New York Times is Cycling Taiwan: You Pay What You Get For...

A couple Taiwan cycling related stories have been worming their way through the social media this week.

The first is a beautifully integrated info-tisement, of the kind that are becoming irritatingly common these days, as trusted sources of information have been desperate for content and started pimping for private businesses (CNN anyone?). The quid-pro-quo of content for cash is nothing new, but it is becoming even more prevalent in the internet age.

The article comes from the Grey Lady herself in the In Transit blog by Diane Daniel and briefly touts a bicycle tour of Taiwan.

To be more specific, the blog uses its space to promote one bicycle tour of Taiwan from a company called Bicycle Adventures located not far from where I grew up.

You can always tell when something is amiss when an article about cycling in Taiwan includes one of two things: a) a reference to the Taiwan Tourism Bureau, and b) a reference to the mythological founding of Taiwan cycling by Giant's King Liu... "who having descended from on high in gleaming raiments, astride a snorting white stallion, thrust Tony Lo's gleaming bald head into the sands of the Tajia River and said, let there be cycling... and there was cycling."-- Book of Giant 3:13.

This article has both.

The price of the tour is a whopping USD $3945, which is pretty steep by any standard and Taiwan is in no way ready to command this type of cash for an experience that can be had for much less and more fun with some free information, such as the information provided on this blog and others, and a map. Taiwan is safe and relatively easy country to explore, even without any command of Mandarin what so ever as evidenced by decades of McGill University grads who wash through each year.

Upon reading the entire article and browsing the company's itinerary, I was struck by a couple of things.

The NYT says:

While traversing the island’s five mountain ranges, riders visit two national parks in near-rain-forest settings of up to 8,000 feet. One of the biggest challenges will be an uphill ride in the Taroko Gorge, a 65-mile climb that features stunning scenery, traditional villages and several tunnel passages.

At first I thought this was one baddass trip... imagining Alishan, Lugu, Wuling, Baling.... all the great climbs in one ride. In reality, the majority of climbing is done on a single trip up to Dayuling, and back to Taroko. The trip never even touches the western side of Taiwan, where there are some incredible and tour-worthy routes.

The other piece of information that caught my eye, and probably the most damning, is the bikes used in the tour will be rentals (probably from Giant).

If you have the means to spring for such an expensive vacation, for godsakes, bring your own bike... a bike you know intimately. Nothing could be worse that negotiating a landscape on an entirely unfamiliar machine that may or may not be sized and geared to fit the rider.

Lastly, the tour seeks to guide visitors to "Cultural stops". With an informed guide with local knowledge, cultural stops are at every stop. Here we see selected museums and tourist centered locations. It is common practice in Taiwan for tour guides to establish a patronage network with hotels, markets and trinket dealers. It seems here, the Taiwan Tourism Bureau has gotten in on the action.

This brings me to a much greater and more philosophical problem that is not directly related to this article, but to the general problem of the current Taiwan Tourism Bureau in general.

The Taiwan Tourism Bureau is greatly influenced by partisan politics. Over the past 30 years we have seen a protracted struggle for the official representation of Taiwan, both internally and externally. The current administration has been completely tone deaf to the actual identities of Taiwanese citizens and has veered far from the Taiwan centered viewpoint that had been adopted (often poorly) under the Chen administration to more closely identify with the views of the higher echelons of the Chinese Nationalist Party, which has maintained an often pejorative view of Taiwan as a mere degraded periphery of a great China.

This cleavage between views influences how Taiwan is represented internationally and locally... from culture and history, to the portrayal of Taiwan's very diverse population of overlapping ethnicities.

I fail to see how the Taiwan Tourism Bureau can best represent for consumption, the amazing strata of Taiwanese life.... when it is continuously informed by an ideological stance that positions Taiwan far, far from the center, in an area that is steeped in the ethnic chauvinism of the Chinese nationalist world view.

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Bottoms Up!

Taiwan makes the news for fining drunk cyclists.

