Thinking About Sheng-Shing Station (勝興車站) and the Nature of Touring Taiwan

Bike Routes Around Sheng-Shing

Yesterday, Taiwan's central government kicked off its 2011 tourism campaign in which cycling appears quite prominently as one of Taiwan's 10 major attractions.

The government has narrowed the campaign into three key ideas; 1) "Tour Taiwan 100", an obvious (and shamefully ideological) focus on the 100th anniversary of the Republic of China, which first arrived in Taiwan between 1945 and 1949. 2) Authentic Taiwan, an attempt to distill and locate Taiwan's cultural authenticity through invented symbols and meanings provided by the government. 3) Great Service in Taiwan; a plan to woo Chinese tourists with Taiwan's strange and exotic service culture.

Authentic Taiwan will promote the culture and traditions of Taiwan through four key events, one for each season: Taiwan Lantern Festival (Spring), Taiwan Cuisine Festival (Summer), Taiwan International Cycling Festival (Autumn) and the Taiwan Hot Springs and Fein Cuisine Carnival (Winter). In conjunction with these events, there will also be a number of new initiatives such as ‘Taiwan Tea Adventure’ and ‘Taiwan Night Market Competitions’ designed to promote the other aspects of culture on the island.

It appears the bicycle aspect of this campaign will focus on East Coast tourism and "Aboriginal" entertainment.

This news could not have come at a more fortuitous time for this blogger, who was just about to write a little bit about his trip through Sanyi, and specifically, Sheng Shing Station (勝興車站)with some interesting insights into this tourist attraction and others like it in Taiwan.

Route Marker

Sheng Shing Station is the site of an old Japanese Colonial era train stop along the old North-South route to Kaohsiung, which was completed by 1908.

The area is located in the foothills just above Sanyi, a town that is regarded as a Hakka town predominantly populated the descendants of Hakka speaking immigrants from the foothills of Qing era Fujian, and the descendants of Kaxabu and Taokas speaking indigenous peoples who have lived in and around the Dajia River basin and river valley for thousands of years.

Japanese Era Building?

At first glance it appears the hoards of tourists that descend on Sheng Shing Station each weekend are looking for the things many tourists around the world seek when they travel; a little escape from their hectic lives in the cities. Here they seek some type of refuge in a little idyllic rail road town full of shops pedaling "traditional" food and handicrafts. These tourists may also hope to enjoy some of the authentic "local Hakka culture", eat authentic "local" food, and see lives that are different than their own.

In Sheng-Shing visitors can walk the old cobbled streets, enjoy the aesthetic beauty of the traditional, antique buildings and really get a feeling of authenticity of what life in this little town must have been like during its heyday almost a century ago.

Romantic Getaway From City Life

At first I was fascinated at how the local people had located their cultural and historic authenticity in the Japanese Colonial period (1895-1945), which had been so reviled by the Chinese Nationalists when they arrived on Taiwan. The Chinese Nationalists spent an enormous amount of energy trying to eradicate any residual evidence of the 50 years the Japanese spent colonizing and transforming Taiwan into a model colony of the Japanese Empire. The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) hoped to eradicate the Japanese "taint" and replace it with the symbols and meanings of their own Chinese Nationalist colonial project.

The task would have been too great as the social and structural implications of the Japanese colonial project were just too great and too deep to destroy. It would have meant burning Taiwan to ashes. Therefore, several structures like this old station remain and communities have constructed entirely new local identities around these vestiges of life during the Japanese era.

What I found so interesting was that without the Japanese experience, these local communities like Sheng-Shing would look much different or might not exist at all. Moreover, the local residents have made the projection of their Japanese experience their raison d'etre. It is not a Chinese identity or a projection of Qing era Hakka culture. Instead, the locals have chosen to "other" themselves to exist in a different time or mythical past than the tourists. The tourist is allowed to break from achronological time and visit people and places from the "past".

At first this seems astounding that an identity from the Japanese colonial period, which has long been over, could still find salience in modern Taiwan.

