Taiwan's Indigenous Bicycle Branding: Naruwan, Welcome To Taiwan

Taokas Bikes

As I was looking over some Facebook feeds last week, something interesting caught my eye. I noticed this little Taiwanese bike company had branded their company with the name "Taokas".

The company elaborates on the name on its website *My translation*:

300 years ago Taokas was a center of indigenous cultural and human resources. Three hundred years later, Taokas has transformed into an important base for the production of bicycles. Over the next three hundred years, Taokas will not only represent Asian bicycle brands, but will become an important symbol of Taiwanese cycling culture.

Taokas is the former name of Dajia, while the lands once belonged to the Taokas settlements of Plains Aborigines. When the first Han Chinese came to the area to open the lands for faming, they asked the local Taokas what the area was called. They said the area was called "Taokas".

As the word Taokas sounds very similar to "Tachia" in Chinese (actually the Taiwanese word Daiga), since that time the names then slowly evolved into "Tachia".

In reverence to the way Dajia nurtured prosperity, We have chosen to take the "Taokas" name for our brand.

Since the beginning of the 21st century, many European and American bike brands have entered the Asian market, but the design concept of the European and Americancars are not suited to Asian needs in bicycle design. Therefore, in order to better suit Asian the ergonomic requirements of the Asian physique, and the intended use of Asian bicycles, we created "Taokas" as a fusion of unique design and manufacturing processes to develop the most suitable Asian bike.

Initially, I was struck that any Taiwanese, outside of academia, actually know the word Taokas. Secondly, I was interested in how the word has taken on a new meaning for this company.

Taokas is an ethnonym that has been used for the groups of indigenous people who lived along the river valleys and alluvial plain between the Da an River and the windswept badlands of Hsinchu. The area around Dajia was once a major hub of Taokas village life.

At various times throughout Taiwan's history the Taokas often played a major role in the development of Qing frontier policy through their alliances and rivalries with other ethnic groups (both indigenous and non-indigenous).

• 1731: In December, excessive corvee, taxation, and anger over government employees casually sleeping with aborigine women leads to the Ta Chia revolt in central Taiwan. Braves from Ta Chia attack sub-prefect Chu at Sha lu, kill his entourage and set fire to the yamen building. As Chu flees south, many settlers are killed in the aboriginal advance toward Changhua. The Ta Chia (Taokas) tribe is joined by two tribes from the Anli (Pazeh) tribal group to defeat Qing troops defending the route to Changhua.

• 1732: The Ta Chia revolt continues as troops are drawn from the south to assist in putting down the rebellion. The absence of military near Feng Shan sparks a minor rebellion of Chu Yi-kui supporters in the south. At the same time a regional official, Ni Hsiang-kai, has five grain transporters killed from the Papora tribes hoping to pass them off as rebels and collect a reward. The killings result in the Papora joining the rebel assault on Changhua. The Babuza tribes join the uprising and the revolt gathers 2,000 aborigine braves in a siege on Changhua city and the surrounding area. The Qing bring up several hundred Hakka braves and enlisted several Honya tribes with the loyal Anli tribe, which fight until a settlement can be reached, but not before much of the surrounding countryside has been devastated.

Rikulau

Despite such a great segue into Taiwanese history, what I really find fascinating about Taokas and other Taiwanese brands, is how often they resort to using indigenous names and symbols in their branding.

Rikulau, the custom frame builder, has built its brand around the Rukai word for Taiwan's near-extinct species of Clouded Leopard.

Rikulau - the legendary sacred animal of the Rukai people (a Taiwanese aboriginal tribe). Rikulau is the name of clouded leopard in their language. 700 years ago, a group of Rukai ancestors followed the footprints a Rikulai to find a forever land for their children. They left the east coast, and went up the stream into the deepest forests of the mountainous ranges of southern Taiwan. And finally, they settled at the foothills of Da-Wu mountain where the footprints of rikulau stopped.

Rikulau is the biggest feline animal in the island of Taiwan. It moves like wind in the deepest forests of the mountainous island. It is the best climber among all wild cats. It is the fairy that bridges the dreams between people and the nature. It is the incarnation of agility, speed and style.

(Note: Rikulau – clouded leopard in aboriginal Rukai language)

Like most branding, the names seek to create a story and a fantasy. The company hopes to make a resounding emotional connection with the consumer that will result in company profits.

For Taiwanese, the image of the indigene has undergone 400 years of transformation in the face of Han and Japanese ethnic hegemony. The list of pejoratives in the official discourse has ranged from, "violent and backward" to " athletic, drunken and benign".