The beer and the bicycle have long been an item in the gossip pages of cycling magazines. There are numerous products on the market that integrate the two hobbies. Some frames even come with bottle openers welded to the tubing.

Should we drink and ride? Probably not. Maybe... oh heck, I dunno....

I really don't think I am the right person to write about this.

This somehow reminds me that there are some really great beers coming into Taiwan.

My favorite beers from the Elysian Brewery are now on sale all over the place.  The No.1 from Taiwan's 23 Brewing Company is pretty good for us North Westerners who like hoppy beers. Jolly's Thai Restaurant and Brewery has some nice beers... I think they have food too, but I don't recall. And how can anyone refuse the new beer from Chthonic?

Ummmm... don't drink and ride?! Stay in school.

King Liu in Amsterdam: Green World on Wheels!

The 76 year-old Giant Bicycle founder, King Liu, has commenced his tour of the Netherlands with the stated purpose to discover why 27% of the citizens in the Netherlands use bicycles for transportation.

Taiwan Focus Reports:

On the six-day trip, dubbed "Green World on Wheels, " the group will ride a 500-kilometer route to look at the cycling infrastructure of the Netherlands, which is known as a "cycling paradise." The riders will also study ways in which Taiwan can improve its cycling environment, said King Liu, 76, who is president of Giant Manufacturing and ycling environment, said King Liu, 76, who is president of Giant Manufacturing and chairman of the Giant Global group, the world's largest bicycle manufacturer.

I think Green World is quite an appropriate name for this junket as these guys must be high if they realistically think Taiwan's government is prepared and willing to bankroll the massive societal overhaul necessary to have Taiwan emulate the Netherlands. Taiwan first needs the police force to shift from an amateurish and corrupt civil force into a real law enforcement body. This means that Police would have to become active in upholding and enforcing and applying the law evenly, rather than passively waiting for an assignment which calls for them to enforce. How many times have we seen police stand idly by as a law is broken before their eyes and they don't flinch because it is not their assignment? This is really the first step. For most people, the roads are too dangerous to become regular commuters and the bicycle infrastructure is insufficient and even dangerous. Furthermore, Taiwan's government can talk as "Green" as it wants, but currently the central government has several industrial projects in the works that threaten some valuable ecosystems. Many of these projects are aimed at wooing Chinese business. Until these hard choices are made, Taiwan is not ready to put its money where its mouth is.

Enjoy your trip to Amsterdam! Everyone loves a vacation in the name of "research".

Be sure to check the follow-up in the Comments

ECFA, Bikes, and the Mythology of the Chinese Toothbrush

Gift Horse

For well over a decade the news media, foreign business communities, Chambers of Commerce and governments from the local to the federal levels, have been whipping themselves into a lather over the potential of the elusive "China Market". The analogy has been put to me many a time by Taiwanese and expat business types alike, that if I could sell a toothbrush to every Chinese... blah, blah, blah.... And Oh, how we just need to use the power of our superior system to make them come around to "our way" of doing things. All these guys are standing around with blue-balls over the elusive China market and can't seem to get any play despite the promises.

Here is the rosy picture being promoted by the Chinese side of things for the Taiwanese bicycle industry out of CIIP.COM:

According to reports from Taiwan media, appreciating the huge potential of the mainland market after the signing of the ECFA, Taiwan Giant Global Group plans to strengthen the capability and competitiveness of the mainland headquarters this year by launching a new investment plan to invest an initial RMB 1.16 billion for the establishment of the Bicycle Industrial Park in Kunshan, Jiangsu Province.

Reports disclosed that with the expansion of the market, Giant Global Group will increase its investment to raise its market share in the mainland bicycle market. Based on its original SUV brand GIANT, the Group will vigorously develop a new brand MOMENTUM to raise the market share of passenger vehicles. The medium-priced brand will be aggressively promoted through about 2,000 distribution channels.

Giant Global Group plans to increase its investment to build a bicycle plant in Kunshan, which has gained great support from the mayor of Kunshan Guan Aiguo. The 40-hectare new plant will consist of plants for bicycles, frames, carbon fiber and electrical vehicles. Besides, the cycle track & bicycle theme park plan will also be pushed forward. The investment in the initial stage amounts to USD 36 million (NTD 1.16 billion).