Hakka Food

I then stepped back a little and considered that the locals may not necessarily fix their identity in the symbolism of the Japanese era, but instead may be responding to provide the tourists with exactly what the tourists want to see.

They have constructed a facsimile of a Japanese era railroad town with faux cobbles in the streets, imitation wood facades covering more recent concrete-box buildings, and quaint little shops or stalls to sell the things that probably never existed in the time and place being portrayed by the locals.

The locals have created a fabrication to satisfy the exotic fantasies of the visitors, who, themselves, have located and identified Shing-Sheng's authenticity in a particular time, which is the actual object of desire-- not the locals.

Sheng-Shing Station Street

I was then reminded of one of my favorite passages from Michael Taussig who examines the way indigenous/local cultures, which have become the object of desire by the West, appropriate the West's imagery and symbolism, then reflect it back like a type of video feedback:

"To become aware of the West in the eyes and handiwork of its Others, to wonder in fascination with their fascination, is to abandon border logistics and enter into the "second contact" era of the borderland where "us" and "them" lose their polarity and swim in and out of focus. This dissolution reconstellates the play of nature in mythic parts of contactual truths. Stable identity formations auto-destruct into silence, gasps of unaccountable pleasure, or cartwheeling confusion gathered into what I call "mimetic excess" spending itself into a riot of dialectical imagery"--Taussig, Mimesis and Alterity p.246

Although Taussig had a more profound contrast between West and Other, I think the basic thesis can be applied here in the dialectic between the Local and Non-Local.

In the case of Sheng-Shing Station, it is not as simple as the locals engaged in cultural production or the commoditization of identity for consumption by the visitor. Nor is it necessarily a simple case of locals industriously deploying their cultural/historical resources for economic benefit.

The locals are not providing the visitor with the facsimile of what the visitor wants, but is instead reflecting back the reflection.

The locals (or the developers behind them) have produced an image of what the locals imagine the visitor would like to see. This exercise requires the locals to imagine themselves in the eyes of the visitor and project what that image may look like, while the visitor consumes the local's image of what the local thinks the visitor would like to consume. It becomes an endless house of mirrors of unintended parody in the world of mimesis and its alter.

Despite this strange and almost ridiculous contrivance, the result gains a type of authenticity as a living local culture that could not exist without the visitor, the visited and their preconceived imagination of the other reflecting back at themselves.

Many of Taiwanese tourism destinations are built around this relationship and make it interesting to watch, and thus when the government starts pedaling "authentic" local culture, I wonder if this is what they have in mind?

Sources:

1. Taussig. Michael.1993. Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses. New York, NY. Routledge

Professional Cyclist's Frame For Viewing Taiwan

I found this little interview with Daniel Carruthers, a professional cyclist who has been living in Asia.

Some of his comments to be interesting and worthy of note.

Life in China is actually very different to Taiwan. It was easier living in Taipei. We lived in Shida, where there are plenty of nice food choices at good prices. It’s more expensive to eat good food here in China. Regular Chinese food is good, but I get sick of it – it’s the same everywhere and it’s very oily.

Getting things done in China always seems to take longer. Things seemed more efficient and stream-lined in Taiwan. More people speak English in Taiwan and you can get around there without having to know too much Chinese. But here in China, it is almost essential to master basic Mandarin if you want to get around. Not many people speak English unless you are living near a university campus where most students know some English.

I think one very common mistake foreign commentators make when researching and writing about Taiwan, is that writers seem to constantly seek an unnecessary and useless parity between Taiwan and China.

Logically, I see no reason to enforce this parity, but I suspect is has something partially to do with how "Westerners" identify and view otherness. As people view the "other" in terms of difference from themselves, the less care they take in grouping the "other" into categories that make cultural sense to them. The fact that people in Taiwan and China both speak forms of Mandarin Chinese as an official language seems to provide enough material for writers to seek parity between the two cultures. The same writers would probably not seek as much parity between American, English, Irish, Ghanan, Philippine, Fijian, Samoan or Pakistani cultures, despite their use of English as an official language. With such different social structures, I really do not understand why Taiwan needs to constantly be compared to China.

