Taiwan TOPICS Travel & Culture July 2014

www.amcham.com.tw THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE IN TAIPEI

Taiwan Business

Topics SP E CI A L I SSU E

Travel & Culture

TAIWAN BUSINESS TOPICS July 2014 | Vol. 44 | Issue 7 中華郵政北台字第 號執照登記為雜誌交寄 5000 7_2014_Cover.indd 1

July 2014 | Vol. 44 | Issue 7

NT$150

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Published by the American Chamber Of Commerce In Taipei

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ConTenTS

july 2 0 1 4

volume 44, n umbe r 7 一 ○三年七月號

Publisher

Andrea Wu

發行人

吳王小珍

Editor-in-Chief

總編輯

Don Shapiro

沙蕩

Associate Editor

副主編

Tim Ferry Art Director/

法緹姆 美術主任 /

Production Coordinator

Katia Chen

後製統籌

陳國梅

Manager, Publications Sales & Marketing 廣告行銷經理

Caroline Lee

李佳紋 photo : rich matheson

American Chamber of Commerce in Taipei 129 MinSheng East Road, Section 3, 7F, Suite 706, Taipei 10596, Taiwan P.O. Box 17-277, Taipei, 10419 Taiwan Tel: 2718-8226 Fax: 2718-8182 e-mail: amcham@amcham.com.tw website: http://www.amcham.com.tw 名稱：台北市美國商會工商雜誌 發行所：台北市美國商會 臺北市10596民生東路三段129號七樓706室 電話：2718-8226 傳真：2718-8182 Taiwan Business TOPICS is a publication of the American Chamber of Commerce in Taipei, ROC. Contents are independent of and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Officers, Board of Governors, Supervisors or members. © Copyright 2014 by the American Chamber of Commerce in Taipei, ROC. All rights reserved. Permission to reprint original material must be requested in writing from AmCham. Production done in-house, Printing by Farn Mei Printing Co., Ltd. 登記字號：台誌第一零九六九號 印刷所：帆美印刷股份有限公司

8 Strong Growth Potential for Adventure Travel

Taiwan is a great place for cycling tours, paragliding, birding, scuba diving, and treks into the mountains to visit remote Aboriginal villages.

By Timothy Ferry

12 Taipei by bike – A Day’s escape

The city and its environs offer plenty of options for cyclists, whether on riverside paths or along the hillsides.

By Alexander Martin

26 exploring the World of Taiwanese Tea

Themed tours involve visits to farms, production facilities, and teahouses to introduce tea culture as a whole.

By Steven Crook

30 Touring the remains of Taiwan’s Sugar Industry

The island’s economy may no longer revolve around sugar cane, but many reminders of that period remain.

By Steven Crook

經銷商：台灣英文雜誌社 台北市108台北市萬華區長沙街二段66號 發行日期：中華民國一○三年七月 中華郵政北台字第5000號執照登記為雜誌交寄 ISSN 1818-1961

Chairman/ Thomas Fann Vice Chairmen/ Scott Meikle / William J. Farrell Treasurer: Cosmas Lu Secretary: Fupei Wang 2013-2014 Governors: Thomas Fann, William Farrell, Ajit Nayak, Neal Stovicek, Stephen Tan, Fupei Wang, Bill Wiseman.

2014-2015 Governors: William E. Bryson Jr., Sean Chao, Rodney Van Dooren, Douglas Klein, Cosmas Lu, Scott Meikle, Dan Silver, Ken Wu. 2014 Supervisors: Anita Chen, Midee Chen, Joseph Lin, Louis Ruggiere, Vincent Shih.

16 exploring Taipei’s riversides

Behind the levees, riverfronts offer an oasis of tranquility in the center of greater Taipei.

By Abraham Gerber

22 The long road to Identity

Various groups have been seeking official recognition as indigenous tribes, some successfully and others not.

By Cheryl Robbins photo : rich matheson

COMMITTEES: Agro-Chemical/ Melody Wang; Asset Management/ Christine Jih, Derek Yung; Banking/ Victor Kuan; Capital Markets/ Miranda Liaw, C.P. Liu, Shirley Tsai; Chemical Manufacturers/ Michael Wong; CSR/ Lume Liao, Fupei Wang; Customs & International Trade/ Stephen Tan; Education & Training/ Robert Lin, William Zyzo; Greater China Business/ Helen Chou, Cosmas Lu; Human Resources/ Richard Lin, Seraphim Mar, Vickie Chen; Infrastructure/ L.C. Chen, Paul Lee; Insurance/ Joseph Day, Dan Ting, Lee Wood; Intellectual Property & Licensing/ Jason Chen, Peter Dernbach, Jeffrey Harris, Vincent Shih; Manufacturing/ Thomas Fan, Hans Huang; Marketing & Distribution/ Wei Hsiang, Gordon Stewart; Medical Devices/ Susan Chang, Tse-Mau Ng, Dan Silver; Pharmaceutical/ Margaret E. Driscoll, David Lin, Jun Hong Park; Private Equity/ William Bryson; Public Health/ Jeffrey Chen, Dennis Lin; Real Estate/ Tony Chao; Retail/ Prudence Jang, Douglas Klein, Ajit Nayak; Sustainable Development/ Kenny Jeng, Kernel Wang; Tax/ Cheli Liaw, Jenny Lin, Josephine Peng; Technology/ Revital Golan, Scott Meikle, Jeanne Wang; Telecommunications & Media/ Thomas Ee, Joanne Tsai, Ken Wu; Transportation/ Michael Chu; Travel & Tourism/ Anita Chen, Pauline Leung, Achim v. Hake.

36 Taiwan’s ubiquitous Foot massage Parlors

Although the practice is steeped in Chinese tradition, the most famous practitioner is a Swiss Priest, “Father Wu.”

By Steven Crook

40 The Huashan and Songshan Artistic Parks

photo : tourism bureau

Cultural developments bring renewal to central Taipei

By Abraham Gerber cover photo : rich matheson

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july 2014 • Volume 44 n umbe r 7

Cover SPonS or

ever rich Duty Free Dedicated to promoting Taiwan tourism

photo : tourism bureau

44 48 HourS In TAIPeI

The city offers a blend of convenience, culture, natural beauty, and great food.

By Joe Seydewitz

48 Tourism boom brings new Hotels

The latest developments include the opening of the Mandarin Oriental and preparations by the Marriott to enter the market.

By Jane Rickards

52 Three Guys, Two beers, one Dream

Repoint and Steve’s Brew are on a mission to bring American-style craft beers to the Taiwan market.

By Timothy Ferry

Travel retail corporation Ever Rich, 100% Taiwanese invested, imports goods directly from original brand makers for its retail outlets in Taiwan. With 6,000 highly trained employees, Ever Rich’s duty-free shops have a long track record of serving domestic and foreign travelers while contributing to the distinct character of Taiwan’s international airport terminals. Operation sites include downtown pre-order centers in Taipei, along with renowned facilities in Terminal 1 and 2 of the Taoyuan International Airport, as well as the Kaohsiung, Songshan, Taichung, and Hualien Airports and the Keelung Harbor passenger terminal. In recent years, Ever Rich has taken a more active role in promoting tourism on the offshore islands by investing in Kinmen, Penghu, Green Island and others. In Kinmen especially, Taiwan’s “Golden Gate,” Ever Rich just soft-opened the biggest duty-free shopping mall in Asia, which will soon be connected to Kinmen’s first ever 5-star hotel, due to open by the end of this year.

But Ever Rich doesn’t stop with simply promoting Taiwan’s tourism industry; the company is also a strong participant in comprehensive planning aimed at improving public infrastructure. Ever Rich has won the Public Construction Commission’s “Golden Thumb Award” many times on the strength of its excellent work in airport planning and operations. Ever Rich was also honored to receive the “Taiwan Tourism Special Contribution Award” from President Ma Ying-Jeou in 2013. Ever Rich’s “corporate social responsibility report” has been recognized by Bureau Veritas, earning Ever Rich the distinction of being the first corporation in Taiwan’s retail industry, and the first duty-free shop in the world, to achieve this recognition. The core value of Ever Rich founder Simon Chiang is “serving the interests of society and the general public.” This includes encouraging employees to take part in community service activities, and the company has been recognized for its efforts with a “National Public Service Award” for profitseeking enterprises. Ever Rich remains among the most active companies in Taiwan for engaging in corporate social responsibility.

昇恆昌免稅商店 推廣台灣觀光產業不遺餘力 昇恆昌為100%國人所投資設立得免稅商店，所有商品皆買自原廠，自 行培訓近六千名員工。昇恆昌長期服務國內外旅客，打造具特色的台灣國 門機場。營運據點目前有台北市區預售中心民權店、位於內湖的昇恆昌免 稅廣場、桃園國際機場第一、二航廈、高雄機場、松山、台中、及花蓮機 場與基隆港等。近年更積極推廣離島觀光，投資金門、澎湖及綠島。尤其 是今年5月展開試營運的金門昇恆昌金湖廣場，是全亞洲最大的市區免稅 購物中心，此購物廣場結合電影院，更將與2014年底即將完工的金門第 一座五星級飯店連結，期望將金門觀光旅遊提升到新的層面。

PHOTO : MANDARIN ORIENTAL HOTEL

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除了商業服務外，昇恆昌亦全方位規劃改善機場服務設施，多次以機 場經營規劃案獲得行政院公共工程委員會頒發金擘獎的殊榮肯定。2013 年更獲馬總統頒發「臺灣觀光特別貢獻獎」做為嘉勉。2014年5月也得到 法國BV集團頒發企業社會責任認證，為全球第一家免稅店獲此殊榮。創 辦人江松樺先生的經營核心理念為「以人為本，社會公益導向，利益大 眾」，專注本業之餘也率領員工從事公益慈善等活動，是臺灣積極落實企 taiwan business topics • june 2014 5 業社會責任的公益企業。

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Chairman M.C. Ho and Dr. Henry Chu

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from which the body produces more specialized cells and tissue. An embryo at first is composed entirely of stem cells, but the stem cells gradually differentiate as the body matures, becoming either tissue and or mature stem cells of differing levels of potency and specialization. Together, they serve as the natural repair system for the body. “Scientists have found that when we are injured and as we age, stem cells from our bone marrow repair us,” says Dr. Henry Chu, General Manager of Enhance Biomedical and Superintendent of Full Life Clinic, local companies that collaborate with Sino Cell. These cells are an important source of hope that advances can be found to tackle previously hard-totreat illnesses such as heart disease, arthritis, and many neurological and degenerative conditions.

