20101030 Day 11 - Joe's Cycling around Taiwan (Taoyuan 桃園 to Hsinzuang 新莊)

Huayu Hotel surprisingly provided free breakfast.  I didn’t expect much.  But for the price I paid for last night’s stay, I would rate the breakfast to be very good.  Again it was the basic Taiwanese breakfast with hot rice congee and small side dishes.

For cycling around Taiwan, I have avoided making hotel reservations in advance.  In my first day’s travelogue I stated the reason being:

“No advanced reservation is made for hotels. I will look for a place to stay every night. This is an advice from other cyclists because unexpected (rain, bike breakdown, etc.) does occur when you are on the road. Advanced reservation forces you to ride at night, which is a no-no.”

But today is different.  I am only less than 30 kilometers away from today’s destination, Taipei.  I know for certain that I will reach Taipei today.  I better find out where I will be staying before I get there so that I don’t get lost inside the vast metropolis.

What I did not realize was that many people from out of town visited Taipei on weekends.  I called several hotels and hostels and was told they were all booked for the weekend.  This is the first time I’ve attempted to make an advanced reservation and it wasn’t as easy as I thought.  I need to find a lodging alternative.

I have also tried to avoid staying at any relative’s house.  As a cyclist on a long journey, I am usually tired at the end of the day and need to go to bed early.  I also need to get up early the next morning to be on the road.  This routine is bound to intrude on other’s daily life.  Although people in Taiwan are well known for their warm hospitality, I consider that it is more convenient to me and to others that I stay in commercial establishments.  But today I have failed to find a place to stay;  I need to break this rule.  I called up my cousin Rudolf.

Rudolf was surprised and happy to hear from me.  He and I are of the same age and we once roomed together in our sophomore year.  He and his wife now live in Hsinzuang (新莊).  Their house has two unoccupied bedrooms available to accommodate me.

After solving the housing crises, I was ready to hit the road.  This is Highway 1 leaving Taoyuan and going north.


My first stop was the Chang Gung Nursing Home (長庚護理之家).   The nursing home is about 5 kilometers away in the township called Gueishan (龜山).  Here is a picture of the nursing home from its website.
 

An uncle of mine had a stroke ten years ago and became immobile.  After several years of taking care of him, his wife developed Alzheimer’s disease and had to be hospitalized too.  Now both of them are in this nursing home.  They are very dear to me and my wife.  Whenever we come to visit Taiwan, we always visit them.  In the picture, my auntie was gently and lovingly caressing her husband in a visitation area.


The nursing home sits on a hill.  After the visit, I was pleasantly sliding down the hill at high speed.  Suddenly I heard a dog barking on my right side.  I turned my head and saw a big black dog fast chasing and loudly barking at me with a vicious look.  I’ve heard of cyclists being chased and bitten by unleashed dogs.  To be prepared for this kind of incident, I carry pepper spray.  Whenever I see an unleashed dog ahead of me, I'll hold the spray on my palm just in case.  Luckily, I have so far not fired the spray at anything.  But this black dog came out of nowhere.  I didn’t see it ahead and it was too late to take out the spray.  I sped up and thankfully was able to go as fast as 40 kilometers per hour in a downslope to get out of harm’s way.  It was the scariest experience.

Next stop on Highway 1 is my alma mater, Fu Jen Catholic University (輔仁大學).


My classrooms were on the 2^nd or the 3^rd floor.


Boys’ 1^st dormitory for College of Science (理一舍).  The floor in the common area was waxed and shining all the time.  I used to like to come back to the dorm building and be greeted with the aromatic scent from the waxed floor.  The hallway outside the bedrooms was slippery from the wax and we’d playfully slide on the floor, sometimes in underwear sliding toward the bathroom.  This maneuver was copied by Tom Cruise in the movie “Risky Business” a decade later.


