Great Taiwan Bike Rides IX: Yushan By the Back Roads

The point of this ride is to ride south from Nantou County down to Chiayi but to spend as little time as possible on Highway 21, the New Cross Island Highway and Highway 18 (Alishan Highway). This ride is for fit experienced riders---you will ride up to 2,600 meters on the second day and there is a good bit of climbing the first day.

Friday

7:00PM Bag bikes and catch HSR down to Taichung.

8:00PM Catch Ubus (統聯) bus to Nantou City (南投) from Bay 16 downstairs. Bikes in luggage compartment below. This is the last bus, so don't miss the 7:00PM train.


9:00PM Arrive in Nantou. The Ubus stop is in front of a 7-11. Walk up the street past the Carrefour and the other bus stop. Hang a left and there is a cheap hotel NT$800.

Saturday:

8:30AM Catch bus to Jhushan 竹山.

10:00AM bikes assembled and breakfast eaten. Head east on Nantou County Road 151. This turned out to be a bit of a mistake since there is far too much traffic going up to Sitou (溪頭). Next time I will take the bus to Shuili and ride up 131 instead.

11:30 AM Lugu (鹿谷) take Nantou Route 56 east. The fun riding starts here.

1:00PM Baipuzai (白不仔). Take the unmarked road up behind the farmhouse and wind throughh the hills over to Sinyi 信義.

2:00PM Sinyi. Stay on the west side of the river and take Nantou Route 53 south to Fengguidou (風櫃斗). We were there in late December--the plum blossoms were just blooming. The road now turns into the Sinhe Access Road (信和產業道路) which winds through sleepy little aboriginal farming towns.

5:30 PM Jiumei (久美). Here we have to come down to Highway 21 for a few km until we reach Tongfu Village (同富) at the junction to the road up to the hot spring resort of Dongpu. We arrived late, so we stay at National Taiwan University's Forestry Experimental Station. It's a deal at NT$500.

Sunday--this was a long day
7:00 AM leave Tongfu by crossing a small bridge and riding up a country road on the west side of the river. No traffic at all.

8:00AM Rejoin Highway 21 40km of glorious switchbacks. One of Taiwan's most beautiful roads. Almost no traffic on a Sunday morning.

1:00PM Tatajia 2,600 meters. Lunch at Yushan National Park Visitor Center.

2:30 PM Alishan

4:00PM Shijhuo (石桌). Normally we would take 159A down to Chiayi, but it's late and that road is longer so we stay on the Alishan Highway. Traffic is heavy. You do not want to get stuck on this road in the dark on a weekday by the way. Many dangerous trucks. We were lucky and the Sunday traffic wasn't too bad. Still 159A would have been much nicer (this classic road is the starting point for many great rides out of Chiayi). If you take 159A, you can bag the bikes and catch the bus back into Chiayi at the temple complex called Bantianyan.


6:00PM Chukou. Since we were on the Alishan Highway, we caught the bus into town at Chukou and then transferred to a bus going out to the Chiayi THSR station.

9:00pm back in Taipei

Great Taiwan Rides VIII: Hsinchu to Taipei


Update: some good pictures of the ride up to Shangyulao by a Taiwanese cyclist.

This short overnight ride takes 1.5 days. Sorry no pictures. On the first day, you will climb nearly 2,000 meters, so this should be for fit, experienced riders. One of the best rides in northern Taiwan!

Sat. 7:00 AM: Taipei High Speed Rail Station (bikes disassembled and in bike bags)

7:45 AM Arrive at Hsinchu HSR Station

8:00 AM Load both bagged bikes into new hatchback-style taxi. These taxis are usually available at HSR stations.

8:45 AM Jhudong(竹東). Take Hsinchu County Route 122 east.

9:10 AM Arrive Wufeng Bridge (五峰大橋) in Shangpingli 上坪里. Taxi fare from HSR station was NT$700. Elevation c. 300 meters

10:00 AM bikes assembled

10:05 AM Cross Wufeng bridge and head east off on Hsinchu Route 63.

10:25 AM Reach Huayuan 花園. Turn left and cross bridge to reach Hsinchu Route 63-1 that winds up out of town. Route 63-1 is also known as the Tianhu Rd. (天湖道路) Note that if you turn right and stay on 63, you will reach the Luoshan Forestry Rd. which offers nice offroad riding. Buy water and snacks here as it is a good 10km uphill to the next reliably open store.

11:00 AM Xintianhu 新天湖. c. 900 meters.

12:00 PM Arrive at junction at Tiandana (天打那) c. 300 meters after a nice downhill through Meihua Village.

12:30 PM-1:30 PM lunch and nap

1:45 PM Head east and up on Hsinchu Route 60. This road is also known as the Jinping Houshan Access Rd. (錦屏後山產業道路). The first four or five km are a gentle climb up to Naluo 那羅. Make sure you get food and water here.

2:30 PM Arrive at Daoxia 道下. The last store is here (not always open), and the real climb begins here.

5:30 PM Arrive at Shangyulao 上于老 c. 1,450 meters. There is an excellent roadstop restaurant on the left across from the police station. Make sure you order the local mushrooms. There is an inexpensive, no-frills place to stay a few doors down on the left next to a coffee shop. NT$700. A more expensive Minsu is down the hill a few hundred meters.