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Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine found that the function of the stem cells of mice with progenia were impaired compared with those of young normal

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mice, but when progenic mice were injected with stem cells from healthy mice they lived three times as long, at the same time delaying many symptoms of old age. “This leads us to think that healthy cells secrete factors to create an environment that helps correct the dysfunction present in the native stem cell population and aged tissue,” wrote Dr. Laura Niedernhofer, one of the senior investigators on the University of Pittsburgh team, in an article about the project published in Science Daily. “In a culture dish experiment, we put young stem cells close to, but not touching, progeria stem cells, and the unhealthy cells functionally improved.”

Because using one’s own stem cells is the safest way to pursue therapy, the collection and storage of these stem cells while one is young and healthy could be crucial for enjoying the full benefits of stem cell therapy. For this reason, Sino Cell has begun to provide storage services for the stem cells found in peripheral blood. “From our experience, which has included the storage of stem cells from elderly clients, we’ve found that it’s most effective to store the stem cells of healthy young people,” says M.C. Ho. “In the future, when you need to use stem cells, it is

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these stem cells that will have the best quality and viability.”

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“If there is an earthquake that cuts off electricity, they have their own electrical generator, and the lab doors will hermetically seal like submarine doors in the event of a flood.”

Sino Cell is confident that its work will contribute substantially to the health of future generations. “Cell treatment is the trend of the future” said Dr. Chu. “Therefore we are very enthusiastic and optimistic about the future benefit of this therapy for humanity.”

Sino Cell Technologies Inc. 11F, 17 BoAi Road, Taipei 100, Taiwan Tel: 0800-565-588#229

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Strong Growth Potential for Adventure Travel Taiwan is a great place for cycling tours, paragliding, birding, scuba diving, and treks into the mountains to visit remote Aboriginal villages.

BY TIMOTHY FERRY

A

chance English teaching gig and a thirst for adventure brought Cam McLean to Taiwan more than a decade ago. While looking for opportunities after working in construction management, the rangy New Zealander was searching for a way to bring together his passion for outdoor sports and his need for a new career, when he happened upon 8

a video of some daredevil mountain bikers on Hsinchu County’s rugged Stone Deer Trail. Inspired, he rode that same trail with some friends, all veteran bikers.

The group was so impressed with Taiwan’s backcountry – fast, winding trails, sheer drops, grueling ups and downs – that one of his friends remarked: “There’s a business opportunity here.”

PhoTo : T ouriSm bureAu

Ten years later, McLean is the owner of InMotionAsia (www.inmotionasia. com), one of Taiwan’s top cycling tour companies, offering 5-star cycling tours catering to a well-heeled clientele of multinational executives, mostly expats living in Asia. McLean notes that while his customer base is fairly small, clients are willing to pay more for the experience of a lifetime cycling Taiwan’s acclaimed mountain roads. As he observes: “If someone is going to pay money to go overseas for a cycling tour, they’re pretty serious about cycling.”

McLean has done well in a growing niche market – “adventure travel” – which encompasses everything from kayaking and scuba diving to mountain climbing and paragliding. The Seattlebased Adventure Travel Trade Association (ATTA) says adventure travel is one of the fastest growing tourist sectors in the world; ATTA’s Adventure Tourism Market Report 2013 notes that the sector’s revenue increased from US$89 billion in 2009 to US$263 billion in

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ExtrEmE tourism 2012, an average annual growth rate of 65%. The report surveyed travelers from Europe and the Americas, an estimated 69% of the total travel market (ATTA says it will include Asian travelers in the next market report), and found that 42% cited an adventure activity as the main focus of their travels.

Centrally located in East Asia, Taiwan is in many ways a Goldilocks region for travel. According to Malcom Vargas, an American paragliding instructor and long-term Taiwan resident, Taiwan represents a middle ground between expensive, overdeveloped Japan and less-developed S o u t h e a s t A s i a n n a t i o n s . “ Ta i w a n strikes a happy medium without being mediocre,” he writes. Taiwan’s Search and Rescue teams are experienced and responsive, he assures, while Medi-evac and medical services are also first class.

Equipment for adventure sports is readily available and competitively priced, and instruction is offered year-round for air, land, and water sports. He adds that transportation, banking, and telecom services, as well as other amenities, are ubiquitous. “You really have to struggle to get lost in Taiwan,” he writes.

South African Eddie Viljoen, founder of adventure travel firm Green Island Adventures, emphasizes that local Taiwanese are “very friendly and eager to help guests,” and that, “everyone can speak a little English.” Taiwan is also “very, very safe,” an important consideration for female travelers, who make up the bulk of his customers. “It’s also very gay friendly,” Viljoen adds.

Tot Foster, founder of Taiwan-based Bamboo Trails (www.bambootrails. com) summed it up in an email: “Big yet accessible mountains (with good quality roads), beautiful mountain streams, remote beaches, decent waves, and hot springs galore, all contained in an island less than 300 miles long and 100 miles wide!” She notes: “Intact aboriginal culture and friendly people add to the experience.”

Gifted with tall, jagged mountain ranges, lush rainforests, sound infrastructure, and traditional Chinese and Aboriginal culture, Taiwan would seem like a choice destination for this growing slice of the tourism pie.

So why isn’t Taiwan a more popular destination in the adventure travel sector?

One reason is that while adventure travel at this point is most in demand among travelers from Europe and the Americas, Taiwan’s name recognition in these markets is poor. Most Westerners don’t know Taiwan from Thailand, and if they do, are generally under the impression that Taiwan is an industrial wasteland.

“Most people’s first thoughts on Taiwan are of industry and troubled relations with China, so selling the idea that there are huge and beautiful wilderness areas can be tough,” admits Foster. “Ten years ago I had to see it for myself before I believed it.”

In 2013, only around a quarter of the 414,060 visitors from the United States came to Taiwan as tourists; the ratio among the 223,062 visitors from Europe was similar. South America is another important source of adventure tourists, but arrivals from Latin America to Taiwan are in the mere thousands every year.

Any market in Taiwan catering to Westerners seems bound to be a niche activity, especially when compared with the masses of Asian – particularly Chinese – tourists flooding into Taiwan.

Rather than courting well-heeled Westerners, Taiwan has made a big play for the other recent big story in global tourism: the Chinese tourist. China is now the single biggest source of tourists and tourist dollars in the world; according to the United Nations World Tourism Organization, China’s 100 million tourists spent a

total of US$129 billion in 2013, a 26% increase over the previous year.

With close proximity and a shared culture, language, and history, it’s no surprise that Taiwan decided to develop the China market. Once rules were loosened in July 2008, the number of Chinese visitors surged, from just under one million to over 2.87 million in 2013. The vast majority of them – 2.26 million – identified as tourists.

Taiwan’s Tourism Bureau has not stopped with just the China market.

Since 2008, it has initiated a number of programs to increase the overall number of visitors to Taiwan. Traveler arrivals have nearly doubled since then, from 4.4 million in 2008 to over eight million in 2014, with 72% of these arrivals identified as tourists.

But many in the tourism industry feel that Taiwan is overly focused on big-bus, budget tours aimed at getting hordes of Chinese travelers into a few hotspots, while ignoring the huge potential Taiwan has for developing the more diffuse, lowimpact adventure travel segment.

“Travel agencies generally work on a high-volume, low-margin business model,” observes American and longtime Taiwan resident Cheryl Robbins, founder of Tribe Asia, a travel agency and online retailer specializing in Taiwanese aboriginal tours and handicrafts (www.tribe-asia.com). “But right now what we need is a low-volume, highprofit model.”

Such a model is exactly what several

Malcolm Vargas, paragliding pilot and instructor, demonstrates some techniques of paragliding. photo : puli Flight school

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ExtrEmE tourism expat-owned firms are already doing.

Recognizing the difficulty of selling Taiwan directly to Western markets, they are instead courting expats already in Asia.

As Robbins notes, Western expats in Asia have “seen the touristy places – they want a unique experience that they can go home and brag about.” Taiwan can offer those unique experiences. Below are some of the adventure travel activities that are readily available at Taiwan’s seaside, mountains, forests, and rivers.

Paragliding When a foreigner in Taiwan mentions paragliding, the name Malcolm Vargas invariably comes up. Vargas (email: heart_of_taiwan@yahoo.com) has been in Taiwan for more than two decades and is something of a paragliding evangelist, having written the world’s first comprehensive Chinese-language paragliding training manual. He also offers training lessons, and is the only instructor in Taiwan certified by the U.S. Hang Gliding and Paragliding Association (USHPA). Paragliding is similar to parachuting, but instead of jumping out of an aircraft, paragliders simply run off the top of mountains or cliffs, allowing wind currents to lift them in the air for what are often lengthy and far-roaming flights. Crazy as it might sound, paragliding is gaining in popularity in Taiwan, due in no small measure to the efforts of Vargas and other enthusiasts. Vargas says

that he hopes “to open a new paragliding site every year in Taiwan,” with operators trained to offer safe, professional “tandem” sessions, in which a rider is harnessed to a paragliding pilot for the flight.