During the 1990's Taiwan experienced a confluence of social, economic and political change that resulted in a reframing of Taiwanese cultural life from outside of the Han Chinese model favored by the Chinese Nationalist state apparatus.

During the economic boom of 1990’s, eco-tourism took off in Taiwan as many of the areas “reserved” for the Indigenes were redesigned to allow city dwellers to escape and explore their own sense of “otherness,” like Marlowe in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Tourists are often treated to demonstrations of indigenous dancing, singing and traditional handicrafts to learn about the “other”.

The general assessment of the value of Indigenes in Taiwanese society echoes a sentiment of the urbanite intent on encapsulating pure authentic primitiveness in which some conceptual balance can be achieved. The urban imagination collects the images of the Indigene and blends them together with scant knowledge of the colonial experience of Taiwan.

The trend of branding bicycles to reflect Taiwan's history of indigenous cultures both seeks to authenticate and differentiate Taiwan and Taiwanese culture as distinct from the cultures of China as a source of local pride.

At the same time these brands exploit the existing memes of Taiwanese indigenous life to reflect the modern Taiwanese exotic fantasy longing for simplicity, freedom and leisure; values often attributed to indigenous cultures on Taiwan that are represented in the trend toward cycling as a leisure activity.

Taroka (Named for the Taroko People)

Problems Over-Developing A Bicycle Paradise

Map of New Development in the Rift Valley

A couple pieces have caught my eye over at The View From Taiwan, and I thought I could weave cycling into the discussion.

Two articles in particular stand out. The first involves the rapidly expanding development of Taiwan's East Coast. And the other highlights recent criticism of a bill that would critically impinge on the rights of Taiwan's First Peoples.

Michael does such an excellent job with many of the details, so I will simply expand upon the ideas here to better demonstrate how these initiatives impact and will be impacted by cycling and bicycle tourism.

Much of the hoopla surrounding the recent Taiwan Cup and Taiwan's International Bike Festival involved showcasing Taiwan as a cyclist's paradise. Although we each have our own idea of what cycling paradise entails, the thrust of the Taiwan Tourism Bureau's presentation revolved around the amenities and activities specifically constructed to cater to the bicycle tourist. Many of the projects put on display were the result of a tourism building boom that had given the Ma administration plenty to crow about, and moreover, these projects have provided construction and development companies a fertile playground to capitalize on the deliberate transformation of Taiwan from a leader in technology and industry into a tourist Mecca.

Although I support expanding rider support all over Taiwan, the country's penchant for unchecked development, illegal construction, kickbacks , payoffs and creative zoning threatens to not only discourage visitors who are looking to enjoy Taiwan's rugged wildernesses, but it also threatens the collective rights of Taiwan's indigenous inhabitants, many of whom own the lands along the Rift Valley between Hualien and Taidong.

The Taipei Times reports:

Amis representative Konon Panay (古孟巴奈) said the central government did not define and grant Aboriginal lands, but it has been depriving Aborigines of their lands in the name of development.

Under the government of the Republic of China (ROC), the often correlative concepts of "development" and "eco-tourism" can be viewed as demonstrative of Taiwan's problematic postcoloniality.

When the Republic of China (ROC) arrived on Taiwan in 1945, the government instituted a program which located Taiwan's Hakka, Hoklo, Pingpu* and Aboriginal communities as "backward" in need of the modernity the ROC claimed to possess. The authoritarian government of the ROC used development programs in an attempt to "modernize" and transform the people of Taiwan into something subjectively better and "improved". Non-Taiwanese were located closest to the civilizing center and Aborigines at the furthest points.

In many ways the ROC scheme reflected pre-existing beliefs of Qing era transformationalism, or the belief that "savages" could be improved if they could learn to act like "humans", as well as the social darwinism that was popular with Sun Yat-sen and his cohorts. Taiwan's Aborigines were believed to be a degraded people who could be improved through the ROC civilizing program.

Many Aborigines were asked to move from traditional villages into "modern" concrete houses. Not only was the move away from traditional homes an attempt to modernize them, but the act can be viewed through the Confucianist lens as an act of taming; of transporting indigenous people through time to near the present and away from the "wilderness", which has been traditionally viewed by Han people as both savage and degraded. Even during the Qing colonial era, farmers along Taiwan's western plain were implored by official decree to "tame/open the wasteland" through farming. These believes reflect the deep connection between traditional Confucian views and official ROC ideology. Emma Teng's book Taiwan's Imagined Geography provides a great read on how these beliefs manifest themselves in official writing on Taiwan's indigenous peoples.