I feel another aspect of the parity between Taiwan and China is the resonant Cold War ideologies of the ROC, PRC and even the USA. In post WWII discourse, Taiwan was inaccurately portrayed by various political actors as some type of China.

I think this influence is evident in a recent blog post by Richard Masoner from Cycleicious, who brings the political term "overseas Chinese" into his blog post regarding the Taiwan Bike Festival. The term "Overseas Chinese", or 華僑 is a 20th century political construct devised and employed by the Chinese nationalists and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) to mobilize support and raise funds for their movement and later for the new Chinese nation. The term is built around an imagined cultural, ethnic and racial construct that has no real foundation in the history of "Chinese" identities. Masoner uses the anachronous term "Chinese diaspora". Chinese political actors used the invention of the "Overseas Chinese" as a base for political support following the Chinese civil war and actively sought to enact programs that would draw citizens of other nations together in support of a racial Chinese nation and in opposition to the PRC. No wonder people get confused.

It is not surprising that the interview above clearly reveals the cultural, environmental and social differences between groups of people who live within social and political systems with vastly different motives, goals and objectives. I would recommend writers be aware of their China bias and simply write about Taiwan as Taiwan. It only makes sense.

Also:

• Mark Blacknell is Blown Away by Taiwan's Cycling.
• Cycleicious Talks Cycling Festival.
• India looks to Taiwan for cooperation on bikes. This is a very big move as Taiwanese firms diversify their targets for sales and production, which had been focused on Chinese production and marketing for many years.

Cycling Culture Is Something Shared: Mingde Reservoir Reprise

Gone Fishin'

Although it seems I just got back from a long ride from Taichung to the Mingde Reservoir and back, I really wanted to share this route with my good friend and riding buddy, Michael Turton from The View From Taiwan. This is not a short ride on the bike, but, for me, 186km.

One of the regular themes of this blog is the subject of "culture", and I hope to use this blog space as a journal or record of Taiwanese culture as it unfolds. Cycling is a great example of one of Taiwan's cultures or one aspect of Taiwanese culture and I think, in some way, it highlights the importance of viewing Taiwanese cultures in terms of their particularity rather than through the warped lens of a grand narrative.

The topic of the meaning of "culture" has had very little respite from decades of academic assault and there has yet to be any unified, applicable meaning to the term "culture". About the only thing anyone can seem to agree upon is that "culture" is something shared. This is the focus of my post. The variety of people I meet on the road adds so much depth and vibrancy to the scenery, I return home full of excitement to discuss the people I met and what they were about.

Jimmy Neihu

On the way out of Zhuolan, I passed a young loner (on a crusade to champion the cause of the innocent, the helpless, the powerless... in a world of criminals who operate... above the law), who was out on a sleek looking steel bike. I was really amazed that he had such a "different" bike and so well outfitted.

I turned around to discover the bike was a Surly Cross Check CX bike. This is one of those great "Taiwan Bikes" I love to recommend to people who want a great bike for just about every type of Taiwan riding-- The elusive all-rounder.

The rider's name was Jimmy, and he was on his "Round Island Tour" starting in the Neihu suburb of Taipei.

The bike was perfect. It was all Shimano 105, light racks, steel, 28c touring tires. I wanted to high-five him for making a great choice. The only things I would change are the Alex rims and lose the kickstand.

Jimmy mentioned that he also had a Kuota racing bike at home, but that was the wrong bike for the task.

Over The Water

After leaving Jimmy, we wrapped around Miaoli's Liyu Reservoir and into the rolling hills of Miaoli County.

Strawberry Fields Forever

The strawberry farmers were busy preparing the fields and the deep rows of earth make for fantastic pictures for contrast.

Sunshine On Dahu

The weather was as perfect as you could get for riding. Not too sunny, with a breeze. The northerly wind was a little annoying at times, but the dividends would be paid on the return trip.