The building with a round roof is the gymnasium Zong-Mei Hall (中美堂).  When this gymnasium was built, Madame Chiang Kai-shek was the chairwoman of the school board.  The name Zong-Mei was derived from the middle characters of her husband’s name Chiang Zongzen (蔣中正), aka Chang Kai-shek, and her name Song Meilin (宋美齡).  Nowadays, Chiang Kai-shek is no longer being looked at with a kinder eye in Taiwan.  The connotation for the name Zong-Mei now carries a more literal interpretation as Sino-American (中-美).  The tall building in the back is the new Medical School.


Cousin Rudolf’s house is not too far from the campus. He greeted me at a gas station and led me to his house on the 9^th floor of an upscale housing complex.  We reminisced a lot while his wife very kindly put all my clothes in their washer and dryer so that I’d have a set of clean clothes to go out at night.  Rudolf had a prior dinner appointment so I asked him to take me to a subway station to go to Shihlin Night Market (士林夜市).

It was raining so the night market wasn’t very busy.  I found many tourists from mainland China.  Without them, the market would have looked somewhat deserted on a rainy night.

A long line was formed in front of a fried chicken stand.  I got into line and had a big piece of chicken breast for NTD $50 (USD $1.66).  It tasted good but the portion was too big for me to finish it.



I’ve read a recommendation for this Cantonese congee (廣東粥).  It took a while to get the food because it was cooked to each individual order.  It’s good and worth the wait.


This night market has too many food-stands selling the same things, such as oyster omelet (蚵仔煎), squid soup (花枝羹).  I was somewhat underwhelmed until I stopped by a stage in front of the market.  A nearby church was having a crusading concert.  Group after group of young men and women were eagerly belting out upbeat gospel songs.  I didn’t quite get what they were singing but their enthusiasm and devotion were clearly showing.  I admired their dedication to come out in the rain and energetically sang to a group of a less exciting audience.  I listened for a long time before I headed back to Rudolf’s house.


The next day was Sunday.  Rudolf, his wife, and I went to visit another cousin, George.  I grew up with George and was close to him.  He and his wife spent many years in upstate New York operating a Carvel ice cream shop before retiring back to Taiwan.  Three years ago, after several nights of non-stop Mahjong games during the break for Chinese New Year, he had a stroke.  He survived and recovered from a 6 months coma.  He is now living at home, able, but needs help from his wife to walk.  I was very happy to see him making big signs of progress toward his full recovery.  L-to-R: me, Rudolf, George, and Rudolf’s wife.


After having lunch at George’s house, I went to Ximending (西門町).  Sunday afternoon at Ximending is an interesting venture in itself.  The area was once the most prosperous commercial district in Taipei.  After the commercial center shifted to the east side of the city, Ximending saw its fortune declined a bit.  Now it has rebounded to become a lively mecca for young people to shop and hang out.


In front of a department store, an orchestra played for passersby.


The pedestrian zone got crowded early in a typical Sunday afternoon.


Ximending has many stores selling anything Japanese.  It is known as Harajuku (原宿) of Taipei.  Here is one of many cosplay characters seen on the side of a street.


A candidate, Yin Shau-Wei (應曉薇), for Taipei City Assembly was campaigning among cosplay characters.  Her eager assistant took this picture for me.  The candidate was very polite, soft-spoken, and with a disarming demeanor.  She would later win the election and become an assemblywoman a month after this picture was taken.


The first map shows the full island of Taiwan.  My bike ride for Saturday alone was from 11:30 position to 12 o’clock position.  The second map gives a closer view of my ride.



Vertical profile of Saturday’s ride.  After the nursing home, it was all going downhill to Hsinzuang.   The tiny step-up at far right is from the elevator going up to Rudolf’s house on the 9^th floor.


Summary of Saturday’s ride.  It was a very short distance of only 31.33 kilometers.
 

-Joe


Next:  20101101 Day 12 - Joe's Cycling around Taiwan (Hsinzuang 新莊 to Keelung 基隆)

20101029 Day 10 - Joe's Cycling around Taiwan (Zhunan 竹南 to Taoyuan 桃園)

Lotus Hotel provided free breakfast.  It was another typical Taiwanese breakfast with hot congee and small side dishes.  Since I’ve paid NTD $1200 for an overpriced room, I decided to make up my money’s worth by eating as much as I could of every item on the buffet counter.  It was not a good move.