The tall peaks of Puli Township in central Taiwan’s Nantou County, 17 kilometers from Sun Moon Lake where Vargas is based, have become something of a paragliding center for Taiwan. Vargas works with another expat-owned adventure travel firm, Step Out in Taiwan (www.paraglidetaiwan.4t.com), to provide rides and lessons for would-be paragliders. Step Out in Taiwan is joined in Puli by Outdoors Taiwan (www.outdoorstaiwan.com), another expat-owned paragliding venture featuring pilots Karlis Juanpetrovics from Latvia and Tim Stahl from the United States. Green Island Adventures, more often associated with scuba diving, likewise offers paragliding in Puli. Closer to Taipei, Feitsui Wan is another popular location for paragliding.

Prices for paragliding flights generally fall between NT$2,000 and NT$3,000 for 20-30 minutes in Puli, with no training necessary if doing a tandem flight. Vargas also offers lessons for NT$20,000 for 4-5 weekends or 7-8 consecutive days.

Scuba diving According to Nigel Anderson, certified scuba instructor and owner of the ScuBar (www.scubar.com.tw) in Fulong District,

New Taipei City, high levels of maritime biodiversity make Taiwan one of the world’s top dive destinations. Anderson notes that overfishing over the decades has reduced wildlife populations, but the establishment of maritime national parks such as Kenting’s protected zone and the banning of fishing near Green Island have allowed fish populations to recover, to the great benefit of the environment and scuba divers. Sport Diver magazine agrees, having placed Green Island’s “Big Mushroom” coral formation at the top of its “Iconic Dives” in the Asia Pacific list in 2013. Southern Taiwan offers the best diving in Taiwan, with Orchid Island, Green Island, and Kenting topping the list. Scuba divers in Taiwan can see several unique species such as the flying gunard, the highly venomous sea krait snakes, and exceptional coral formations.

G r e e n I s l a n d A d v e n t u r e s ( w w w. greenislandadventures.com), well established in the south of Taiwan on Green Island, offers diving package tours from between NT$2,000-NT$2,500 per person. The firm says that if divers have logged 50 “advance dives,” Green Island will even lead them to dive with hammerhead sharks.

While scuba diving is well established in the south, particularly Kenting, Canadian Nigel Anderson is trying to establish a diving scene in the north, at the popular beach town of Fulong. Based at his new ScuBar, a scuba-diving themed bar-restaurant, he offers tours and dive training at nearby dive sites. For absolute beginners, Anderson even offers trial instruction in the Songshan Sports Center’s five-meter-deep pool for as little as NT$900 per lesson.

Aboriginal culture

PhoTo : kAT iA chen

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Cheryl Robbins of tour organizer Tribe-Asia works with a local travel agency to develop itineraries for foreigners looking to travel to indigenous areas in Taiwan, which is both fascinating for the tourists and economically beneficial to the tribes. Taiwan’s Aboriginals are considered the ancestors of all Austronesian cultures, and as such are of considerable interest to tourists from Oceanic nations such as New Zealand. Also, unlike the

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ExtrEmE tourism

photo : c heryl robbins

United States where access to American Indian reservations is often extremely difficult to obtain, Taiwan’s Aboriginals welcome visitors. “In Taiwan, (Aboriginal villages) are completely accessible and completely hospitable,” Robbins says.

“The people are very generous.”

A resident of Taiwan for over 20 years, Robbins has earned certification as a qualified tour guide, one of only a handful of foreigners to do so. Most of the villages she recommends are remote, isolated from the mainstream economy.

Tourism generates business opportunities that allow local residents to remain in their villages instead of seeking jobs in the cities, thus helping to maintain the cohesiveness of their societies. Still, recognizing the need to respect the ways of the Aboriginal tribes, she keeps her tours small scale. “If it grows too much, it will be like Thailand, where people don’t want to let you into their lives,” she says. Instead, she caters to high-end tourists who “buy the handicrafts, stay in the local minzu [bed-and-breakfast], hire local guides, and are respectful of the culture and environment.”

Birding Birdwatching (also known as birding) might conjure images of elderly people leisurely strolling around parklands with binoculars, but according to Richard Foster, this image couldn’t be further from reality. He says that the birders he guides around Taiwan are dedicated – even driven – to ticking off as many bird species as possible in their field guides, and are willing to endure nearly any deprivation to do so. He refers to the movie A Perfect Year, starring Jack Black, Steve Martin,

and Owen Wilson as competitive birders, to describe the single-mindedness of birders to see as many species as possible.

Foster must endure hardship right alongside them, suffering cold and rain in the uplands and extreme heat and humidity in lowland forests, working 18-20 hour days driving, hiking, and mountain climbing to lead these birding devotees to their quarry.

Having been involved in bird guiding for several years, and with excellent command of Chinese, he leads both Asian and Western birding tours and notes some interesting differences between the groups. Asians, as per stereotype, always want a photo, but Western birders simply look, tick the box on their guide, and move on. “They seem to attach very little emotional significance to it,” he observes.

“It’s a bit strange.”

Originally from Northern Ireland, Foster has been in Taiwan for over 20 years and has created a significant presence in the birding world. Birding has become more popular around the world, and the competitive element means that serious birders have to come to Taiwan, as the island hosts a number of endemic species (meaning they are found only in Taiwan) such as the Formosan WhistlingThrush, Swinhoe’s Pheasant, Taiwan Partridge, and Formosan Magpie. Foster manages the blog Birding Taiwan (www. birdingtaiwan.blogspot.tw) and is also the owner and manager of Taiwan Ecotours, based in Tainan (TaiwanEcotours@ gmail.com). Foster’s website says that he guides ecotours throughout mostly southern Taiwan as well as Penghu, Kinmen, Matsu, and Kenting. Most tours are 10-days long and cost around US$2,000, including meals, accommodations, entrance fees, and transport. He stresses

photo : richard Foster

that there are no additional “surprise” costs. Most tours have 2-6 participants and get to see around 200 species. Foster also offers 1-day tours on the outskirts of Taipei for US$200.

These are only a handful of the possibilities offered in Taiwan for adventure travel. Bicycling is very popular, including extended tours in Taiwan’s mountain roads, as the success of McLean’s InMotionAsia reflects. Mountain trekking is also becoming increasingly popular, and several companies offer extended treks into Taiwan’s Central Mountain range.

For example, Bamboo Tours offers 18and 14-day tours of Taiwan for small groups of four to five people.

With Taiwan’s high quality of life, political stability, and clean air, the island looks like an increasingly winning vacation destination, especially in contrast to many congested and heavily polluted East Asian cities. For example, at the Challenge Taiwan triathlon, one of the premier sporting events in Asia, held in eastern Taiwan’s Taitung County, Chinabased expat competitors expressed admiration and envy for their Taiwan-based counterparts on the quality of Taiwan’s training environment. Between the traffic and the pollution, several noted, China will likely kill the avid triathlete, and most were forced to do all of their training indoors.

While the indicators look good for growth, whether the local industry invests the resources to transform Taiwan into a world-class destination for adventure travel remains to be seen, but insiders are optimistic. McLean’s sentiment is echoed by other expat industry players when he says, “I believe that Taiwan has huge potential in this kind of tourism.” taiwan business topics • july 2014

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Perhaps the best way to enjoy the scenic hills around Taipei is on a bicycle. photo : aleXanDeR MaRtin

Taipei by Bike – A Day’s Escape The city and its environs offer plenty of options for cyclists, whether on riverside paths or along the hillsides.

BY ALEXANDER MARTIN

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aipei is blessed with excellent public transportation, including an extensive mass rapid transit (MRT) network as well as an efficient bus system. But more and more residents of the city are also choosing to get around by bicycle – either as part of a daily commute or for pure recreation.

Contributing to that trend is the YouBike program unveiled in November 2012 as a joint effort between Taipei City 12

Department of Transportation and Giant Bicycles. The launch of YouBike placed Taipei in an elite fraternity of international cities with bike share programs, including Paris, London, New York, and Chicago. With financial support from the government and a good maintenance system to keep the bikes in excellent condition, it didn’t take long before YouBikes became a regular fixture on Taipei’s streets.

The YouBike program has deserv-

edly enjoyed a warm reception among residents and tourists, thanks to its low rental fees and ease of use. Upon registration with an EasyCard, email address, and cellphone number, rental is free for the first 30 minutes, and NT$10 for each subsequent half hour up to four hours, after which the fee per half hour rises to NT$20. Bike rental stations are spread throughout the city and can be easily found using several freely available smartphone apps. The YouBike system has since spread to the city of Changhua in central Taiwan, and together with a similar system in Kaohsiung, it will serve as a model for future bike-share operations elsewhere in Taiwan.

The Youbike program marks only the most recent stage in a long-term romance between Taiwan and bicycles that began with the island’s economic recovery in the wake of World War II, when threewheeled pedicabs emerged as primary transportation devices. A growing proportion of bicycles and spare parts, once exclusively imported from Japan, were manufactured by domestic enterprises, and by the 1960s and 70s modernization in production methods had made the “iron horse” affordable and ubiquitous.

Giant Bicycles, the world’s largest bicycle manufacturer by revenue and Taiwan’s best-known bicycle brand, was founded in Taichung’s Dajia District in 1972, and helped Taiwan to surpass Japan as the world’s biggest bicycle-exporting country. Thanks to the promotional efforts of Giant and other Taiwanese bicycle producers, recreational cycling enjoyed a rise in popularity during the 1990s and 2000s, prompting city and local governments across Taiwan to designate and promote bicycle paths and routes. Dramatic scenes from the movie Island Etude, perhaps combined with the economic slump of the worldwide recession of 2009, drove a surge in biking, as many chose to save on fuel costs by forgoing weekend road trips in favor of joining a pack of amateur riders on jaunts to nearby parks. While biking has somewhat plateaued in popularity, its legacy survives in the forms of cycling clubs, rest stops at police stations, the

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Biking YouBike initiative, independent bike rental centers, and designated cycling routes around the city.