Ex Shrine

We passed the town of Dahu, where I spotted a pair of lanterns from the old Shinto shrine at the gate of a more modern buddhist monastery.

Michael At Mingde

Michael plugged along up the hill to the Mingde Reservoir.

King Of The Road

The roads are so perfect they could just about make a cyclist weepy. There is some cycling infrastructure in place, but it appears to be substandard or someone's brother-in-law made a fortune from a government contract to produce bike racks.

Maybe Nots

Scenery

There is lots to take in during the ride through the reservoir, and the wetlands are an invaluable natural resource for wildlife.

Birdland

Looking Back

Serious Riders

At our pitstop in Shitan we met a group of boisterous riders with some of the heaviest, shock-absorber-est, fat-tire-est mountain bikes I have ever seen. They looked like they were training to win Leadville. We chatted them up for a while and they were at first full of bravado, but when Michael tried to sell them on road bikes, they became a little less sure of themselves. We had a lot of fun bumping into them at several points along the ride and we just couldn't figure out how they were catching up with us. Then we remembered the hour lunch and snack stops we had since first running into them. They ended up being just a goofy bunch of guys out on their bikes to get away, goof off and maybe smoke some cigarettes with friends.

Along The 119

We then climbed out of Miaoli on the Highway 13, only to turn onto the Miaoli Local 119. I was eager to show Michael this little road and scenic detour. I figured the tailwind on the Highway 1 would be a blast on the way back.

Michael Tries To Enjoy The Road

We hammered home. My legs were still feeling fresh. I was keeping my speed up... way up. Things were just clicking. We then cut back to the Highway 13 on the miserably straight 140. It is a demoralizingly straight road that makes no forward progress.

The New Newlywed Game

Just before our climb back into Houli, we passed some riders with some interesting gear. The woman had on a white veil and I had to turn around to chat. It turned out they were newlyweds from Tamshui, who were on the second day of their honeymoon. Their plan was to take a cycling trip around Taiwan as their first act of their new life together. They were being followed by a friend who was also the cameraman for this adventure. It was one of those wonderful little stories that makes cycling so interesting. I was glad to have met all these people and glad I can share.

It Will All Be So Easy Until Clipless Pedals Are Introduced Into The Relationship

Please see Michael's Post on the ride at his blog.

It Must Be An Election Year: Ma Ying-jiu Eats the Tour de Taiwan

Looking Into The Future

The CNA (Focus Taiwan) is reporting that the elected R.O.C. president, Ma Ying-jiu, would like to include the annual Tour de Taiwan in his planned festivities to ring in the centenary of the R.O.C.

Some highlights and commentary below:

"We hope that cycling, a sport that promotes energy conservation and carbon emissions reduction, will become a major sport among Taiwanese people, " Ma said.

The first issue is that the record shows Ma Ying-jiu, his administration and his party are no friends to the environment. Ma's government has spent NTD 3 million in taxpayers money to defend and cheerlead the expansion of the petrochemical industry in Taiwan. The latest is to build a new plant in one of the last wetlands along the western plain.

Then there was the unfair attempted expropriation of farmland aided by the president for the construction of an expanded Chunshan Science Park.

Ma's party has used its legislative majority to pass a law that would relax restrictions on land developers. Much of this law is aimed at paving Taiwan for Chinese tourists. The government seems bent on creating attractions for the sole purpose of drawing Chinese tourists, whether there is a need or not. It is a manufactured demand for attractions.

Let's not forget the 5th phase of the Sixth Naphta Cracker plant, which the government's Environmental Impact Assessment Committee determined to be too burdensome to require reduced carbon emissions.

The list goes on...

The Ma administration and the KMT is a tool for very few to become very rich at the expense of the very many. They are not concerned about the environment as long as it does not prevent them from maintaining power. Only when an issue threatens a politicians chances for holding office will the environment be a concern. Fortunately, since the democratic reforms ushered in under Lee Teng-hui, there is now some civil recourse. Unlike the days when the government simply did as it wished under the instruction of a dictator and maybe a little organized crime for the elbow grease. The Number 3 Nuclear Power Plant on a coral reef in Kenting and the 98,000 barrels of nuclear waste for the indigenous Dao people to sit on, are just two examples of this era.

