening Ceremony, the Presentations, the Campus Tours, the WURI 2026 Global Rankings Ceremony, and the Cultural Tours outside NCNU are still to come.
About the Author:
Genevieve B. Kupang, PhD, is currently the Dean of the Graduate School and International Relations Officer at Baguio Central University, Baguio City, Philippines. She serves as the WURI Historian, Secretary of WUNI-Leaders (WUNI-L), and Board Director of the Cordillera Association of International Relations Officers (CAIRO). She serves as Peace Education Coordinator for the World Council for Curriculum and Instruction (WCCI) and Co-Lead of the Exceptional Women of Peace Awards under Pathways to Peace.