Anyone who has ever taken a stroll along one of the rivers that pass through Taipei and New Taipei City has likely experienced Taiwan’s extensive network of cycling paths. The network runs almost completely uninterrupted by road traffic all the way from the Taipei Zoo in the southeast to Tamsui in the northwest, from Tucheng and Banqiao in the southwest to Nangang in the northeast.

The network also has a trailhead near the National Palace Museum in Shilin, and an exit immediately adjacent to the Xindian MRT Station. When the situation calls for a quick escape from the city, nothing can quite beat the sheer convenience of hopping on a YouBike, which comes with an adjustable seat and three gears, for a leisurely spin along the river.

Unfortunately, on weekends the bike paths are almost as congested as Taipei’s streets, but with the added hazard of badly behaved dogs darting in the way.

Some suggested routes Taipei’s riverside bike paths offer many wonderful vistas, access to a significant portion of the city’s parkland, and convenient points of entry to other excellent bicycle routes along public roads open to motor traffic. Some recommended routes – avoiding busy traffic conditions when possible – are detailed below.

As Youbikes are generally too heavy for going up slopes, riders on hillier routes

jingmei

should instead choose to rent from one of the private bike-rental stations located at points along the Tamsui and Keelung Rivers as well as the Xindian and Jingmei Creeks. They offer full-day rentals of basic mountain bikes for around NT$300 per bike, plus or minus NT$40 depending on whether you choose to return the bike at the station from which you rented it or at another station in the chain. Most of these stations open at 8 a.m. and close at 9 p.m., with further details available through a simple internet search.

The Giant store (432 Minsheng West Rd., Tel: 02-2556-7630), located next to the Tamsui River at Dadaocheng Pier (大稻城碼頭), also offers day rent-

photo : touR isM buRe au

als. For those interested in renting for several days at a time, the Giant stores at 278 Nanjing East Rd. Sec. 3 (Tel: 02-8771-4045, near the Nanjing East Road MRT) and 309 Dunhua North Rd. (Tel: 02-2716-0421, near the Zhongshan Junior High School MRT, specializing in women’s bikes) offer bicycles designed for long-distance touring – they can be fitted with panniers to carry gear – at NT$1,200 for three days. Stripe Magic, an independent bike shop, is also located near the Nanjing East Road MRT (No. 1, Lane 36, Fuxing North Rd., Tel: 02-2731-4435).

If you’re starting from the city center, ride south on Fuxing South Road under the elevated Wenhu (Brown) MRT line and turn left at Heping East Road. Stay under the elevated rails as they curve east. A few blocks later you will see Liuzhangli MRT Station. Bear right, and immediately after crossing the intersection with Keelung Road, stop to cross Heping East Road at the corner in front of the entrance to Liuzhangli Station. Follow the arrow onto Chongde Street and proceed straight through a blinking caution light, a traffic signal and an intersection, marked with a sign indicating Lanes 146 and 157 of Chongde Street, to begin a 20 to 30-minute long gentle ascent through a public cemetery with fantastic views of Taipei and its Zoo. taiwan business topics • july 2014

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Biking In the late Qing dynasty, this route, formerly known as Liuzhangli Street, was used by farmers to transport tea from the area now known as Muzha to Taipei’s bustling Dadaocheng Market.

After the Second World War, high officials and military officers appropriated the surrounding land, deemed to possess favorable geomantic properties, for use as a graveyard. The tomb of Chiang Weishui (蔣渭水), a prominent figure in the domestic resistance movement against Japanese rule, can be reached by a path leading from the road.

For those who choose to take the riverside route, head south from Gongguan along the riverbank and, after passing baseball fields on your right, you will come upon a fork. Right leads to Xindian and the southern terminus of the riverside bikeway, where – after a simple crossing of the Bitan pedestrian bridge adjacent to the MRT station and a brief climb up Yongye Road – a wonderful three-hour loop of moderate difficulty in the backwoods south of Xindian awaits. Follow

Xizhi

The monument to the Luku Incident of 1952, in which alleged Communist collaborators in the vicinity were rounded up and executed. photo : aleXanDeR MaRtin

Xintan Road, Section 1 to Xiaokeng 1st Road and then on to Pingguang Road Sections 1 and 2. Remember to bear left and descend when Xintan Road Section 2 branches off and ascends behind a concrete retaining wall, and to make a right at the “T” intersection a couple of kilometers later. Mapping software, particularly cycleroute.org, can be helpful when planning your ride.

The left path from the fork follows Jingmei Creek east to Taipei Zoo. Use either of two bridges, one at approximately the 3.5-kilometer mark, the other at about 1.5 kilometers, to cross to the creek’s opposite (right) bank. (Alternatively, stay on the surface road after crossing at the second, Daonan Bridge, and after passing through National Chengchi University, you can reach Mao-

kong and its wealth of teahouses after a brisk climb of about an hour). The end of the Jingmei Creek path opens onto a wide street full of tour buses parked below the Taipei Zoo MRT Station; head left (against traffic, ride slowly or stay on the sidewalk) and, after passing the Muzha MRT depot, swing a right onto Muzha Road, then take the next left, less than 100 meters down the road.

If the beach is more your style, simply continue on Muzha Road, which becomes Route 106, and after about 30 kilometers turn right onto Provincial Highway 2C (denoted as “2丙” in blue) near the town of Shifen. From Shifen, another hour or so of flat riding and you’ll be sprawled on the shimmering sands of Fulong, with train service back to Taipei available for true beach bums.

photo : touRisM buReau

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Biking

photo : aleXanDeR MaRtin

For those who skipped the beach to make the left turn, a recycling collection point gives way to a park popular among model airplane hobbyists. Soon the climb flattens, and in a few minutes you’ll arrive at Chongde Street from the opposite direction. The passage to Nangang on Section 4 of Academia Road beckons from behind a hill.

Take a moment to admire the scenery and ensure that all brakes are in working order, then commence the descent down Academia Road leading to Academia Sinica. On the way down, take care to avoid small protruding “cat eyes” embedded in the pavement, especially if you’ve left your spare tire/tube at home. When the China University of Science and Technology is behind you, take a right and stay on Academia Road through several traffic lights until you arrive at a “T” intersection. Left leads to Nangang and the eastern terminus of Taipei’s bike path complex, while right takes you onto Jiuzhuang Street, the start of a more substantial challenge. Before taking the latter route, riders are advised to make a brief rest stop.

Jiuzhuang Street leads up a hill, about seven kilometers long, with banners planted at regular intervals advertising a tea plantation just short of the crest. Skip the plantation (it’s packed with tourists) and continue a short distance to the top of the hill, where there is a monument to the Luku Incident of 1952, in which Kuomintang forces rounded up and executed many in the vicinity suspected of collaborating in the staging of an armed insurgency by alleged Taiwanese Communists.

Directly behind the monument, turn left onto Xiding Road and take in the marvelous scenery on offer.

If lunchtime has not yet passed, consider a visit to the Wenshan Tea Shop (No. 11, Lane 375, Xiding Road; sign only in Chinese), which serves a variety of delicious Taiwanese dishes, with many ingredients sourced from local farmers.

Now fully sated, and perhaps laden with a few packages of the area’s finest Baozhong (包種) tea, continue descending along Xiding Road into Xizhi District.

Several large apartment blocks signal that you’ve returned to civilization, and after a gated driveway flashes past on the left, the road narrows before spilling onto a two-lane street. Before crossing the small stream ahead, make a sharp left and follow Nanxing Road to its intersection with Provincial Highway 5 (新台五路一 段); go straight through the traffic light and find 5A (5甲) at the next intersection.

After a ride of more than 20 kilometers from the top of Chongde St., a decision awaits: turn right (and ride a few blocks) to find TRA Xizhi Station, and a comfortable train ride home, or maintain a straight course on Xiwan Road, which over 15 more kilometers leads straight to one of the peaks of Yangmingshan. The breathtaking views from this mountain route almost demand a backdrop of an afternoon or setting sun. Take a right at the coffee shop near the viewing platform, then a left shortly thereafter at the stone monument. Soon you’ll be at Fengguizui (風櫃嘴), with a breezy descent back into Taipei via the National Palace

Museum, illuminated along its entirety by streetlamps.

Taipei’s riverside bike path network can be accessed from behind a park located about a kilometer past the Museum on the right. From there the remaining challenge is to navigate the riverside paths – and perhaps to decide what to eat after such a tremendous ride.

Fengguizui

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Now cleaned up and revitalized, Taipei's rivers are once again the lifeblood of the city. phoTo : TouRism buREau

Exploring Taipei’s Riversides Behind the levees, riverfronts offer an oasis of tranquility in the center of greater Taipei.

BY ABRAHAM GERBER

F

ang H u i - C h e n , a u t h o r o f t h e recently published Chinese-language book Rivers, describes the Taipei riverfront of her youth as “a place that felt somehow dangerous in its desolation.”

“Taipei is a city where there are rivers on all sides,” said Fang in an interview.

“Yet while growing up, I didn’t feel at all close to the rivers,” even though her home was located right next to a levee.

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For that sense of separation, she blames the levees erected after 1949, which served to cut off the surrounding city from the riverside. The result, observes Fang, is that the riversides became a place “where people wouldn’t normally go, because no one was there.”

Considering Taipei’s geography and history, Fang’s description of “desolation” is striking. Taipei lies in a basin fed by the Tamsui River and its tributaries

Riverside parks offer an ideal vantage point to observe Taipei's annual Dragon Boat Race along the Keelung River. phoTo : TouRism buREau

the Dahan, Xindian, and Keelung Rivers.

Historically, the city grew up nourished by the commerce that coursed through its maritime arteries – at least until the Tamsui River silted up in the late 19th century. Taipei was once a busy river port whose wharfs at Dadaocheng and Mengjia in modern day Wanhua District were the heart of the young city’s life.