Mr. Ma, you are no friend to the environment and your high talk of carbon emissions rings empty!

"Taiwan is a kingdom of bicycles, not only because it produces high-end bicycles but also because the people use them and have made them a symbol of Taiwan," Ma added.

In effect this quote highlights the fact that Ma Ying-jiu recognizes the fact that Taiwanese have constructed a new national and ethnic identity with their own shared symbols of meaning i.e. culture that is not a part of the Chinese experience. Symbols like the bicycle and its impact in helping Taiwanese imagine their community through shared experiences, in this case an economic experience forged between local, global and unique structural forces, has effectively created a dichotomy between Taiwan and China in terms of "one" vs. "other". The process of othering China under similar social, economic and structural circumstances has been the basis for the Taiwanese identity for over 100 years and an identity separate from Han people on the continent for hundreds of years. (I do not use the term China as it is problematic and anachronistic).

The most surprising quote from the article nearly knocked me out of my chair.

"You feel attachment to the land when you pedal your way over every inch of it," he pointed out.

Ever since the beginning of Taiwan's localization movement under Lee Teng-hui, Ma Ying-jiu has attempted to put on the face of a "New Taiwanese", or a person born in China who feels a separate experience on Taiwan and a shared historical trajectory and destiny binds all people to the land as "local" or Taiwanese. As a matter of fact, Ma was the first politician to openly deploy the term.

For Taiwan neophytes, the localization movement grew in tandem with the democracy movement in the 1970's and 1980's as Taiwanese rejected the Chinese Nationalist ideology that had been brought to Taiwan in 1945 by the Chinese Kuomintang, and enforced under a brutal system of martial law and a single party dictatorship. The KMT attempted to maintain power despite representing only a small minority of other Chinese Nationalists who fled China. Democracy was opposed as was the establishment and promotion of local Taiwanese languages and cultures. Instead, the KMT Leninist state used its power and various forms of intimidation to promote a single highly centralized "national" language, culture and ideology that reflected the philosophy of Dr. Sun Yat-sen.

Sunism is a conglomeration of various philosophies, but draws heavily from some of the popular ideas of the time, which also helped to inspire fascism. Sun sought to use the 18th century pseudoscientific beliefs in racialism and social darwinism to accomplish two ends; a) to delegitimize the Qing as "outsiders" and "non-Chinese" through "blood" descent, and b) maintain all the territories acquired by the Qing expansion that pushed the borders of the Middle Kingdom out to two non-traditional places--the desert, and the ocean (Taiwan). Sun classified "Han" as a "pure race" that was bred to be the rightful leaders of the "Asian races" ahead of the "brown and black skinned people" who Sun felt were degraded and "subhuman". Sun believed it was a Chinese nation that would lead the master race of Asia through its superior culture and breeding. The Chinese nation became a civilizing project and a colonizer. We can still see much of this at work in China today. Not only did Sun place Han as ethnically/culturally superior, but he determined that Han equaled modern as well. This gave the Republic of China the pretext to engage in transforming all people's within its dominion into Han and Chinese nationalists. This is how the ROC ruled Taiwan for 45 years; in the relationship of colonizer and colonized.

Ma Ying-jiu hails from this tradition. For his entire career he has advocated this brand of Chinese nationalism, and up until the early 1990's he was an ardent opponent of democracy and localization. Ma, who was born in Hong Kong and grew up in one of the insular communities of other Chinese immigrants (refugees) who enjoyed benefits derived from their ethnic status as "Mainlanders", has always tried to oppose, suppress and deny the separate Taiwanese identity. As a student at Harvard he is widely believed to have been a student informer on the overseas Taiwanese who opposed the KMT's single party dictatorship.