Sources revealed Giant Global Group currently possesses a bicycle plant in Kunshan with an annual output of 2.5 million. As the Group's largest manufacturing base in the mainland, the plant boasts about 50% of the products meeting the domestic market demands. After being put into operation, the new plant will meet the market demands for both GIANT and MOMENTUM and the plant will trade with Taiwan bicycle plants after the signing of ECFA.

Of course, the latest negotiations on the "early harvest list" have broken down and all these grand plans the benefit China, a few wealthy industrialists and a few connected politicians are still up in the air. Moreover, the promise of greater capital outflows to China is stalled so Taiwanese will have to keep showing up for work to receive the same salary they received 10 years ago despite rising inflation. Michael Turton has a wonderful analysis on the matter on his blog here.

In the 1960s the KMT government was desperately seeking foreign investors in the burgeoning electronics sector and all but killed off Taiwanese textiles and footwear in the process. Taiwanese recovered from the early waves of capital outflow and the replacement of traditional industries. Much of this resilience was based upon the small to medium sized enterprise and the the ability to exploit local relationship networks.

Still, politics has never been too far from the agenda. In Ian Skoggard's excellent book, The Indigenous Dynamic in Taiwan's Postwar Development: The Religious and Historical Roots of Entrepreneurship, one Taipei based informant declares in a manner we often hear from ideologues on both sides of the Taiwan Strait:

The U.S. doesn't care about the appreciation of the NT dollar. They just want their price.They don't care if we are starving. The U.S. market is getting very cruel. We are such a small country. We are being mistreated by the U.S. No matter how rich we are, we are still Taiwan and not the R.O.C. The U.S. forces us to take their farm products when we have everything here we need, and our farmers complain. Maybe some day when we go back to China, we'll stand on level ground to talk. p. 123

The myth that Taiwan is too small was dispelled in the 1990's, when Taiwan, while allowing investment in China, also sought to diversify its centers of production by courting Southeast Asian nations as well. This also coincided with Lee Teng-hui's Taiwan-centered economic framework that sought negotiations from a position of strength than the more conciliatory approach of demure weakness. That approach is gone in the name of unbalanced, unchecked, economic and political annexation by China.

It should be important to note that Giant Founder, King Liu, is currently working for the Ma Administration as a consultant for transportation, tourism and the economy. No doubt there is a pretty penny in it for him.

This wouldn't be the first time government economic schemes have resulted in major outflow of capital from Taiwan, but it would be the first economic project where the economic benefit and the interests of the Taiwanese people have been placed on the back burner for politics and ideology.

The bicycle industry is a major part of Taiwan's economy and national identity... and not to forget JOBS... and needs to be promoted and protected at home.

All of this comes hot on the heels of recent Ministry of Economic Affairs moves to quietly bring Taiwanese firms back home. The great pancea of the "China Market" to heal Taiwan's economic woes is proving to be elusive as a reality. So while ECFA is being trumpeted as an economic necessity, China is proving to be a sour investment for many at the cost of quality, safety, security, and jobs.

Ride Like A King Day

One final piece of Giant News to report:

No, the title of this post does not suggest riding an early 1990's Cannondale aluminum framed bike over potholed roads for 8 hours until you feel like you've been beaten by a half-dozen of L.A.'s finest. No, no...

May 7th will be the second annual "Ride Like A King Day", in honor of Giant founder and Taiwanese cycling spiritual leader King Liu. According to Bicycle Retailer Magazine, King Liu is still riding strong at a spry 76 years of age. If he is not too old to clip in and hit the road, nobody has an excuse. Three years ago Liu covered the 927km around Taiwan to help promote cycling in Taiwan. I absolutely hate hearing the "age" excuse for cycling. Nothing can make a person feel like a kid again than riding a bike.

Speaking of age:

Joe Freil has a great piece on age and diet.