After Taiwan’s first railways were established and the Tamsui River gradually became impassable to large vessels, Taipei’s rivers were no longer central to the city’s commerce. As the city developed, the danger of flooding became

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Ta i p e i R i v e R s i d e

a threat as the emerging metropolis sprawled up and down the river banks. A series of levees were created to keep river waters away from homes and factories, and the rivers that had once sustained Taipei became unsightly and malodorous victims of pollution.

In recent years, however, the rivers have been making a comeback, following strenuous government efforts to clean up the water and develop the riversides with an interlocking network of biking trails and green spaces that enable city residents to once again enjoy their proximity to Taiwan’s rivers.

Cycling paths Biking is perhaps the quickest way to experience Taipei’s riverfront. Cyclists can now ride over more than 112 kilometers of such riverside trails in the greater Taipei area, reports Ho Shui-hua, a section chief in the Taipei city government’s Public Works Department.

This project was carried out in the interest of road safety while accommodating the rapid increase in recreational cycling in recent years. As long as there was sufficient space between the riverbank and levee, the width of all bicycle paths was doubled and additional sections were added to separate bicycle from foot traffic. In addition, sections of the trail were rerouted to bring them closer to the riverfront, and while previously certain portions of the trail required riders to move onto the highway, cyclists now can enjoy an uninterrupted ride

along the scenic waterside. To aid in medical or other emergencies, the government has also installed over 6,000 lanterns along the pathways, as well as posting signs enabling riders to identify their location on the trail to police or medical personnel. Ho notes that while the paths were mainly used during daylight hours in the past, today the heaviest use is during the evening.

As a result of these improvements, rentals at Taipei’s riverside bike-rental stations have increased by 46% over the last two years, logging over 360,000 individual rentals in 2013 (not including those of the city’s separate YouBike system). Taipei City’s riverside rental network was integrated with that of New Taipei City in April of this year, allowing cyclists to rent and return bicycles anywhere among the some 25 bicycle service stations sprinkled over the greater Taipei riverside. Unlike the city’s YouBike system, these rental stations offer a wide range of free services including free helmet rental, free basic repair services for all trail riders, free drinking water, and free first aid. In addition, they offer a broad range of bicycle models, including mountain bikes, children’s bicycles, tandems, and even hand-powered bicycles for the disabled. Rates range from NT$15 to NT$60 per hour.

Riverside parks Taipei’s bike trails weave through a system of 28 riverside parks, each showing a different facet of Taiwan’s riverside.

Taipei's riverside parks provide welcome places to enjoy scenery and sunshine. phoTo : TouRism buREau

While many of these parks are confined to narrow strips of land between river and levee, major parks such as Guting and Yingfeng feature spacious green lawns that make them ideal for picnicking or other activities. Even though these parks are kept meticulously clean and offer a full range of facilities, vast expanses of space remain underused, making many of the parks islands of tranquility.

Guting Park located near Gongguan, for example, is like a walled garden sandwiched between the city and the Xindian River, with spans of meticulous green lawns, beyond which broad swathes of ivy cover the imposing levee that walls in the city. More than a riverfront park, it feels like a green oasis sheltered not only by the levee, but also by tall grasses and by trees that cut off views of the river from most spots. It is mainly empty during daylight hours, save for stray dogs and birdlife, with the greenery interrupted here and there by weathered basketball and tennis courts and other athletic facilities.

Bicyclists enjoy Taipei's extensive bike paths and scenic views along the banks of the Keelung River, in Yingfeng Park, near Songshan Airport. phoTo : TouRism buREau

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phoTo : TouRism buREau

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Ta i p e i R i v e R s i d e

In contrast, the Yingfeng Park north of the Songshan Airport is broad enough for visitors to forget the levee as they stroll along the waterfront. Here the Keelung River has been tamed, straightened in the early 1990s to prevent flooding, with the result that no trees or vegetation block access to the waterfront. While pools of water can make the waterside path slick and hazardous after a downpour, when dry it provides ideal access to reach the still waters below and to observe the beautiful murals decorating the other side of the river. Yet, while the park is spacious and well-kept, on the Monday night of this writer’s visit it was largely empty except for the occasional taxi driver taking a rest.

The solitude of many of Taipei’s riverside parks is surprising given the masses of people who live just on the other side of the levee. This embankment itself appears to be the central reason for the parks’ relative disuse. While the riverside parks should be urban oases, the imposing levees wall off this space from the surrounding city. In addition, unlike normal parks that are open on all sides, entrances to Taipei’s riverside parks are few and far between, making the parks inconvenient for pedestrians. For example, the walking distance of over 30 minutes between entrances left your correspondent feeling trapped when he wished to leave the Yingfeng Park. The impassability of the levees, compounded by the lack of public transportation in some locations, makes many sections of the park accessible only by bicycle or motorcycle.

Although large stretches of parkland remain underused, the city government is continuing to work to develop the

The Dadaocheng Ferry ends right next to Tamsui's Old Street District, with a great view of Guanyin Mountain just across the river. phoTo : abRaham GERbER

riverfront. At the Dajia Park located on the northern edge of the Songshan District, for example, it is installing numerous sculptures and murals. Another innovation is the Rainbow Bridge, a scarlet suspension bridge sloping across the Keelung River. Open exclusively to pedestrians and cyclists, the bridge’s illuminated silhouette has become a popular background for night photographs on Taipei’s waterfront.

The municipal government has also provided facilities for other means of experiencing Taipei’s riverside. In particular, the Huazhong Park has become home to some of Taipei’s best campgrounds, with space for over 300 tents and 33 trailers. The park is set to host

the International Camping Federation (F.I.C.C.) Asia Pacific Rally in October, participants of which will have the opportunity to attend a riverside concert, a National Day soiree, a Taipei city tour, and a Taiwan folk art show, among other activities.

Shezi Dao The development of parks along Taipei’s waterfront is viewed critically by some observers. “Many parts of Taipei’s riverfront preserve the countryside [of Taipei’s past],” says author Fang. “Don’t simply view the riverfront as a place for city-dwellers to ride bicycles and walk dogs.” For her, the riverfront should be experienced in its pristine natural state wherever possible.

Of these areas, the Shezi Dao peninsula provides perhaps the best place to observe Taipei’s past. This narrow strip of land between the Tamsui and Keelung Rivers, originally a sandbar before the area was gradually expanded by reclaiming land from the rivers, served as the Despite its industrial appearance, the low-lying Shezi Dao peninsula along Taipei's riverfront is actually prime mangrove habitat. phoTo : abRaham GERbER

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major source of Taipei’s fresh produce before the development of high-speed freeways. Because the low-lying peninsula is susceptible to flooding, construction in the area has been prohibited for over 40 years, turning it into a sort of time capsule of early 1970s Taipei. The landscape consists of two or three-story houses and factories interspersed among broad green fields.

Because the peninsula has been sheltered from the congestion of most of the rest of Taipei, it is home to extensive populations of wildlife, which can be observed from the bike trail encircling the peninsula. The Shezi Dao’s sandy soil, along with a constantly changing tidal mixture of sea and fresh water in the surrounding estuary, provides an ideal habitat for the mangroves that once lined Taipei’s rivers. The most common variety is known as “fountain pen plants” (水 筆仔) by locals for their prodigious penshaped seeds, which are shaped to allow them to drill directly into the riverbank’s soft soil.

These mangroves in turn provide an ideal habitat for many types of intertidal wildlife, particularly crabs, clams, and mudskippers – amphibious fish that use

their pectorals to move around in the mangrove swamps. Large numbers of these fish can be found hopping around Shezi Dao’s shoreline. Along with the shelter provided by the mangroves’ branches, their presence attracts a variety of birdlife, including numerous migratory species such as the great white egrets observable during the spring. Of the roughly 500 types of birds seen in Taiwan, over 100 can be found on Shezi Dao, making it one of best spots for birdwatching within Taipei city.

Dadaocheng ferry For those wishing to directly experience Taipei’s rivers, perhaps the best way is to take the ferry from the old wharf of Dadaocheng to Tamsui. Many of the buildings in the neighborhood surrounding the wharf date back to the 19th century, giving the visitor a glimpse of the time when Taipei was a major hub of the tea trade.

The river itself is placid and relatively clean, with no evidence of the trash and stench that used to repel those nearing its shores. The reduced water pollution has led to a significant increase in wildlife.

As Taipei's rivers have been cleaned up, ferries and pleasure boats once more ply the waterways.

For example, while only 15 species of fish were found to be present in the Tamsui River in 1982, today there are over 109 species – and a walk along the riverfront reveals occasional anglers. Out on the water, the absence of large boats and the relative scarcity of even small craft, makes it even quieter than the parks that line the banks.

The ferry winds past the low-lying houses of old Taipei before coming to Shezi Dao. It then passes the famous Guandu Temple before making its way up the estuary to end the voyage at Tamsui. Over its course, the ferry passes under four bridges – from the lowsloping red arches of the Guandu Bridge to the tall white peaks of the Chongyang Bridge – and also provides a great way to observe the connection between Taipei and its rivers. The ferry trip ends at Tamsui Old Street, at a convenient time for having dinner near the wharf before taking the MRT back to Taipei proper.

Tours run by CH Shipping (www. chshipping.com.tw/index.asp) set off from the Dadaocheng Wharf every Saturday and Sunday at 2 p.m. and arrive in Tamsui at 5 p.m.. Tickets are NT$290 for adults. Children are half price.

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phoTo : T ouRism buREau

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advertorial

Macau: A City with a Rich History to Explore

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acau is a small city but there is so much to see and experience, you really need to plan ahead to make sure you can take in as much as possible, including the numerous temples, many of them dating back hundreds of years. The backstreets and alleyways of Macau are relatively untouched by development – another reason why it will be helpful to map out your itinerary in advance.

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Explore Macau’s Streetscape Beyond Macau’s glamorous malls and grandiose hotels, many backstreets and alleyways faithfully retain their original flavor, providing visitors with a memorable taste of the city’s charming character.