Since becoming president, elected on an economic platform, Ma has made several moves away from the popular Tawan-centered model of his two predecessors, toward a Greater Chinese ideology. Furthermore, he has made little effort in upholding or asserting this identity, or any other for that matter, other than Taiwan as an ambiguous geographic location. For the first time in 20 years Taiwan is being led by a believer in the strong China centered identity espoused by Sun Yat-sen and the Chiang family dictators, the younger being Ma's patron in the KMT political world.

Over the past two years Ma has backed away from negotiating with China from a position of strength and switched to a position of acquiescence, in part to realize the Chinese nationalist dream of the united "fatherland". He backs every measure which erodes Taiwanese sovereignty over their land. Ma even asked Taiwanese to avoid waving their own flags in a sporting event against Chinese teams... in Taiwan, while the Chinese could do what they wished. Ma has twice refused to make even a symbolic attempt at joining the United Nations, he often refers to cultural and economic links between Taiwan and China as "domestic" or "region to region".

Lastly, I resent the use of a cycling event in the centenary of the ROC, as Taiwanese were in no way a part of its founding and only came into contact with the ROC in 1945 after being a Japanese colony for 50 years. For most of the Taiwanese experience with the ROC they has no access to its rights nor its privileges. Right and Privilege was left to people like Ma Ying-jiu... connected party insiders. The ROC is an entity that enables a system of ethnic disharmony and inherent inequality as some citizens are "Chinese" enough and others are not and can never be. The entire enterprise needs to be scrapped and rebuilt around Taiwan as a center and not a periphery. Only this can ensure equality for all people. Unfortunately, Ma is working hard to see this will never become a reality.

I can not look into Ma's heart of hearts to know how he really feels, but if his actions are any indication his words are empty words.

(Video) Taiwan's Cycling Culture

I found this short video produced in part by the Taiwan News, to give a short summary of cycling related issues in Taiwan.

I think the video goes a step further in demonstrating the importance cycling plays in Taiwan's new identity and how Taiwanese have taken the bicycle as a symbol of national pride. The fact that they even produced a video is evidence for this.

Imaging the bicycle as symbolic of Taiwan or an expression of Taiwan pride may have its roots in the bicycle being at the same time, a prestige item of luxury/leisure which conveys social status, a symbol of technological aptitude, and an imaging of the environmental awareness that divides groups of people into various constructs of social order (i.e. First World vs. Third World). The bicycle may also symbolize a type of personal freedom while allowing for the imagined safety of a group activity, the type that all Taiwanese are socialized to participate in through school clubs.

Michael Turton's photo essay on campaign signs helps demonstrate the salience of the bicycle image and its meaning to Taiwanese. Although many people all over the world ride bicycles and it represents different things in different places, Taiwanese have taken the bike and infused it with their own meanings, making the bicycle a very unique expression of Taiwanese culture.

800 lb. GIANT Gorilla?

An interesting little article appeared in the Taiwan-based China Economic News Service aka Taiwan Economic News Service the other day.

According to the article, the Taiwanese bicycle mega-manufacturers Giant and Merida are poised to see substantial growth in the China market this year. The article states:

"Giant is now the No. 1 bike brand in terms of sales value and with the highest the average selling price in the Chinese market for bikes. To cash in on the growing demand for leisure bikes in the market, the brand has launched a new sub-brand, Momentum, this year, which, bolstered by Giant`s solid brand recognition among Chinese consumers, is expected to help to boost the brand`s overall share in the market in the future.

With the aforementioned marketing strategies, Giant confidently expects steady growth in its sales volume and value of own-brand bikes in the Chinese market in the coming years. Presently, the brand runs three manufacturing factories in China, which have totally achieved annual output of over 3.7 million bicycles, with a majority of which for sale in the domestic market."

It is no revelation that growing affluence in China is driving many sectors of Chinese society to consume on levels that may match and even outpace their global counterparts in terms of their desire for the prestige of consumer goods.

