Follow the winding mountain road into Hengshan, and Big Hill North Moon comes into view, perched quietly on a ridge. This was once a Hakka farming community, its slopes lined with mandarin orange groves and home to a century-old schoolhouse—the Hengshan Public School Dashanbei Branch (a Japanese colonial-era elementary school for Taiwanese children), established in 1923, later renamed Fengxiang Elementary School, and shuttered in 1983 as enrollment declined. In 2014, the overgrown campus found its turning point.

"Transforming a closed school into a food and agriculture education base is more than passion—it's the realization of a dream." Chuang Kai-yung was still a graduate student in the Institute of Service Science at National Tsing Hua University when, guided by the principle of integrating resources to create new value and supported by his academic mentors, he took on the derelict campus. What began as a field course experiment has since grown into more than a decade of sustained, grassroots commitment to place.

Where Service Science Meets Table

Step inside Big Hill North Moon today, and the past is never far away. Salvaged blackboards, desk drawers, and old exercise books have been arranged into display areas throughout the former classrooms, while the corridors and campus grounds have been reimagined as a cultural hub where food and agriculture education, travel experiences, and a local market all converge.

The land itself is equally generous. The base's terraced slopes and natural waterways support twenty to thirty varieties of local citrus, each tied to the story of a farming family. Even the huo shao gan—an unsightly mandarin—is put to full use through cooperative farming with grower-friendly practices. Peel, flesh, seeds, and leaves all find their way into the kitchen. Using the campus restaurant as a development lab, the team has rolled out an inventive lineup: citrus dried fruit, jam, beer, coffee, and seasonal desserts. Among the most celebrated are the citrus sausage and citrus gong wan, where a bright note of orange lifts the richness of the pork. A citrus sparkling water, developed later, has since made its way into convenience stores nationwide—carrying the whole-citrus philosophy far beyond the mountain.

Unlike the scenic hilltop restaurants common across Taiwan's countryside, Big Hill North Moon runs on the principles of service science, weaving together specialty products from neighboring townships into a single meal that captures the region's terroir. Guests might sip Emei's Oriental Beauty Oolong, tear into wood-fired bread from Hengshan, and enjoy a spread of Guanxi grass jelly noodles, Zhudong handmade mochi, and traditional Beipu lei cha (a tea-based beverage in Hakka cuisine, also known as "grounded tea" or "pounded tea"). "We want people to taste the flavors of nearby townships in a single set meal," Chuang says with a smile.

From abandoned schoolhouse to cultural destination, from unwanted fruit to an unlikely reinvention, Big Hill North Moon uses food to reconnect people with the land—and keeps finding new ways to tell the story of everyday life in the hills.

☛　Big Hill North Moon has been selected as one of the Ministry of Culture's inaugural 100 Culture Bases.