I think these beliefs can be seen from 2008, when Taiwan's current president and Chinese Nationalist standard bearer Ma Ying-jiu addressed a group of Aborigines.

Ma was quoted as saying:

"I see you as humans and as citizens of this city. I'm going to educate you well and do a good job of providing you with opportunities. That's the place from which the attitude of aborigines needs to be adjusted...now that you've come here, you need to play by the rules here..."

The pejorative distance between city and country, savage and non-savage, degraded and elevated are on full display with Ma clearly envisioning himself in the position of the civilizer.

The moves for development groups to go in and develop the indigenous lands along the Rift Valley while stripping or weakening the rights of indigenes to manage their own development creates a system of patronage, where the indigenous peoples must rely on the development groups and their political benefactors for economic support. Many of Taiwan's development schemes are not only owned by outside investors, but often many of the only jobs created are in service or entertainment where indigenous people are requited to perform quasi-traditional performances for the pleasure of tourists thus becoming the exotic object of desire on their own ancestral land while most of the profits go elsewhere. I recall "Aboriginal dancing" being one of the "highlights" promoted to visiting journalists for the Taiwan International Bike Festival.

The prospect of cycling tourism has become one of the driving forces behind much of this development; development that is neither sustainable, tenable, ethical or just.

For these reasons I would recommend cyclists ask for cycling development in Taiwan with a lighter touch to best enjoy Taiwan. I hope those people who arrive in Taiwan on a government paid junket or for cycling tourism can covey the belief that often less is more and we care about more than simply bike trails or hot springs. We care about the entire cycling environment including how the land was acquired and how much local involvement goes into planning cycling infrastructure. For now many of the decisions on bicycle infrastructure and development are made by politicians, developers and their corporate backers.

* Pingpu existed under the Japanese, but were incorporated into Hakka and Hoklo groups under the ROC by 1953.

ADDED:

Food For Thought: Two thoughtful articles about tourism from Ryan at Savage Minds. Article 1 and Article 2

Losing Indigenality

Pazih speakers must learn to be traditional

Whenever I am out, either on the bike or just out, I like to watch, listen, and talk to people. I like to get oral histories and think about how history, people, cultures, ethnicities and constructs all converge on a particular spot. Sometimes something happens that triggers a moment of deep reflection or simply a moment of “wow!”

The bicycle makes a wonderful and disarming way to meet people in Taiwan. An ice breaker if you will. In Taiwan people love to ask where you are going and if you are going “around the island”. This ice breaker leads to some often surprising discoveries that would otherwise have remained concealed.

One major purpose of this blog, aside from simply posting routes and pictures, is to use the bicycle as a starting point to explore different topics that are related to learning Taiwan. The bicycle in this blog serves as the ice breaker to a greater discussion of Taiwan related themes.

An interesting encounter:

Our Host

As we climbed up through the hills of Lugu with dusk closing fast, we stopped at a hostel that was reasonably priced and had vacancy for 5 people. The owner and his family, as well as some of the other guests, were very excited to have a group of foreign cyclists staying at the hostel. A few people near the door lingered to look at out bikes and components and cock an ear to listen to the oddness of five Chinese speaking foreigners.

Later that evening the owner treated us to a fungus dish at dinner and came out to chat for a while. The owner is a short man with a tan complexion, slight build and round nose. He looked like many other people from the area and as most people who have really lived in Taiwan know, Taiwanese are a people of great diversity. (I can’t stand hearing foreigners talk about “homogeneity” of Taiwanese. )

We were in mid conversation with the hostel owner when, for no apparent reason and completely out of the blue, he made an abrupt declaration that resonated above the din of the conversation.

“I am not an Aborigine!” He announced.

“Aborigines dress in costumes and sing and shout Oy ay ay!! No, I am not an Aborigine”, he continued in a half-pantomime.

I was a bit stunned. Nobody had even suggested he was an Aborigine and it had absolutely nothing to do with our conversation. So of course I had to wonder why he felt he needed to make this an issue and so deliberately attempt to establish his distance from the Aboriginal identity.

Now, I know a lot of people who would like to say this gentleman, like most Taiwanese, must be an Aborigine as over 80% of all Taiwanese are thought to carry markers in their DNA linking them to any of the Austronesian speaking peoples of Taiwan and beyond and he is simply ashamed and hiding his "true" identity. Many foreigners remark that many Taiwanese don't look "Chinese", but I am about as confident in describing the appearance of a person in China and I am a European or American.

