For years Taiwan has been known as the ‘bicycle kingdom’, mainly because of its huge bike factories, which make up a sizeable amount of the global industrial work force. My hosts Giant are the biggest bike manufacturing company on the planet by revenue, a company of epic proportions with $1.8 billion and 6.3 million bikes made in the last year, that started right here in Taiwan.

While they lead in manufacture of bicycles, for numbers of natives recreationally riding they’ve always fell quite far behind. Far from being a cycling mecca, the population of Taiwan have never caught on to the urban cycling bug, regardless of the amount of bikes being created around them and the beautiful landscape in which they live.

Up to recently, Taiwan has made bikes, but not ridden them. Now, Giant has started to change that.

Since taking up the sport, Liu’s attitude towards cycling within the country seems to have shifted from just selling bicycles, to using the them in order to help and push forward the country.

From the impact of pollution rates on the nation’s health, to the tourism industry, the company sees a great impact that cycling could make in Taiwan. Putting part of Giant’s proceeds towards building better cycling infrastructure and making bikes available to everyone within Taiwan’s biggest cities, Liu and the company clearly have dreams of turning the hectic and dangerous roads of Taipei into a place safe for cycle commuters and getting all people to start to taking advantage of the  landscape and mountain climbs surrounding them.

Trying to get the island to notice a sport when it’s already a constant noise in the background of their everyday life is no mean feat however, Liu decided to do it through tackling a cycle tour round the whole of the island himself. The inspirational undertaking had a clear message – if I can do this at 73, you can all do it too.

After six months of training, he completed his challenge, cycling the whole of the island, 927 miles, in 15 days, it made front page news all over Taiwan and the interest in recreational cycling felt an instantaneous boost.

Now I’m travelling to take up the challenge for myself by riding 500km up and down Taiwan’s mountains, to see how I measure up and to discover the country’s burgeoning cycling culture.

Our support driver gets out the van. “You Ok? We have a break in four kilometres, want to drive to there?”

Four kilometres?! I can do that! I try and protest and gesture that I’ll carry on, but the support rider is already out of the van and running over to take my place. I give him my bike and get in the van, looking out I see him look back in confusion, mount the bike and reach under the handlebars to change the gear, I realise that I’ve been doing it wrong, I’ve been cycling the mountain in a high gear from the start. My cheeks burn as I sigh, sometimes you can’t just wing it without asking for help. Reaching the break point I get out and thank him, as we set back off after a drink I find that I’m now able to keep up with the group, definitely not the fastest, but not the slowest either, my 500km of mountains has officially begun.

If anything could push me forward it’s the fact that I was following in the bike tracks of a 75 year old. King Liu’s own tour must have been hard, but it seems that instead of draining him, it only pushed him into more cycling, as after his first tour of Taiwan, he started to plan his second across China to further spread his cycling message.

The ride was 1,688 kilometres long and lasted 20 days. Thousands of cyclists gathered at a stadium in Shanghai to welcome Liu and his group of about 30 supporters at the end of the ride and he used that space to promote the cycling lifestyle even further.

Liu says he sees himself as a “missionary” spreading cycle culture, with its ability to spread low emissions, social harmony and personal health as the basis of his pitch, specifically in Taiwan.

“Driving is too fast, walking is too slow. By riding a bike, you can deeply immerse in Taiwan and appreciate the land” he says.

30km later we’re climbing a mountain in the pouring rain. Just after we agreed on the tougher route and set off, the heavens opened. Apart from the rain, we’ve clocked 70km and have been climbing for the past hour.

As I feel my enthusiasm starting drain away we hit a small row of houses in one of the mountains aboriginal communities. Riding past, I notice that the locals in their gardens are coming to the side of the road. As they whoop, clap and wave us past I realise how big the cycling movement is becoming in Taiwan, with this tour we’re one part of King Liu’s enormous movement, it fills me with a bit more determination and I speed up my climb once again.

As we climb and climb, I start to feel like this mountain is never ending. The road twists and turns and every time I think the next turn will reveal the peak, its just another steep road and we carry on pedalling.

After a couple of hours, I realise that the air is becoming a lot muggier and the air is looking steamy, as I ride around a corner I notice a small monkey sat at the side of the road. Our surroundings seem to have suddenly shifted and I feel as though I’m in the middle of a rainforest. I turn the next corner and suddenly realise that the other cyclists are slowing down, we’ve reached the top.

Getting off my bike and sitting on the floor, I feel my legs want to seize up straight away but I don’t really care, the forest around me and the view down is too spectacular to think about anything else.

After five days in the mountains, our return to Taipei is a shock to the system. With car and motorcycle clogged roads everywhere you turn, I can suddenly see why the people of Taiwan find it such a challenging prospect to pick up a bike and ride through the city.

The hints of change can also be seen however, many tourists ride around of YouBikes, the rental bikes that King Liu, Giant and the Taiwanese government have implemented, and brand new cycle paths run down the side of the busiest roads.

As we cycle through the city centre and to our final destination, people still look with interest at our uniformed bike group, we’re cycling the same route the King Liu did only a couple of years ago and that image must be coming to their minds. Its certainly changing general attitudes, since his cycle tour the amount of recreational cycling in the country has shot up, overtaking China’s rate, which is also growing. From coasts, to mountains, to winding roads and little villages, it seems that the locals of this nation island are just beginning to explore this territory by bike, its an exciting time to see.

Taiwan’s pristine landscape and remote corners have interested international bike tourers for decades and conquering my own relative lack of bike experience showed me exactly what this island has to offer. What it most showed me however, was how young the Taiwanese road cycling culture really is, from cycle commuting to climbing its mountains at the weekend, the shift in local thinking is palpable. King Liu got on a bike to show people that it can be done and it seems that people listened.

Now King Liu has announced his retirement at the start of next year, as he steps down from his role at Giant. While his bigger legacy is in business, the most obvious one for now will be in cycle culture. Giant has started the island’s first official cycle tour company and recently, the government named their route as”Cycle Route Number One”, linking its paths and marking the route with signs. Cycling is quickly becoming a lifestyle choice for the island’s inhabitants.

As we leave Taiwan and head home, one thing is clear to us. The Bicycle Kingdom is back.

Find out more about Giant’s cycling tours around Taiwan here. 

To read the rest of Mpora’s ‘Mountain’ issue head here

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