What really interests me about this article is what this trend means to the old Fei-Ge or "Flying Pigeon" brand of bicycle and even the Taiwanicization of Chinese culture.

In Taiwan we are used to understanding culturalization programs from the receiving end of different state centered programs to colonize and transform the people of Taiwan into something more desirable to the state. Over the past 60 years Taiwanese have been subjected to the Chinese Nationalist culturalization program that positioned Taiwanese people and cultures in terms of "inferiority", "backwardness" and "weakness" in consideration of the Taiwanese willingness to cooperate with the Japanese colonization program. Beginning in the 1950's the R.O.C. government on Taiwan instituted several items of culturalization legislation aimed at transforming Taiwanese people and cultures to conform to the ideals of the highly centralized state culture of the R.O.C. -- to transform Taiwanese into Chinese.

Taiwanese are used to seeing their cultures under assault from the "other" and Taiwanese have also sought out and adopted many new cultures into the dynamic discourse of "Taiwaneseness". It could be argued that The United States served as Taiwan's cultural center for much of the post WWII period as strong Americanization filled the gaps left by Japan. It is through the process of local interpretation that these symbols and meanings became "Taiwanese" culture rather than the mysteriously applied and poorly defined measurements of "mainly Chinese with Japanese and American influences". I would go so far as to argue that "Chinese culture" is a bogus term outside of the current nationalist construct. Still, there is a continuing battle between the constructed "sinicization" promoted by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and "localization/indigenization" of people who view Taiwan as the center of their world and their culture.

From Taiwan we still, and rightly so, see China as a potential hegemon. As China's economic power increases, the Chinese will be more able to project their interests beyond China's borders and attempt to draw the periphery closer to the center. Of course the periphery can never occupy the same space as the center and will always remain "peripheral". Still, the questions raised by the CENS article ask us to consider the possibility of and response to the "Taiwanicization" of China. It turns the equation on its head and begs us to examine the impact of Taiwanese culture on the Chinese.

Giant and Merida are Taiwan's two largest bicycle brands. Giant is the "kleenex" of bicycles in Taiwan. I do not know how often I am asked if my Salsa branded bicycle is a Giant. But beyond simple brand recognition there is a real sense of national pride in Giant. It represents the "Taiwan Miracle", it validates the sense of Taiwanese accomplishment and acceptance in the world to help counter the Taiwanese tragic lack of self-confidence that has been cultivated through a failed Chinese nationalization program and Taiwan's shameful diplomatic isolation (and the appeasement policies that have been promoted to avoid defacto Taiwanese nationalism). Giant has become an expression of Taiwanese economic and leisure cultures.

Now Giant is poised to take over the Chinese market, which has been dominated for decades by the ubiquitous Flying Pigeon. The Flying Pigeon is China's major domestic supplier of bicycles. Although it was originally founded in Tianjin by a Japanese businessman, the Flying Pigeon was taken over by the state following the Chinese Civil War and it essentially grew into China's national bicycle in much the same vein as Hitler's Volkswagen-- a cheap form of transportation for the masses.

The Flying Pigeon virtually became a part of daily life for Chinese. It pervaded Chinese cultural life as it transformed China by providing not just physical, but economic mobility for millions of citizens. Much like Giant in Taiwan, the Flying Pigeon symbolizes something greater than just the bicycle in the imaginations of the Chinese people. It is an icon of Chinese cultural life and of the Chinese experience that most people who live outside of China can not really understand. The Flying Pigeon is the type of shared symbol that breeds culture and now Giant is poised to replace it.

It makes me wonder at what point Chinese people will begin to develop a sense of nostalgia and start to seek to protect and retain the contemporary symbols of Chineseness rather than simply promoting the silly myth of "5000 years". Will they resent Taiwanese (and others for that matter) for their own cultural hegemony as Taiwanese bring their culture with them to China and inadvertently engage in replacing Chinese culture with Taiwanese ways of doing things? Will the Chinese cultural pendulum eventually swing back as they fight to hold on to the symbols of their unique and special experience?

It makes an interesting scenario.

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