I am not trying to dispute the DNA study, but I think this belief is a dead end that seeks construct a Taiwanese ethnic-national identity rooted in a primordialist authenticity, similar to China’s construction of the “5000 years of Chinese culture”. I think this line of thought misses the point of what it may mean to be an Aborigine or any broadly defined ethnic group in Taiwan, and the gentleman on the mountain helps to clarify this point.

The R.O.C. which supplied much of the state structure that governs Taiwan today, is very much rooted in the early Chinese nationalist ideology that centered around modernism and social-Darwinism.

“Considering the law of survival of ancient and modern races, if we want to save China and to preserve the Chinese race, we must certainly promote Nationalism. To make this principle luminous for China's salvation, we must first understand it clearly. The Chinese race totals four hundred million people; of mingled races there are only a few hundred million Mongols, a million or so Manchus, a few million Tibetans, and over a million Mohammedan Turks. These alien races do not number more than 10 million, so that, for the most part, the Chinese people are of the Han or Chinese race with common blood, common religion, and common customs-a single, pure race.”

Sun Yat-sen in San Min Zhu Yi (1927)

It is quite evident from the passage above that Sun embraced racialism and also viewed human beings and cultures on a trajectory of forwardness and backwardness through teleological time.

The R.O.C. government enacted a policy of strong centralization to bring the people of the new nation closer to the cultural center and create a sense of unity, which had never existed before in Chinese history. The nationalization process focused on strongly centralized notions of government, language, education, economy and culture. The KMT regularly used force to wrest control of localities from warlords and the powerful elite who had hoped for a loose federation of localities and independent states. Later, Chiang Kai-sheck’s New Life movement of the 1930’s effectively canonized a national culture for the R.O.C., which married Republican modernism and social darwinism with a state-defined Han traditionalism. The official nationalist culture placed a burden on all peoples, particularly peripheral peoples, to demonstrate their alignment with the state by adopting official culture. It also legitimized, in the eyes of the government, the states own superiority over those peoples.

When the R.O.C. arrived on Taiwan following the armistice with Japan in 1945, the KMT maintained its framework of strong centralization. The experience of fighting warlordism for two decades in China influenced how the KMT engaged in its relationship with Taiwan’s different cultures. By framing national and local cultures in terms of their forwardness or backwardness, the KMT party-state implemented itself as the civilized center and burdened the majority of Taiwan peoples to identify with the state or risk losing access to state power. Many of the disparate refugees who followed the KMT to Taiwan readily replaced their home languages and cultures with those defined by the KMT to align themselves with the government and with other fellow refugees. This policy also established ethnicity as either a conduit or a roadblock to power. The New Life vision of a Han-centric state, was reaffirmed by the Chinese Cultural Renaissance Movement of the 1970’s, which promoted “Traditional Chinese” culture to check cosmopolitanism and compete with the PRC for authenticity.

The establishment of a strong Chinese Nationalist culture as the state’s own symbol of modernity, and the state’s denial of modernity to local/indigenous cultures, is evident in the R.O.C.’s terms for recognizing indigenous peoples. Taiwan’s indigenous peoples must satisfy the R.O.C.’s standards for being traditional in order to be recognized as authentic; denying their coevalness and trapping indigenous peoples in Han stereotypes as they are imagined to have been at first contact. In essence, to be viewed as indigenous, one must also be viewed as traditional. This creates a cleave between indigenous peoples and the state that can never be bridged on equal terms. This structure has continually frustrated groups of Plains Aborigines, who are confronted with not being “traditional” enough to be viewed as authentic in the eyes of the state.

This brings us back to the gentleman in Lugu.

The current groups of recognized Aborigines are groups of indigenes who were largely defined, not as much by their preexisting beliefs of ethnic cohesion, but rather by the way they come into contact with the state. They are asked to resemble how they are imagined by non-indigenies to have been at first contact. Under the definitions promoted by the state, those who fall within those state definitions are impelled to negotiate with state power differently than those who do not (not unlike Foreigners). This nexus is a major location of Aboriginal ethnic identity as well as a tool for constructing ethnic boundaries.

