FAR EAST CORRESPONDENT — Yeh Ci-xing wasn’t expecting a tectonic shift in her core values or the genesis of major lifestyle changes after picking up an in-flight magazine. They aren’t intended for that. What they did contain, particularly in 1988, were pithy distractions from the boredom, bad food, and secondhand smoke-filled cabins that were the hallmarks of long-haul flights.

“I was so moved by an article about Tzu Chi that I signed up within a few days of touching down in Taipei. And I’ve been with them ever since,” says the full-time volunteer for Taiwan-based NGO Buddhist Compassion Relief Tzu Chi Foundation. “I’ve learned to expect the unexpected.”

And so have millions of others.

Read more from Cain Nunns in The Guardian Weekly.