Zhunan is a bigger township than I thought.  It took me a while to get out of the town proper.  Along the way, I saw many industrial buildings and complexes.  It seems that this town has turned itself from a train hub into a major industrial center.  The sign on the side of the highway expresses the town’s aspiration to be a township of technology and humanity.


I took Highway 13 and turned into Highway 1, going north.  The wind has died down a little bit today but it is still felt all over.  The surface of a big pond next to the highway looks wrinkled and stirred.


Against undulating ripples, I paused and contemplated what this trip has meant to me.  A long-anticipated and presumably pleasurable cycling adventure has turned into two weeks of anguish.  The first week was a disappointing disruption by Typhoon Megi, and the second week a daily dose of torture and agony from the fierce and untimely seasonal wind.  Before the trip, I have read other cyclists’ travelogues.  Their trips are of sunny skies and abundant beauty.  But mine, except for a couple of days on the east coast, is a different story.  Mimic a smart lady's saying: if everyone's trip is a bowl of cherries, why is mine in the pits?

Many times I have to wonder if there is a lesson or message from His Almighty in subjecting me to these torments.  I’ve lived a life of uneventful existence.  I studied diligently, worked industriously, and retired contentedly.  I am now older and want to make a small mark in my life’s story by cycling around Taiwan.  Merely like a little egret wishes to leave a crawl print on a quiet sunny beach.  So why did HE unleash a tempest to this beach, just to teach me something?  And what exactly is the gist of the lessons?  As a wise man used to say “All I really need to know I learned in kindergarten”.  I have learned enough to come to this stage of my life.  I don’t think I really need any more lessons.

His Almighty never answers my questions.  I think HE may be preoccupied with deciding who the winners are for the upcoming big elections in Taiwan, especially the Five Cities Election (五都選舉) – mayoral races for five largest municipalities.

After my brief Zen moment by the water pond, I came across an old wooden train station house, Xiangshan Station (香山車站), on the side of Highway 1.  Given the ubiquitous artifacts of prosperity I witness along my journey, it is surprising to see an operational train station in such a neglected state.  I asked a group of chess playing senior citizens nearby and was told that the town was small and poor.


But less than 200 meters away from the train station, a very well constructed Catholic Church stands next to the highway.  The town does not seem poor at all.


The weather report predicts that the temperature will get lower as the day progresses. At 10:45 AM, this temperature display at a street intersection in Hsinchu City (新竹) showed 21 degrees Celsius.


Tou-Chian-Shi Bridge (頭前溪橋) is the city boundary between Hsinchu City and Zhubei City (竹北).  The bridge has a dedicated lane for motorcycles and another dedicated lane for bicycles and pedestrians.


Highway 1 passes through Zhubei City.  A continuous uphill for the next 15 kilometers starts from here until the township of Yangmei (楊梅).


On the side of Highway 1 is the busy campus of Ming Hsin University of Science and Technology (明新科技大學).  It was known as Ming Hsin Technical College (明新工專) when I lived in Taiwan.  Classical columns of the building behind the campus gate remind me of a similar building at MIT.



By lunch hours, I rode by two security guards on the side of the highway directing traffic.  I stopped and observed that they were directing cars in and out of the driveway of a restaurant.  It must be a good place for lunch.  I pulled into the parking lot behind this restaurant, LaoPiGer Beef Noodle (老皮哥牛肉麵).


The inside was spacious and busy.


The beef noodle soup was very good.  Next to it was a plate of cold cuts that was average.  The small bowl was sweet bean jelly (豆花), which was of unlimited supply and free of charge.  Next was a plate of vegetables.  The cup was soy milk (豆漿), which too was of unlimited supply and free of charge.


The incline continues on Highway 1.  The grade is not very steep.   But on the fifth day of battling with the wind, I was really exhausted, so the uphill seemed to last longer than I expected.