The city’s distinctive road signs – white tiles highlighted by blue decorative ribbons that frame the name of the street in Chinese and Portuguese in the same blue color – reflect Macau’s East-meets-West nature. Many of these streets provide photo enthusiasts with visually rich materials highlighting the depth of the city’s heritage.

Take for example Rua da Felicidade (“The Street of Happiness”), one of Macau’s most iconic streets, made famous as the location for scenes in “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.” The street, lined with humble two-story houses with Chinese-style white facades and red shutters, is paved with granite slabs. Once Macau’s redlight district, it has been restored to become one of Macau’s key attractions, full of shops and restaurants.

Plenty of other interesting photo opportunities can be found in lesser known back streets and alleyways lined higgledy-piggledy with picturesque old houses or low-rise residential buildings.

The city’s undulating landscape makes the exploration of the streetscape more interesting.

Deities in Residence Before there were churches in Macau, there were temples. The most notable one, A-Ma Temple, even dates back to the Ming Dynasty, to 1488.

Naturally, A-Ma, the Goddess of the Sea, was the first deity to be honored, as fishermen from southern China began to settle in Macau in large numbers during the Ming Dynasty.

Since then, temples and shrines honoring different deities have sprung up in various parts of Macau. Today, there are dozens of temples in Macau – some ostentatious and others down-to-earth – devoted to nearly 100 different deities.

A-Ma Temple, within the Historic Center of Macau on Barra Hill, was

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advertorial

built well before the Portuguese began to settle here in 1557. A pair of stone lions greets visitors at the gate. The moon gate at the front façade, decorated with colorful wall sculptures and elaborate ornaments under the eaves, echoes the architectural characteristics of the various halls and pavilions lining the slope of the hill.

For those who believe in the Goddess of Mercy, the most important place of worship is Hun IamTong Te m p l e o n Av e n i d a d o C o r o n e l Mesquita. It is one of the biggest and wealthiest of Macau’s temples, with a huge entrance gate and roofs clustered with porcelain figures. Separated by open courtyards are richly decorated halls dedicated to the Precious Buddhas, the Buddha of Longevity, and Kun Iam, who is dressed in embroidered silk with a fringed crown that is changed every year. She is attended by 18 Buddhas on either side of the altar. In adjoining rooms are funeral chapels and scrolls honoring Kun Iam in pictures and calligraphy.

B e hin d th e te m p le a r e te r r a ce d

gardens. Within one garden is the stone table on which the first Sino-American treaty was signed on July 3, 1844, by the Viceroy of Canton Ki Ying and U.S. Minister Caleb Cushing. Nearby is the marble statue of a monk in an ornate pavilion, as well as four ancient banyan trees, with branches intertwined, which are collectively known as the Lovers’ Tree and are regarded as a symbol of marital fidelity.

Na T cha, the child god from Buddhist legends, made famous by the Chinese classic “Journey to the West,” is worshipped in the humble Na T cha Temple. Built in 1888, this small traditional Chinese temple stands close to the ruins of St. Paul’s Cathedral, the acclaimed 17th century Portuguese cathedral, presenting a dialectic of Western and Chinese ideals, as one of the best examples of Macau’s multicultural identity and religious freedom.

Regardless of one’s individual religious preferences, a visit to Macau’s ancient temples will give visitors an intimate understanding of the belief systems native to Macau.

For more details and free brochures, visit MGTO at 10F-C, 167 DunHua North Rd., Taipei 105, or go to the official MGTO website at www.macautourism.gov.mo.

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photo : R ich matheson

the long Road to identity Various groups have been seeking official recognition as indigenous tribes, some successfully and others not.

BY CHERYL ROBBINS

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ost Taiwanese grew up with the understanding that the island is home to nine indigenous tribes. The Formosan Aboriginal Cultural Village near Sun Moon Lake, in fact, is known in Chinese as the “Nine Tribes Cultural Village” and introduces the traditional way of life of nine different indigenous groups.

It has therefore been a bit puzzling to many people that the number of recognized tribes has been steadily increasing in recent years. Between 2001 and 2008, five tribes – the Thao, Kavalan, Sakizaya, Truku, and Sediq – received such recognition. And this year, the official number of recognized indigenous tribes has increased by another two – making a total of 16 – with the addition of the Kanakanavu and Hla’alua peoples. The official announcement came in June.

Upon hearing this news, a friend understandably remarked: “Why, all of a sudden, are there so many new tribes?”

The answer is that these tribes are not “new,” as their people have inhabited Taiwan for thousands of years. The recent increase in applications for official recognition can best be explained as the correction of past misclassifications.

Traditionally, Taiwan’s indigenous languages had no written text, and as a result the tribes history was not recorded but passed down orally. During their occupation of Taiwan from 1895 to 1945, the Japanese were the first to attempt systematic surveys of the indigenous peoples, but they were sometimes misled in their efforts due to language barriers or the consequence of historical events. For example, the Kavalan and Sakizaya peoples put up a resistance against Qing dynasty troops in the late 19th century and lost. Their leaders were killed and many survivors scattered into neighboring Amis villages, taking on Amis names and learning the Amis language, in an effort to hide themselves in case of reprisals. Thus, when the Japanese arrived, these tribes were lumped together with the Amis.

After studying the Kanakanavu and Hla’alua peoples living in the mountains of what is today greater Kaohsiung, the Japanese classified them together as the southern branch of the Tsou tribe found

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AboriginAl tribes mainly in Alishan Township of Chiayi County. This inaccuracy has remained on the books for many generations. Pi’i (also known by her Chinese name of Weng Mei-Ying), the secretary of the Kanakanavu Cultural, Educational and Industrial Development Association, notes that when she went to school, she was officially labeled as Tsou. But she remembers her grandparents and her father speaking in the Kanakanavu language, and she also recalls that there was very little contact with the Tsou in Alishan. Thus, even at a very young age, she felt that the tribal label did not quite fit.

More than two decades ago, the Kanakanavu and Hla’alua elders were invited to participate in a month-long program of cultural performances, along with the Tsou of Alishan, at the National Theater in Taipei. It was then that the differences became glaringly obvious.

Although the Kanakanavu and Hla’alua peoples had adopted the clothing of the Tsou, they discovered that their languages were so different that they could not understand one another. From this event

came the desire among both tribes to find their roots, though the effort would not be translated into real action until many years later.

The decision-making body for official recognition is the Council of Indigenous Peoples (CIP) of the Executive Yuan, the government authority responsible for overseeing all aspects of indigenous affairs. In ruling on applications received from different indigenous groups, the CIP considers such factors as ethnological classification, population distribution, history, culture, social organization, and traditional rites and ceremonies. In addition, the applicant group must have members who can speak the tribal language fluently and must be able to reproduce examples of their traditional attire. These conditions are verified by a research organization commissioned by the CIP. The Hla’alua filed their application for official recognition in May 2011, and the Kanakanavu followed in February 2012. A research team from National Chengchi University, appointed by the CIP to look into the merits of their cases,

concluded after a year-long investigation that these two tribes differed significantly from the Tsou. After consultation with the neighboring Bunun tribe to avoid territorial disputes, the CIP this March accepted the petitions for recognition and specified the territory over which each tribe would have sway.

Who are the Hla’alua?

According to Yiu Ren-Gui, a member of the Hla’alua Cultural and Educational Development Association, the Hla’alua once lived on Yushan (Jade Mountain).

Tribal legend says that a great flood occurred between 1,000 and 2,000 years ago, which forced the tribe to scatter.

Some of the Hla’alua moved eastward and found a place inhabited by a people who were short in stature, referred to by the Hla’alua as the Kavurua. The Hla’alua learned farming techniques from the Kavurua, which helped their population to increase, and they migrated again, following the Laonong River to arrive in today’s Gaozhong Village of Taoyuan

photo : Rich matheson

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AboriginAl tribes

One of the major ceremonies of the Kanakanavu tribe of southern Taiwan expresses gratitude for the fish and algae that are important components of the group's traditional diet. photo : R ich matheson

District in Kaohsiung. Other members of the tribe had moved to what is today’s Anping District of Tainan City, where they interacted with the Tsou tribe. When the Dutch began to occupy Anping about 400 years ago, the Hla’alua living in that area gradually retreated into the mountains, eventually also settling in Gaozhong Village.

Beginning about 100 years ago, the Bunun also were forced to move to Taoyuan District from other parts of Taiwan as a result of Japanese efforts to quell the tribe’s resistance efforts. The proportion of Hla’alua in the area’s population decreased. In addition, intermarriage became common because, according to the oral history of the tribe, the fertility rate of the Hla’alua was much higher when they intermarried with the Tsou or Bunun than when they married partners of their own tribe.

Today, the Hla’alua number more than 500, some 80% living in Taoyuan District and the rest in nearby Namaxia District.

From about 2000, the Hla’alua began to revive their culture, language, and traditional ceremonies and activities. A language classroom was established to assist in the effort. Currently, three Hla’alua in Taoyuan and one in Namaxia can speak the language fluently. Xie Chui-Yao, head of the Hla’alua Cultural and Educational 24

Development Association, notes that language education has become a major focus of cultural preservation efforts. In a covered area outside his home is a whiteboard filled with lists of vocabulary words in Mandarin Chinese together with their counterparts in a Romanized form of the Hla’alua language.

At the Xingzhong Elementary School in Taoyuan District, only six of the 50 students are Hla’alua, with the rest from the Bunun tribe. The Bunun students have been learning traditional Hla’alua songs, such as those of the Beishenji (Shell Deity Ceremony) – traditionally a five- or six-day event that was revived in a condensed one-day form in 2003.

According to tribal legend, when the Hla’alua left the Kavurua to find a new location that could support their growing population, the Kavurua gave them 12 shells, each said to represent a different deity, and taught the Hla’alua how to worship them.

