Inside OakMega | The Faster the World Moves, the More We Need Each Other
For its third annual team building, OakMega headed to Xincheng and Shoufeng in Hualien, Taiwan: a walking tour around Lianxiqu (Etude) Bookstore, river tracing up Baibao Creek, and local stories turned into our holiday gift box. Here is why an AI company believes in human connection.
Irene ChaoExecutive Assistant
We step outside to see our everyday work with fresh eyes.
Every year, OakMega takes the whole team to a different corner of Taiwan for team building. The point isn't rest. It's to meet different people, see different ways of living, and then look back at the work we do every day with fresh eyes.
Every place we visit ends up as a story inside our holiday gift box.
This year marks the third of these journeys.
Contents
- Three places, three gifts with a story
- Lianxiqu Bookstore
- Houshan Liren
- We build AI, but not to keep people in the digital world forever
- Watch the video
Three years, three places, three gifts with a story
In 2024, we went to Yuli, Hualien. The whole team moved into the small town for four days and three nights, working and living there at the same time: making aiyu jelly by hand at a local farm, drinking coffee hand-roasted by an Indigenous community, and sharing meals and toasts with the townspeople. The friendships from that trip became the next Lunar New Year's gift to everyone we care about.
In 2025, we went to Longtan, Taoyuan, where we learned the local craft of tea making, followed a single leaf on its journey from the mountain to the cup, and carried that experience into that year's Mid-Autumn Festival gift box.
This year, we came to Xincheng and Shoufeng in Hualien. We picked products at Shanhai Department Store, took a walking tour with Lianxiqu Bookstore, and went river tracing up Baibao Creek. Then we turned the whole trip into this year's gift box.
Three trips, three gifts. Each one is a warm gift with a story for everyone who walks alongside OakMega, and a chance for the people who live so wholeheartedly in these places to be seen by many more.
Lianxiqu Bookstore | A local story that began with a baseball team
Our first stop in Xincheng was Lianxiqu (Etude) Bookstore.
In 2015, Hu Wen-wei moved from Tainan to Xincheng, Hualien. To give the kids on the local baseball team a place to read, he renovated an old house and opened a bookstore that lends books but doesn't sell them. It has no regular staff, and borrowing runs on the honor system. That alone says a lot about his faith in people.
Over time, the bookstore grew into a tofu pudding shop, a canteen, an association, a co-learning hub, and finally Shanhai Department Store. The Lianxiqu team transformed an old Taipower building that had sat empty for nearly a decade into a hybrid space for curated local goods, food, and cultural exhibitions, so that more visitors can discover the stories of Hualien's local artisans and small farmers.
Our guide around Xincheng was Jing-yuan from Lianxiqu. What he showed us wasn't just a few shops. It was how one team has spent ten years going against conventional business logic to keep human connection at the heart of a community. In an age when everything is moving online, they keep choosing to build places people actually want to walk into.
Our gift box grew directly out of Shanhai Department Store's selection. Every item carries a local story, and every story deserves to be shared.
Houshan Liren | Leading people back to nature, and back to themselves
On day two, we put on our river-tracing gear and followed Houshan Liren into Baibao Creek.
Founded in 2021 by Tsai Jen-hsien, Houshan Liren has since guided thousands of participants deep into Hualien's river valleys, forests, and hidden spots. They don't run big groups or chase headcounts. Instead, they keep groups small and experiences deep, so that everyone can truly step into this land.
For those few hours in Baibao Creek, our phones went into dry bags and the signal disappeared. All that was left was the sound of the water, our guide's instructions, and our teammates' laughter and the occasional shriek. No agenda, no slides. Yet in a way, we saw each other more clearly, and we also saw just how fast a rhythm we usually live in.
We build AI, but not to keep people in the digital world forever
After the trip, one thought stayed with us.
OakMega builds AI solutions that help businesses get the most out of digital tools. But what we ultimately want AI to bring isn't busier, faster lives spent glued to a screen. We want it to free people from repetitive work and give them more time to return to the real world.
Lianxiqu and Houshan Liren showed us exactly what that real world looks like: meeting people, stepping into a creek, and getting to know people who live wholeheartedly in their own way.
The faster the world moves, the more we need each other. That feeling is something we want to share with everyone who walks alongside OakMega.
Watch the video of our trip
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