The formulation of cultural tradition is based on the manipulation and interpretation by particular people themselves…especially when the tradition is utilized as a powerful element to maintain ethnic boundaries… Tradition is imagined, shaped and defined by holders or sharers of the tradition in a meaningfully current situation… Even when an ethnic group’s original cultural traits have disappeared, it can still mold an exotic expressive culture to attract tourists.” (Hsieh 1994:201)

Our host in Lugu was simply not participating in the indigenous identity. Although he may have very recently leapt the boundary line between Aborigine and non-Aborigine, he was rejecting the traditional image that has come to form new meanings of what indigenality or Aboriginal identity means in Taiwan and he had joined the majority, possibly as a means to seek social and economic mobility or simply because he did not view himself as reflecting the image of an "Aborigine".

It is not surprising why he or his recent ancestors may have made the leap from indigenous to non-indigenous. When living within a state structure like Taiwan’s that has linked ethnicity so closely with mobility, and centers so closely around state-Han cultural chauvinism… the gap between “modern” and “backward” can only be bridged by shedding the traditional. He clearly did not share or wish to share the symbols and meanings of traditionalism with Aborigines and thus successfully shed that identity. The burden of the indigenous identity may have been too great or too much of a liability under the current structure.

Of course he is not an Aborigine! He is not living life experiencing it as an Aborigine. He views the symbols of the Aboriginal identity as an outsider. The symbolism as a group marker does not apply to him as he has likely, successfully renegotiated into a new identity with no boundaries to impede his movement from being indigenous and, unlike the PRC model, state structure is not prepared nor willing to send him "back". A Chinese nationalist might view him as having been successfully transformed into something "better". A harsher critic might suggest he had been self-colonized as a part of a civilizing project that is still very active and very colonial in nature. This project acts under the name of the ROC. Still, this gentleman clearly represents how easily these borders can be crossed and that people may have plenty of agency over their ethnic identities and how they choose to deploy them.

The phenomenon above demonstrates how the ROC structure drives ethnic and cultural change and creates a problematic post-coloniality for Taiwan. The only way to truly begin a post colonial existence and create equality in Taiwan is to start over from a culturally neutral center where everyone is within equal distance from the center as opposed to the state defined Han-centricism where some are closer than others. Until then the ROC will continue to operate as a civilizing center and a colonial entity.

On a final note on ethnic change in Taiwan: I chuckled aloud when the gentleman went around the horn to ask where we were from. When it was clear most of us had been in Taiwan a very long time, he declared “Oh! Well by now you’re all just Taiwanese.”

Notes: I choose to use Aborigine with a capital "A" to reflect its construction on par with other constructed ethnic identities: Hoklo, Hakka, Mainlander, Foreigner.

References: Hsieh, Shi-chung. (1994). Tourism, Formulation of Cultural Tradition, and Ethnicity: A Study of the Daiyan Identity of the Wulai Atayal. In Stevan Harrell, Huang Chun-chieh eds., Cultural Change in Postwar Taiwan. Westview Press. (Pp 201)

Cycling Interest Rate Drops

According to this link below the recent bicycle fad in Taiwan has passed and sales are dropping back down to normal levels.

Not long after the spike in fuel prices in 2008 cycling joined egg tarts and hoola-hoops as another Taiwanese fad. Since Taiwan is the world's largest producer of bicycles it brought an added public awareness of cycling as recreation and as a sport.

In a prestige culture, such as Taiwan's , cycling embodies the image of affluence, foreign knowledge and leisure. It embodies the value of technically advanced equipment and a smart looking kit. Cycling, if done right, looks clean, sleek and graceful and has its "Top Guns". Unlike current Taiwanese values, cycling involves hard, physical work and outdoor training to become a strong rider. Many Taiwanese do not value physical exercise and it is not promoted as a worthwhile past time for children when they could be in cram school or learning an instrument. Exposure to direct sunlight is discouraged and brown skin is still regarded as "ugly".

This is not surprising as traditional Han cultures have equated strong, muscular physiques and brown skin with degradation and barbarism.

Many of the Qing era records of frontier peoples fixate on the athletic and muscular physiologies of their object. Frontier gazette paintings would often exaggerate the body types of indigenous peoples in contrast to the more "refined" Han. This imaging is still in use today, valid or not in the process of "othering" the Aborigines in Taiwan. Despite the high value Taiwanese put on science and mathematics there is still a tendency to project folk beliefs into understanding human physiology. One traditional belief is that skin color was a direct corollary to the purity of food and thus influenced the character of the person. The enlightened or degraded properties of a person could be determined by their diet and location. Location, of course, meant proximity to the Emperor. This helped to explain the "savagery" of the frontier. These folk beliefs were later incorporated into Sun Yat-sen ideology and largely contributed to the racialism at the core of contemporary Chinese nationalism.