Sunday 6:00 AM Leave Shangyulao heading toward Mashi (馬石) and Lidongshan (李崠山). This is the Mamei Rd. (馬美道路), one of northern Taiwan's best off road rides. While steeply downhill and a bit overgrown in places, even a novice off road rider can enjoy this. Lidongshan is a historical site where a Qing general (Li Dong) established an encampment and a group of Atayal died resisting the Japanese.

8:30 AM Arrive at Sangang (三光) elevation c. 650 meters. Turn onto Shalunzai Rd. 沙崙仔 Rd.

9:00 AM Breakfast in Sule (蘇樂) at the junction with the Northern Cross Island Highway (北橫) also numbered as Route 7. You can check out Great Taiwan Bike Rides VI for details of riding the Northern Cross east out to Luodong. We needed to be back in Taipei by late afternoon, so we headed west on the northern cross toward Sanxia (三峽).

10:00 AM coffee at the Ronghua Dam (榮華大霸).

12:00 PM lunch at the Swiss Chalet restaurant. Nice views, OK faux European food. More info in Chinese and pictures from this blogger.

2:30 PM arrive at Yongning MRT station.

3:00 PM Ximending MRT station

A suggestion--since it is now possible on weekends to take your bike on the MRT's Blue Line, you may prefer to ship your bike bags home from a 7-11 in Jhudong, so that you do not have to carry them during all the climbing on the first day.

More MRT Stations Opened

Apple Daily has good news for Taipei cyclists--12 new MRT stations will allow bicycles on March 1st. The combined ticket price for bicycle and rider has also been lowered to NT$80 per trip regardless of distance. Other rules are much the same. All stations are open on weekends and holidays from 6:00AM to 4:00PM. They close between 4:00PM and 7:00PM for rush hour and then reopen until the end of service that day.

The new stations are mainly on the blue line that runs east to west from Nankang to Tucheng in Taipei County. Access to these stations opens up a number of great riding possibilities in western Taipei County including the Northern Cross Highway, Shihmen Reservoir, and shorter rides in the area surrounding Sanxia.

In the other direction, access to Kunyang station makes a number of day rides that loop from the Muzha area back to Nankang more doable in a morning and greatly reduces the amount of city riding. A bike lane out to Nankang would improves things even more.

On the down side, the Muzha line remains off limits due to the small size of the cars. Taipei Station and Chunghsiao-Fuxing are also not accessible. However, Xiaonanmen near the Botanical Gardens is open.

I'll try to follow up with rides that start from the newly-opened stations, but that will have to wait until next week after I get back from riding from Chiayi to Taitung via the Southern Cross.

Poetry Festival - Haiku

In honor of the Taipei Poetry Festival, I offer up these bits of Saturday-morning verse. The first one inspired by a recently popular song that takes syllabic liberties with a paraplui.

Aisan 愛傘

My um-ber-ella
Left at 7-Eleven
Others can use it

Sanzhimao (Three's a Crowd) 三隻貓

One cat on my lap
Two cats hiss menacingly
My peace disrupted

Stinky Tofu Redux

Last week the story of a stinky tofu shop in Sinjhuang was picked up by the international media after the Taipei County EPA fined it NT$100,000 for being too stinky. Well, today the shop is back in the news. Business has improved since the fine as new customers have flocked to the shop to find out just how stinky their tofu is.

A New York Times review of Nicole Mones’s new novel “The Last Chinese Chef” leads with a photo of an illustrated menu from somewhere in China, judging by the simplified characters and prices. To most NY Times readers, the photo probably seems fairly appropriate to the review since the core of the novel is supposed to be about "the unique tangle of Chinese food and culture, and the ways both have been influenced by the country’s volatile political history."

Except the food in the picture isn't Chinese, it's a collection of typical Taiwanese dishes including (from left to right) Taiwanese-style sticky rice dumplings in lotus leaf, Tainan-style pole vendor noodles, braised pork on rice (practically Taiwan's national dish), Hakka Meatball soup (a Hsinchu specialty now found everywhere on the island), fried rice noodles, beef noodles (an invention of Sichuan soldiers exiled in Taiwan), and Taiwanese-style fried noodles.

The pairing of a review of a book about Chinese food with photos of typically Taiwanese dishes demonstrates beautifully how the significant Taiwanese presence in China is invisible to the West looking at China.

Bikes Permitted on MRT Weekend and Holiday Evenings

I haven't seen this mentioned anywhere in the English media, but you can now take your bicycle on the MRT on weekend and holiday evenings. This makes later afternoon riding in Xindian or Danshui much more practical. Remember, you can only take your bike on the Danshui-Xiandian or Beitou-Nanshijiao lines. Here's the official announcement.

Also, on returning from a ride on the Northern Cross Highway recently, I was able to take my disassembled bike in a bike bag on the MRT from the Yongning station in Tucheng back to Taipei on a Monday morning around 10am. The MRT regulations say that they can refuse passengers with oversize luggage, but they simply asked me to use the elevator. This is another option that makes all the great riding in the Sanxia area more accessible from Taipei.

Of course you can always ride out to Tucheng on the the bike path along the Dahan River.