The Northern Cross Island Highway

Taiwan is crossed by three main arteries from East to West. On my major bike ride around the island, I did the entire Southern Cross Island Highway and half of the Central Cross Island Highway, but I did not even touch the Northern Cross Island Highway. I had been planning to do the Northern with my friend Steve on a weekend trip only to find out he already did it... in a day! Not to be outdone by my good friend/ arch nemesis, I decided I would have to take off for the Northern as well.

I woke up early on a Saturday morning and put all my essentials into one basket. I got my atlas of Taiwan, water, locks, rain jacket, gloves, helmet, snacks and a hunger for the open road. I went downstairs to the local Taiwanese breakfast joint near my house and ordered my Zwa Bing and hot tea, per usual before a bike trip. I chatted briefly with the shop keep about what I was intending on doing that day, and like all Taiwanese, she thought I was crazy. I'm used to that by now.

Well, the sun was coming out and I put on my gear, revved up my bike and headed south toward Xindian. I followed route 110 down to Sanxia, which is a quaint and delightful little drive if I have ever seen one! After reaching Sanxia, it was a quick turn over to route 3 and finally route 7 and the start of the Northern Cross Island Highway.

Immediately starting out, there is an offramp that goes into a nature park. It seems to follow the river a bit and had I more time, I would probably explore that pathway. But continue on the road I did and my views weren't spoiled by that missed turnoff. The river waves and the road turns around bends and cliff sides, climbing through small towns before entering the mountains completely.

The Northern Cross Island highway begins in Dasi, not far from Taoyuan really and a great day trip for those interested. Home to some quaint old streets and traditional Taiwanese snacks, this was a delightful starting point to my journey into the tip of the central cordillera. Dasi is also quite close to Chiang Kai Shek's burial place, and momument sprawling with visitors and tourists alike. Going past this little momento of presidents gone by, the traffic let up tremendously leaving me on a small, one lane road in Taiwan. Hardly a highway by any stretch of the imagination.

At this point, you are squarely in the mountain range of central Taiwan, and there is no turning back. Here and there, the trip is paused for a roadside picture or a little hut with food. My favorite picture spot was at this enormous purple bridge, just next to an antique, pedestrian red suspension bridge. Shortly after, I too found a nice little hut on the side of the road worthy of stopping for a baozi and fried rice.


The afternoon saw no rain and plenty of sunshine. The air was dry and cool, a nice change for Taiwan indeed! The road went high and low, left and right, upside down and inside out before finally stretching out into Ilan. At this point I was basically home free as I have driven to Ilan on many occasion before. After take a break to rest my sore butt, I climbed back on and drove back into the rolling mountains and tea plantations of Pingling.


A full, 6-8 hour bike ride at least (with minimal stopping) but one that should not be passed up by any motorcyclist living in the Taipei area. A simple, elegant and entertaining ride with little technical difficulties. From your man in the clouds, biker of the North, Michael.

Tuesdays On the House

While taking Chinese lessons two hours every day Monday through Friday, I found spending time with friends during the week a rare occurrence. Maybe a late evening here or there, or the occasional typhoon day allotted some moments to meet up. But it wasn't until I finally stopped studying full time that I found a more balanced schedule to study, work, exercise, and be with friends.

One special day of the week for me is Tuesday night, when two friends of mine, Jessica and Katelin, join me at my apartment to watch the most recent episode of House, MD. I am not much of a TV watcher and this is in fact the only show I watch, so it's nice to share this common interest with two good friends.


Well, the midseason pause came up and without a new show to occupy our interests each week, we decided that we should go out and try a different restaurant instead. Our culinary explorations took us to new and exciting eateries throughout town. We have frequented the posh and ultra hip People Restaurant and Lounge where you need to stick your hand in a hole to open the door. We have had the famous noodles of a Tainan noodle maker. We have dined in some traditional "little eats" restaurants around town, including the one near my apartment, Din Tai Fung, and most recently a Dim Sum restaurant close to the colorful combat zone (for Dr. Jessica). And last Tuesday night we stayed in and failed miserably at trying to make our own dumplings from scratch!


This Tuesday will mark the final dining excursion of this intrepid trio as Jessica will be heading for colder climates back in NYC. We intend to embark on a small bike ride to the tea plantations just south of the city in Maokong. With Tea Fried Rice, the best tofu you could ever hope for and views of downtown Taipei that are unmatched, it will be a fitting sendoff and proper finale to our Tuesday night gatherings.

From your Tuesday night fatso, Michael.