North of Zhubei City is a town called Hukou (湖口).  It was once known as the site of an attempted coup d'état against Chang Kai-shek by an armored force of Taiwanese Army in the early '60s (湖口兵變).  Now this town is best known as the site of an old street, Hukou Old Street (湖口老街), established in the late '10s and early '20s.  The street is a popular tourist attraction.



This section of Highway 1 runs parallel to the railroad.  Many train stations sit right next to the highway.  Here is a sample of these train stations.


Inside the city of Chungli (中壢).


At 3:50 PM, a display at Chungli showed the current temperature of 15 degrees Celsius.  The temperature was dropping fast.  The sky was darkening also.  The sign of an impending rain made me speed up my pedaling.


A giant building on the side of Highway 1 is the Taoyuan Hospital (桃源醫院).  After passing this hospital, the rain started to come down.  I put away the camera and didn't take any more pictures for the rest of the day.


By the time I reached the city of Taoyuan (桃園), it was already nightfall.  I wanted to find a hotel near the temple, where a famous night market was nearby.  But streets in the city were jammed with after-work traffics.  I couldn’t find my way around and eventually walked into a police station for help.  The cop on duty, for reasons unfathomable to me, referred me to a seedy hotel, Huayu Hotel (花語玈館), near the outskirt of the city.

When I walked into the hotel, the front desk personnel looked surprised and puzzled.  I realized that it was a mistake, but it would take another 20 minutes to ride back to the center of the city.  I was too tired, so I relented and asked for a room.  It was NTD $700 (USD $23.33) for a small room with a circular bed.  It couldn’t have been tackier.

There was no restaurant within walking distance of the hotel. I ended up having a bento box at 7-11.

The first map shows the full island of Taiwan.  My bike ride for the day was from 11 o’clock position to 12 o’clock position.  The second map gives a closer view of my ride.



Vertical profile of today’s ride.  The big climb starts at Zhubei and levels off at Yangmei.


Summary of today’s ride.  The wind was weaker today than yesterday.  I didn’t get a higher average speed because on this fifth day of continuous fighting with the wind, I was really exhausted.


-Joe


Next:  20101030 Day 11 - Joe's Cycling around Taiwan (Taoyuan 桃園 to Hsinzuang 新莊)

20101028 Day 09 - Joe's Cycling around Taiwan (Fengyuan 豐原 to Zhunan 竹南)

The Really Good Hotel did not provide a really good free breakfast.  It didn’t provide any breakfast at all.  A cup of café Americano at a nearby 7-11 solved the problem.

My wife has two uncles and several cousins residing at Fengyuan.  It will take me the whole day to visit them all.  An uncle, who is known to get up early, will be a good representative for me to visit before hitting the road.

The uncle and his wife were surprised to see me in a full cycling outfit and embarking on a seemingly daunting task of cycling around Taiwan.  Their two daughters, whom I’d met many years prior in Osaka Japan by chance, were asked to come out to greet me.  None of them remembered our chance encounter, but clearly, I could.  It was another reminder of my rapid aging: can’t remember the present, and can’t forget the past (新事記不牢, 舊事忘不了).

My wife’s paternal grandfather was a founder of a bus company in Kaohsiung County during Japan Occupation.  After his company got bought out to convert the private bus company into public transport, he turned the proceeds into a sizable landholding.  When the Nationalist government came, he was forced to sell his landholding to free up the capital and to invest them in non-agriculture industries.  He set up a paper mill in Fengyuan producing toilet paper.  Its main product, White Light Toilet Paper (白光衛生紙), was once a common household staple in many townships in central and southern Taiwan.  In the 70s, American paper companies came to the island with better manufacturing know-how and sophisticated marketing savvy.  The toilet paper market was taken over swiftly, and local paper mills struggled until their slow and excruciating demises.  The site for grandfather’s paper mill is now occupied by a Women League building (white building on right), a fire station (middle yellow building), and a hospital (the tallest building on far left).