Many other ceremonies were conducted during the year, mainly associated with the growing of millet, according to Yiu. For example, following the millet harvest, male shamans would visit each family to carry out rites and collect millet for storage for the winter months. As the tribe no longer has shamans, these particular rites have been discontinued, but other cer-

emonies, such as one for millet planting, are still observed.

Yiu also notes that the Hla’alua have been able to revive their traditional attire, as there are still a few elderly women in Gaozhong Village who are proficient in making the clothing by hand. Traditionally, men wore a leather cap with eagle feathers, similar to the headwear of the Kanakanavu and Tsou males. However, the pants worn by Hla’alua men – striped with a blue or beige background – are unique. In addition, men wore a triangular hand-embroidered patterned chest piece under their shirts. Some differences exist in the color of the women’s garments between the two main Hla’alua communities in Taoyuan District; one group favors a skirt with blue blouse, while the blouses of the other are white.

Asked why the Hla’alua people have sought recognition, Xie replied: “The Tsou live in Alishan, but our language and culture are different. If we continue [to be considered] as Tsou, we will become more marginalized and our tribe and culture will disappear.”

Who are the Kanakanavu?

The Kanakanavu number more than 500 and are mostly concentrated in Kaohsiung’s Namaxia District. It is believed that these people were the first to arrive in Namaxia some 300 years ago.

Later, about a century ago, increasing numbers of Bunun were forcibly moved there by the Japanese, similar to the situation in Taoyuan District.

The Kanakanavu are thought to have once lived along the upper reaches of the Beinan River in Taitung County. Due to competition from other indigenous peoples, they moved westward to the Jianan Plain and then again along the Nanzixian River.

The traditional territory of the Kanakanavu once stretched to the vicinity of what today is the southern part of Alishan Township. The Tsou and the Kanakanavu were allies and intermarriage was common. In modern times, intermarriage with the Bunun has increased.

In Namaxia, the Kanakanavu mainly reside in two separate communities. The ceremonial grounds of these communi-

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AboriginAl tribes ties include a structure called cakuru in the Kanakanavu language, constructed of wood and thatch. Although similar structures are found among the Hla’alua and Tsou, the ceremonies are quite different. The Kanakanavu have revived the Kanaira, the “Appreciation for Harvest Ceremony.” According to one version of a Kanakanavu legend, a young man was walking in the forest and found a cave. As he approached, the entrance to the cave grew larger and larger. Someone appeared, led him inside, and offered him foods he had never eaten before, such as millet and sweet potatoes. Afterwards, he was given seeds for those plants and taught the techniques for planting them.

The Kanaira began to be performed to express gratitude for this help. Historical photographs document that this ceremony was conducted during the Japanese era, but it was discontinued for a long time before being revived in 2006.

Another major ceremony is the River Ceremony, whose purpose is to ask for blessings to continue to enjoy the resources of the Nanzixian River, including the freshwater fish and algae that are important components of the traditional Kanakanavu diet. During these special ceremonies, the participants wear formal ritual attire that have been designed based on photographs from the late 1930s and early 1940s.

Fewer than 10 elders remain who are fluent in the Kanakanavu language, but opportunities are organized for younger members of the tribe to learn from them.

A dictionary has been compiled and an online language training program developed by the CIP. Pi’i says that the reason for seeking recognition is that “We want people to know who we are. We are not Tsou. We are not from Alishan.”

It is the loss of the language that has been the major barrier to recognition of the Pingpu tribes. In the 17th century, the Dutch East India Company created a Romanized script for the Sinckan language, which was spoken by the Siraya tribe that lived (and still lives) in greater Tainan. The script was used to translate parts of the Holy Bible, such as the Gospel of Matthew, enabling Dutch missionaries to carry out their work of converting the indigenous peoples. This translation has now formed the foundation for a dictionary of the Siraya language. The Siraya have also strived to revive their traditional ceremonies and arts, and these efforts have won them recognition at the city level.

Other Pingpu peoples, however, have been unable to find a comprehensive compilation of their language. For example, the Taivoan of Xiaolin Village in Jiaxian District, also in the mountains of greater Kaohsiung, lost their language long ago.

But due to their rather isolated location, they have been able to preserve their traditional beliefs, ceremonies, and attire.

Five years ago, the Taivoan people suffered a tragedy of epic proportions.

Much of Xiaolin Village was buried in

a mudslide during Typhoon Morakot in August 2009, leading to the loss of nearly 500 lives. The survivors now live nearby in a permanent housing community built by a charitable organization.

Although many of their cultural artifacts were lost, plans are underway to open a cultural hall. In the plaza next to the site is a small hut-like structure for worshipping the Taivoan deity Tai Zu, considered to be the tribe’s protector. In contrast to Han Chinese folk practices, there is no statue to represent Tai Zu and instead of fire or smoke, water is considered the medium for spiritual communication and is placed in ceremonial pots.

Although many challenges remain in rebuilding the lives of the community, Liu Qiu-Tian, head of the Xiaolin Community Development Association, says that the survivors are determined to stay.

“This is where our ancestors lived and we want future generations to know that we are Xiaolin people,” he said.

Although official recognition seems out of reach for the Taivoan due to the loss of their language, it is certain is that the search for identity will continue for many years to come, both for the Taivoan and other indigenous groups.

Pingpu waiting in the wings Taiwan’s indigenous peoples are classified into two main groups based on geographical factors: plains-dwellers (Pingpu) and mountain-dwelling tribes.

Living in closer contact with Han Chinese settlers, the Pingpu were more easily influenced by outside culture, eventually becoming assimilated and losing their traditions and language.

The plains-dwelling Pingpu tribes have had difficulty gaining official recognition because assimilation has led to the disappearance of their native languages. photo : Rich matheson

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A locked warehouse door at Suantou Sugar Refinery bearing the name and logo of Taiwan Sugar Company.

Sugar trains still run for tourists at Suantou Sugar Refinery in Chiayi County. phoToS : RIch maTheSon

Touring the Remains of Taiwan’s Sugar Industry S The island’s economy may no longer revolve around sugar cane, but many reminders of that period remain.

BY STEVEN CROOK

A train loaded with sugar cane arrives at Kaohsiung's Qiaotou Sugar Refinery during the 1920s.

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everal of the world’s poorest countries are dependent on sales of a single agricultural commodity, among them Burundi (the livelihood of 55% of the population is tied to the coffee crop) and Malawi (tobacco represents over 70% percent of export revenue). It is hard to imagine nowadays, but Taiwan was once in a similar situation. Just before and for years after World War II, sugar was the mainstay of its economy.

Sugarcane, a species of grass that reaches about two meters in height and slightly resembles bamboo, has been grown in Taiwan for at least as long as Han Chinese have been present on the island. The Japanese, who ruled Taiwan as a colony between 1895 and 1945, nurtured the local sugar industry. By the late 1930s, sugar plantations covered almost 170,000 hectares, a fifth of Taiwan’s farmland. Cane was grown from Linkou in the north to Hengchun at the southern tip, on the east coast as well as throughout the western lowlands. One in seven Taiwan households had some connection to the industry.

At its peak in 1950, sugar accounted for 73.6% of the ROC’s exports by value. But since the 1970s, due to competition from Brazil and other producers, Taiwan’s sugar industry has been in unstoppable decline. The number of active refineries has fallen from 49 to just three.

The growing, transportation, and processing of sugar have left a lasting physical imprint in almost every part of Taiwan, however. More than a dozen shuttered mills are

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Ta i s u g a r still extant, and hundreds of kilometers of railway tracks laid by sugar companies remain in place.

Jack F. Williams, then an associate professor of geography at Michigan State University, asserted in a 1977 paper, Sugar: The Sweetener in Taiwan’s Development, that “no discussion of Taiwan’s historical geography would be complete without reference to the role of the sugar industry.” According to Williams, the Dutch East India Company, which controlled southwest Taiwan between 1624 and 1662, “recognized [sugar] as a profitable commodity.” Sugar exports rose tenfold to around 1,300 tons between 1636 and 1660.

By the late 18th century, some 18,000 tons of sugar were leaving Taiwan for overseas markets each year. Japan was by far the most important export customer even then, but the industry made slow progress until the colonial period, when Japanese investors responded positively to subsidies offered by the island’s new rulers.

Taiwan’s sugar industry also benefited when Japan introduced a sugar consumption tax in early 1901. Instituted to repay debts run up during the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95 and to fund a rearmament program (Tokyo was anticipating the war with Russia that broke out in 1904), this ill-conceived levy raised very little money. But for Taiwan-based sugar firms subsidized and protected by the colonial government, it brought an unintended yet substantial advantage over Japan-based sugar producers.

The colonial era saw impressive efficiency gains. Between 1915 and 1939, the amount of sugar produced per hectare harvested rose from 2.76 tons to 9.91 tons. Even now, in few places around the world is it possible to consistently produce much more than 10 tons of sugar per hectare of cane.

Unlike tobacco, salt, camphor, or opium, sugar was never a government monopoly in Taiwan. But nor was it a perfect market. According to Williams, the industry association backed by the colonial government “became in effect a giant trust that controlled the entire sugar industry. The various sugar corporations operating in Taiwan reached collective

agreement, through the association, on the prices to be paid farmers, production and supply of cane to mills, marketing of sugar, and other matters….Not only were the Taiwanese squeezed out of business, but along with them went the weaker Japanese firms.”

After World War II, Japanese-owned assets were combined to create the Taiwan Sugar Corp. (TSC). A state-run enterprise since its inception in 1946, TSC still owns more than 50,000 hectares of land – an area greater than Taipei City and its suburbs of Banqiao, Zhonghe, Yonghe, and Xindian combined. A number of industrial zones, such as the Southern Taiwan Science Park, were created on former sugar plantations. In 2013, TSC made a small profit on revenue of just under NT$42 billion (US$1.4 billion).