The Beehive Rockets

Ever year on the Lantern Festival in a small town just north of Tainan called Yanshuei, local residents pour into the streets to fire rockets. No, this isn't a centuries old feud or a localized war zone, it's just an ancient remedy for healing the blues. In modern times, the celebration is used to ring in the final days of the Chinese New Year celebration. In Taipei, sky lanterns are released into the heavens while in Yanshuei it's a free-for-all rocket extravaganza bound to wake up the neighbors. In the next city over.

Eight intrepid volunteers, not quite understanding what we were in for, congregated at 7.30am outside Taipei Main Station on a Sunday morning ready to board a bus that would take us to the other side of the island. Coffees in hand, The China Post folded squarely under our arms, we hopped aboard and set forth on a five hour bus ride to Yanshuei. We arrived in the town just a little after noon, with still enough time to explore this unique village.


Yanshuei's fortunate proximity to Taiwan's former capital, Tainan, allows this village to boast some truly extraordinary architectural relics. We were able to tour some splendid homes, venerable temples, and one unique and antiquated "old street".


This old street was a short but windy stretch of cobblestone street lined with wooden structures dating back hundreds of years. Some were opened to the public with old fashioned Chinese goods decorating the inner halls. The highlight was a still functioning blacksmith that was out on the street producing his wares for onlookers to witness.


Around the corner was a unique structure- a mansion house of sorts made entirely of wood. The layout of the grounds reminded us of a wooden temple. Inside housed some contemporary and classical Chinese art which made for a rather surreal experience.


The city itself was lined with quaint old buidlings mixed with modern ones, making for some rather pleasant strolls around town. The temple of Guan Gong was perhaps the most densely populated with worshippers coming from all walks of life to pray. The temple was decorated with bright, warm colors, while heavy looming incense burned through the air.


But the lighthearted strolls through the city were suddenly halted with a preminisence of things to come- a rare glimpse into what was to be displayed later in the evening. As we were walking, we noticed a group of people bunching into a tented area taking pictures and murmuring amongst themselves. We walked up to the crowed and peered into the canopied structure: inside we finally saw our first Beehive Rocket Structure.


As far as beehive rockets go, this one would be considered small to medium sized. It's height was about one "me" and a half, and it's length was roughly equivalent to that of a car. It had about 15 or 20 rows of little rockets stacked neatly next to one another. All in all, there were thousands of rockets on this contraption. All we could do was look at this and say, they're gonna shoot those at us? What?


Oh, right, did I forget to mention that the rockets are shot at the crowds rather than up in the sky? That's an important detail and I think it should be mentiond. Yes, these little puppies are lit on the tail end and then go buzzing into the jumping spectators and burn, srape and explode all over the crowd. That is why we were instructed to bring safety equipment with us.

As the sun was setting and the festivities were starting, we returned back to the bus to don our evening armor. We had to wear a non flammable winter jacket (in 90 degree heat no less), a full faced helmet with a towel fastened around our neck, gloves, long pants, and shoes. Not a millimeter of skin was exposed. Dressed like knights, we strolled into the starting gates where waterfalls of fireworks were raining down. My friend and I danced back and forth through what was probably melted iron as far as we knew, until finally the first bee hive rocket appeared.

As the fuse was lit, everyone started jumping up and down. Initially I thought this was to prevent rockets from hitting you head on. (For some strange reason when rockets are being fired at you, your initial reaction is to jump up and down.) But actually, the jumping is part of the history of the festival. In years gone by, namely in the middle ages, southern Taiwan was struck with the plague. With no proper medicine to handle the epidemic, the local townspeople resorted to explosives. In what I can only imagine to be a primitive display of bombs going off around the locals, the idea was to jump up and down and shake out the bad spirits causing the plague. Evidently the ritual was a success and the bad spirits are warded off annually with loud noises and TNT.

Well, the festival began. Not knowing what was going on, and thousands of Taiwanese jumping around me, I had no choice but to jump along with them. And without warning, along came the rockets. They whizzed by me, sounding like a firefly pumped up on amphetamines and PCP. On rather frequent instances, the rocket would land on you and, what do rockets do? They explode! So, you would be standing there, crammed in with jumping Asians, dressed in full winter gear in the summer heat being bombarded by rockets exploding all around you. It was easy to lose your orientation and just wonder how you got in the predicament you were in. Realization soon came upon you that retreat was impossible.

After a minute or so of this barrage, the crowd went on the move. Essentially the crowd would parade through the streets and anticipating shop keeps would bring out their beehive rocket cages and fire upon the crowd. After some aimless parading, the mob came to a halt. At this point, people set off loud firecrackers in the streets while the firework waterfalls went off in two separate locations. It's as if they were corralling us into a ranch like cattle. Well, after about fifteen minutes of these boomers going off, a silence fell upon a crowd. And then, with much suspense, an enormous garage door opened slowly and the darkly lit room inside did not reveal what was in store. The crowd watch on in hushed anticipation, as if King Kong himself were to come storming out and wreak havoc on the streets. But the reality was much worse.