Fengyuan has a bike path that was voted as the best in Taiwan.  An abandoned railway was turned into a tree-lined bike path with rest areas and bike rental shops.


The bike path goes over a truss bridge to reach a tunnel.


Inside the tunnel, the bike path is wide and well lit.


A group of elementary school kids was on a field trip.  These kids came from a small village that was devastated by a flood last year.  I hope the field trip was a good healing experience for everyone.


It is the election season in Taiwan.  Billboards with candidates for various races are frequently seen on the roadside.  I don’t follow Taiwan politics and don’t usually recognize names or faces on any of these billboards.  But one name on this billboard caught my eyes.  My wife’s cousin 徐中雄, a long sitting senator, is lending his name to a candidate campaigning for Taichung City Assembly.


My ride for today will mainly be on Highway 13 (台 13) going north.  This mountain with one side lay bare is Flaming Mountain (火焰山), named after the mountain inferno depicted in the Chinese classic novel “Journey to the West” (西遊記).


A multi-deck overpass is the start of a very steep uphill, a rise of 200 meters within a distance of 4 kilometers.  The wind at this overpass was unbearably ferocious.  I struggled along and resisted getting off the bicycle to walk.  I was getting only 4 kilometers per hour on the bicycle, the same speed as walking.


This car manufacturing plant, Yulong Sanyi (裕隆三義), indicates that the climb is about to be over.


Sanyi (三義), a town renowned for its wood carving, sits at the end of the uphill climb.  The major thoroughfare is lined with wood carving shops.


Teriyaki beef from a fast food place was my lunch.


Highway 13 passes by National United University (國立聯合大學).  Not to be disrespectful and pardon my ignorance, but I've never heard of this school before today.


The city gymnasium of Miaoli City (苗栗).


The wind was still very strong today.  I’ve been fighting with the wind for four days and I was getting exhausted and frustrated.  Every sensory receptor of my body started to feel numb and my brain blanked out too often.  At an intersection outside Miaoli, I made a wrong turn and wandered into a detour that added many kilometers to my journey.  The map below shows the correct route in blue highlight. The detour is in yellow highlight.


This intersection with too many poles and thus confusing, I believe, is the culprit for the wrong turn.  Notice a series of Nationalist’s flags posted on the side of the road.  I think they were there to greet tourists from mainland China.


A senior citizen center looks very well furnished for a small town Touwu (頭屋).


Amidst haze and mist of a fast passing drizzle,
I meekly battled against the merciless wind blow.
My cataract-impaired vision could barely focus
on an earth-filled dam – the distant and blurry Mingder Reservoir.
(明德水庫)


Although it was a long detour, the scenery on this highway was very beautiful.  It was a nice change from the insipid scenes of the last three days.


It was getting cold so I stopped by a 7-11 to get nourished.


By late afternoon, I arrived at Zhunan (竹南).  The railroad on the west coast of Taiwan has a coastal branch (海線) and a mountain branch (山線) going north and south.  These two branches converge at Zhunan.  It is a major hub for train travelers and as such there are many old hotels scattered around the train station.  I found one, Lotus Hotel (水紗蓮商務旅館), located inside an office building that looked newer from the outside.  The rate was NTD $1200 (USD $40) for the night.  It was basic, nothing fancy, and overpriced.


Dinner was at a shabu-shabu place near the hotel.  It was cold outside so a hot pot was a fitting choice.

The first map shows the full island of Taiwan.  My bike ride for the day was from 10 o’clock position to 11 o’clock position.  The second map gives a closer view of my ride.



Vertical profile of today’s ride.  The bottom of the sharp drop at distance 10 was where I saw the billboard with my wife’s cousin.  The tip at distance 19 is Sanyi, the wood carving center of Taiwan.


Summary of today’s ride.  I spent some time this morning visiting a relative so the moving time for today is less than 6 hours.  The max speed of 714.8 kilometers per hour was a GPS mistake.


-Joe


Next:  20101029 Day 10 - Joe's Cycling around Taiwan (Zhunan 竹南 to Taoyuan 桃園)