To bring this back into the frame of cycling:

It is not uncommon to ride past indigenous villages where the people are represented by statues depicting "braves" in traditional dress, rippling with muscles like action figures, hunting or holding their traditional knives. These images only serve to reinforce the otherness of the Aborigine and create distance from non-Aborigines and affirm their need to be tamed by the Sunism of the R.O.C.

I guess I am probably straining to relate these ideas together, but I do think cycling as a popular activity in Taiwan highlights several conflicting values in contemporary Taiwanese cultural life and some of the anxieties of cultural change in Taiwan.

Still, an expensive carbon frame becomes a Rolex, BMW or Apple computer; a demonstration of ...er... mobility.

http://life.chinatimes.com/2007Cti/2007Cti-Rtn/2007Cti-Rtn-Content/0,4526,110107+112010022200430,00.html

SiMa XianShan (100 Miles of Pain)

SiMa XianShan

The hardest single hill climb I have ever done was this route up the Da An River. I had been thinking about this trip for a while as it is one of my favorite places in Taiwan. Just outside of Juolan in central Taiwan there is a road that parallels the Da An River. It is a gorgeous ride up into some Atayal villages.

The first time I went up there I was looking for the route a group of Pazih (Pazeh) speaking people used to cross into the Puli basin in the 19th Century. One of my 96 year-old Pazih contacts recalled the story of how her great grandfather packed up the family from near the Nei She area below the Long Teng Broken Bridge to join other Pazih speakers in Ailan. Some of the family remained in the area and have since forgotten their Pazih ancestry and have become "Ex-Aborigines". My Pazih friend knew her family had hiked into Puli, but didn't know from where. I figured the Da An river was a good candidate for the route out of Juolan.

Up the Da An river there are a handful of villages primarily inhabited by Atayal speakers. The mountains rise up right out of the river and the sense of "wow!" can quickly overtake you. You can pass Elephant Nose village and go on to the bridge under Sky Dog village. What might not be apparent is that you are sitting right in the line of fire of Japanese light artillery.

During the first 40 years of the Japanese colonial period in Taiwan (1895-1935), the Japanese administration set out to "pacify and subdue" the highland indigenes who inhabited the mountains of

central Taiwan. Much of the impetus for this was colonial in nature, in the repetitive cycle of the government continually seeking to exploit the resources the indigenous people seek to retain. We are seeing this phenomenon again in the aftermath of Typhoon Morikot as the Ma administration seeks to remove indigenous peoples from their current homes and move them into new homes outside their traditional and commercially viable locations.

After several years of combat the Japanese succeeded in installing several artillery pieces on several strategic mountainsides to better control the indigenous peoples. From the installation on the mountain above, the Japanese had control over the three valleys below. The remains of the base are not entirely visible at first, but if you inspect the site a little more the trench works, barracks, and gun emplacements come into view. It wasn't quite The Guns of Navarone, but it is easy to imagine the area as a military outpost on a colonial frontier.

When I did this ride I arrived at the base of SiMa XianShan and started my climb. The road keeps rising up with some serious sections of steep ascents. There are a few mellow areas where you can catch your legs, but then the road takes off again. Sky Dog (Tian Gou) village makes a good place to hydrate. They seem to be trying to turn it into a tourist village, but there is still a lot to do. It was a rough, rough climb. I finally got to the top to find a bunch of mountain bike riders playing on the trails. They had all driven up the back side in cars. Bastards! I chatted them up for a while until the idea to continue up hill another 300 meters to the Japanese base. It would have made for great pictures, but I wanted to start my descent.

For this ride I put on my 32c fast dirty tires because the roads had been washed out on prior trips. The descent goes alog a cliffside road through tall cedars before going back to the jungle. The road is a little slick with light debris over the pavement and some steep descents where the braking gets technical. The rule of thumb is to stay right at every intersection if it is unmarked. It will spit you out into Dahu. The climb takes you 1640ft. from the river to the peak.

I hit the Highway 3 home, but I forgot about all the long, rolling hills on the way back. I rode embarrassingly slow as I lost time and hours of daylight. At the top of the hill over Juolan I took the LiYu Tan Rd. over the south side of the reservoir. I love this road, but I was too beat to enjoy it. I finally limped back to Feng Yuan on the 13, which has one last annoying hill at the end. It took me way too long, but not a bad ride at all.

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