From the depth of the shadows emerged a contraption so large, so complex, it put all notions of previous beehive fireworks to shame. There, parting the crowd in two, stood a beehive firework box the size of a mac truck, loaded with tens of thousands of rockets aim directly at us. Being only about ten feet away from the behemoth I knew I was in for a dangerously close encounter with the beast. If this thing couldn't ward off the bad spirits, I don't know what could.

What followed was a good twenty minutes of continued rockets flying, bouncing, exploding and all of the above all around you. This puppy was the reason my body was covered in bruises and burns when the night was out. It finished with an impressive firework display of setting off even larger rockets into the night sky. After a good half hour of this, and drenched in sweat, we decided a recuperation period was needed to nurse the wounds inflicted by this behemoth. Speaking of injury, perhaps the most interesting was one rocket found it's way up into my friend's helmet and burnt a little hole in his hair!

At this time, we met up with another friend who wisely slept in and took a train down to meet us. We put on our gear, caught back up with the parade, and jumped with the best of them. The remaining rocket cages ranged in sizes from a refrigerator to a compact car; but each one placed one hell of a punch. It should be noted in the photos that some of our clothing obtained small burned holes. One interesting anecdote was came after a particularly close encounter with a set of rockets. As I was walking away, my friend started patting the back of my head. I asked him what he was doing and he said my back was on fire. I told him to continue putting it out. As he was doing this, someone was behind him patting him on the head too. Turns out he was on fire as well!


The night was a complete riot of an evening. It was like bombs were going off at every turn. Sometimes fireworks would misfire and explode in the street, and those really smart when they hit next to you. Ambulances were going off all night, and we stopped counting after ten. But I think the most remarkable aspect of the evening was that, in a town with such historical old buildings all made of wood, it's a wonder that it hasn't burned down yet.


From your plauge shaking, pyro blasting, fire smoking beehive rocket knight of Yanshuei, Michael.

The Year of the Tiger

It is effect- ively my third Chinese New Year here in Taiwan. It also marked probably the worst week of weather I have ever seen. First- everybody didn't have to work this week except me. Second- everybody left Taipei so I was stuck in this city by myself. And third- It was nothing but downpours of rain, constantly, 24 hours a day, every day of the week. It was the Perfect Storm.


But the cold weather outside wasn't indicative of the warmth celebrated with my family for the second year in a row over in Banciao. I met up with Yuhsin's sister, her parents, brother and sister-in-law and their new daughter Jacqueline, and her two neices whom I absolutely adore. The evening started nice enough- I arrived just in time for dinner. On the menu was the whole fish (which is not eaten) white carrots, jellyfish, chinese coldcuts like sausage and fisheggs, bamboo and turnip soup, etc. I tried it all and they were delicious.


After dinner, we retired to the living room where we played a dice and punishment game. (Taiwanese love punishments! Basically, you can't just "lose" a game, you have to be punished as well.) The game was played simply, there were a set of die underneath a bowl and only one person knew the number underneath. The rest of the group had to guess numbers and whoever guessed the number was punished. Basically, if you won, you really lost! For the punishment, there was a box with a number of compartments- think ice tray. Then on top of this ice-tray like box was a paper covering. You poked through the paper and inside the compartment was a piece of paper containing your punishment. The punishments consisted of varying degrees of tourture- including giving massages, pushups, and smelling baby diapers.


After the punishment game, we broke out the karaoke. I impressed everyone which my only Chinese song I can karaoke which is called "Freedom" in Chinese. There was also a deck of card so we played some card games and I dazzled the youngsters with my magic tricks.


Chinese New Year culminates about 15 days after the new year celebration with the Lantern Festival. Every year, Sun Yat Sen Memorial Hall and City Hall host a number of lantern sculptures to ring in the new year. This year the theme was, of course, the tiger and the lantern sculptures resprestend that.


In the center of the sculpture gardens is a giant tiger which lights up, spins and goes along with music. The tiger, cartoonish in nature, is giving the thumbs up. When first conceived, however, the angles on the hand were a bit misleading and it appeared that instead of the tiger giving a thumbs up, it looked like it was flipping the bird. As an event for families, the sculpture was of course revised.


Alas, thus culminates my third Chinese New Year in Taiwan. I have to say, this was probably the best one yet. Although, it could have been made better had my cousins Stevie and Yuhsin, and their daughter Tia come as well. From your rrrrrrrroooooooooaaaaaaarrrrrrr, Michael.