Superfluous Things: Taiwan's Bike Sales Reel in Europe and China.

• Bike Europe reports on China's stagnant growth in bicycle purchases aside from the eBike. Remember how some of the very large bike manufacturers in Taiwan were very bullish on ECFA early harvest benefits and the growth of high yield road bike sales in China to boost the bottom line... Nope! Air pollution has strangled recreational cycling in China while Taiwan's imports from its neighbor far outpace exports. The report also cites anti-dumping measures driving Ideal to relocate production to China. Don't worry, they'll be back. China's lack of interest in expensive luxury bicycles and recreational bicycles and a sales of Taiwanese bicycles plummeting in Europe do not bode well for Taiwan's bike makers.

• Taiwan's women's tandem of the great Hsiao Mei-yu and Huang Ting-ying won bronze in the Asian Games.

• Taiwan's Tourism Bureau has announced the dates and events for the Taiwan International Bike Festival. The events will be held between November 8 and16.

• On the tail of a New York campaign, the Taiwan Tourism Bureau is on full offensive in San Francisco. The Tourism has laid out its familiar narrative of world class cycling routes, the CNN infomercial on Sun Moon Lake being world class, and Wuling's 105km KOM Challenge. The question remains.... Can Taiwan live up to its own hype or will Taiwan's cycling tourism suffocate before it reaches maturity?

• A cycling tourist buys some faulty information from the Taiwan Tourism Bureau. The offending paragraph and a good reason to question everything about a government sponsored junket:

These influences are still very strong, but the Taiwan we know today reflects the influx of the mainland Chinese in 1949, led by Chiang Kai-shek, who fled the Communist takeover and brought with him as much of China's heritage as he could organize (apparently, the treasures of the Forbidden City had already been boxed up during the 1930s because of the Sino-Japanese War, so it was relatively easy to get them out). 

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