Kaohsiung’s Qiaotou plant Taiwan’s first modern sugar-processing facility operated from 1901 to 1999 in what is now the Kaohsiung suburb of Qiaotou. The 20-hectare site, which processed up to 1,000 tons of cane per day, remains almost completely intact.

Squeezing juice out of cane is energy intensive, but at Qiaotou and other refineries crushed cane fiber (known as bagasse) fueled the boilers. U.S. bombers targeted Taiwan’s sugar refineries near the end of World War II because another by-product, ethanol, was important to the Japanese military.

A small part of the complex was demolished amid controversy to facilitate construction of the Kaohsiung MRT’s Red Line (the name of the station is spelled

Greater Tainan's Soulangh Cultural Park, a former sugar refinery, now houses exhibitions. phoToS: RIch maT heSon taiwan business topics • july 2014

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Ta i s u g a r “Ciaotou Sugar Refinery”). In addition to the refinery itself, the site contains worker dormitories and air-raid shelters, and architects rate the buildings highly for their baroque and Japanese features.

The on-site museum (Tel: 07-6113691; open 9am-5pm daily; free admission) is small but worthwhile if you read Chinese. On weekends and national holidays visitors can take a short ride (NT$80 for adults; NT$50 for children, senior citizens, and the disabled) on one of the trains that replaced ox carts in 1907 as the principal means of moving cane from plantation to refinery. But for many people, less tangible sensations of space and history are key aspects of Qiaotou’s appeal. Lingering beneath the old banyan trees while watching butterflies is a good way to spend time there.

Part of Qiaotou Sugar Refinery is now called the Ten Drum Ciaotou Culture Park, and serves as an educational base and performance space for the Ten Drum Art Percussion Group. On weekends, the troupe performs its electrifying adaptations of traditional temple-parade drumming. During the summer, the culture park hosts visiting drum groups from Japan, Korea, and elsewhere.

Qiaotou is in fact the second former sugar refinery utilized by Ten Drum.

Since 2007, the group’s main base has been what is now called Ten Drum Culture Village (Tel: 06-266-2225; www. ten-hsieh.com.tw; open 9am-5pm daily; admission NT$300 for adults, NT$280

for senior citizens and students) in Tainan’s Rende District. The smokestack of this long-closed TSC facility now bears the words “Ten Drum” in English and Chinese, and is a useful landmark if you are arriving by train (get off at Baoan Station, turn right and walk for 15 minutes).

There is more to Ten Drum Culture Village than the troupe’s music. Under the terms of their contract with TSC, Ten Drum is also responsible for preserving the local ecosystem and the site’s sugarindustry relics. An especially interesting corner is the drum workshop; the fulltime drum maker working here is in his late 50s and is one of just six or seven people in Taiwan still able to make drums the traditional way. Drop by and you may see him curing a buffalo hide, or adjusting the clamps that stretch the leather so the membrane is taut and the sound just right.

The buildings that now form Soulangh Cultural Park in Tainan’s Jiali District (http://soulangh.tnc.gov.tw; Tel: 06-7228488; open 9am-5pm Wed-Sun; free admission to park; some activities and exhibition charge admission) functioned as a sugar mill between 1908 and 1998.

To learn about the sugar-making process, one of the better places to go is Suantou Sugar Refinery, located just a few minutes’ drive from the Chiayi High-Speed Rail Station. The refinery’s crushers, rollers, pulping vats, and boilers have not been used for over a decade, but still remain in place. The inside of the

A sugar train awaits unloading at Qiaotou during the period of Japanese rule.

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mill is open to the public, and each item is labeled in Chinese. Individuals fascinated by industrial heritage (or industrial archaeology, as it is called in the UK) will spend a happy hour gazing at the rusting yet intensely photogenic infrastructure.

For Taiwanese day-trippers, Suantou’s still-functioning locomotives are a major attraction. Those who grew up in Taiwan’s rural southwest before 1990 likely recall seeing TSC’s 762mm (30-inch) gauge trains trundling across the countryside. They may cherish memories of clambering over parked wagons, chasing after trains in the hope of snatching a few canes to chew on at home, or even riding a TSC passenger car.

In Chinese, these trains are often referred to as wufenche [五分車], literally “five tenths car,” to distinguish them from regular Taiwan Railway Administration (TRA) engines and cars, which run on 1,067mm (42-inch) gauge tracks (qifen, “seven tenths”). In Taiwan, only the High-Speed Railway and the mass rapid-transit (MRT) systems in Taipei and Kaohsiung are standard gauge (1,435mm or 56.5-inch).

At Suantou, tourist trains leave the refinery’s colonial-era passenger station every day at 10am and 3pm; extra services are put on when needed. Tickets are NT$100 for adults, NT$80 for students, and NT$50 for seniors and infants. As you head out at a speed of 15 km/h for a short tour of neighboring fields, an onboard guide introduces (in Mandarin and Taiwanese) the area’s history, flora, and fauna. The guide will tell you that the rats inhabiting the cane fields grow big and healthy, and are a delicacy served in nearby restaurants.

Besides Qiaotou and Suantou, sugar trains carry tourists at Xihu in Changhua County and Wushulin in Tainan City.

TSC passenger services, which ended in 1982, allowed people to travel from fairly remote spots such as Suantou to TRA stations where they could board north-south trains. At its peak, TSC operated more passenger stations than TRA does now. A few stations, including ones in Lugang in Changhua County and Yanshui in Tainan City, have been renovated for tourism purposes. Others, such as the tiny stop in Chiayi County’s

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Ta i s u g a r Yizhu, have been forgotten. Not long ago, most of the Chinese characters on the front of the station had fallen off, while the tracks and much of the platform were overgrown with foliage. A tramp had taken up residence in the stationmaster’s office and taped plastic bags over the broken windows.

TSC’s diversification Just as Royal Dutch Shell no longer deals in the seashells that gave it its name, TSC continues to diversify away from the production and sale of sugar. TSC units grow orchids, raise livestock, run gas stations, and make ice popsicles. The lollies are sold at several former refineries, and the range of flavors is impressive. The azuki bean, taro, and pineapple variants are popular, while the sugarcanejuice popsicles are both refreshing and appropriate. Options for the adventurous include soy sauce and yeast flavors.

Last year in east Taiwan, TSC’s Leisure Business Division launched its most exciting venture to date. Rather than demolish what used to be senior managers’ housing at the former Hualien Sugar Factory in Guangfu Township and redevelop the land, TSC has renovated the Japanese-era wooden bungalows and turned them into one of the region’s most attractive lodging options.

Most of the 28 rooms in Hualien Tourism Sugar Factory Guesthouse (Tel: 03-870-5881) accommodate up to three people and cost NT$2,880 to NT$4,800 a night, depending on the season. Guests sleep on tatami mats, and don yukata (Japanese dressing gowns) after soaking in ofuro (high-sided wooden Japanese bathtubs). According to a local Chineselanguage blogger, “The style allows you to feel the beauty of the Japanese culture of silence, soft colors and soft lighting.”

Rooms come with modern conveniences like air-conditioning and flatscreen TVs. Guests can play table tennis and billiards in the factory’s entertainment center, or borrow bicycles and pedal to Guangfu’s small downtown, about 1 kilometer away.

Some 1,250 hectares of former sugar plantations near Guangfu have been designated as the Danongdafu Forest Park.

phoTo : RIch maTheSon

Above: Tourists wander through Ten Drum Culture Village in Tainan.

Below: A porter carries a load at a Taiwan Sugar Company passenger station in Greater Tainan's Guanmiao District in the 1960s.

Unlike the national forest recreation areas managed by the Forestry Bureau, the park is neither hilly nor at a high altitude.

Created with ecological diversity and recreational potential in mind, it should also create jobs in an area where several villages have lost most of their residents since the sugar refinery closed in 2002.

For those curious about the role of sugar in Taiwan’s development but unable to leave the Taipei area, Tangbu Cultural Park (156 Dali St; open 10am5pm Tuesday-Sunday; free admission) in the capital’s Wanhua District preserves a few relics and displays a great deal of background information (almost entirely in Chinese only, however). The refinery itself was demolished decades ago to make way for apartment blocks; three

warehouses, within walking distance of the Longshan Temple MRT Station, are all that remains.

Between 1911 and 1942, cane grown in Linkou and Sanxia was brought here for processing. Most arrived via a network of man-powered rail cars known in Japanese as daisha. Even though the refinery was at a lower elevation, meaning gravity was on the side of those pushing the wagons when loaded, each oneway journey took well over two hours.

Old photos of laborers moving daisha stacked high with canes are displayed inside the park. These images are a reminder that, however sweet Taiwan’s sugar tasted, producing it was, to use the Mandarin expression, xinku [辛苦], “bitterly exhausting.” taiwan business topics • july 2014

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advertorial

Ever Rich Brings Kinmen a Mega Shopping Plaza

V

isitors to Kinmen Island can’t help but be impressed by the pastoral setting of rolling hills drenched in greenery, the prevalence of traditional Chinese architecture, and herds of huge cows grazing in pastures just outside of village centers.

But what really stands out is the camouflage.

Kinmen paints everything in the green-and-brown color pattern ubiquitous to militaries the world over: road signs, sidewalk barriers, storefronts.

Children wear it, and so do grandmothers. The reason is not to hide, nor some ironic fashion twist; instead, the popularity of camouflage reflects the intimate terms on which Kinmen and the military have long existed, and still do, if the number of actual soldiers also wearing camouflage uniforms is any indication.

Kinmen County was for decades the line in the sand between China and Taiwan. Located just off China’s windswept coastline, within sight of Xiamen, Fujian Province, the island archipelago was the site of extensive shelling both to and from the mainland and

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the island is riddled with fortifications, defense-works and old military hardware. Many Taiwanese men served in the army here, and Kinmen looms large in the imagination.

Beginning in 2001, though, Kinmen was once again on the front lines – this time for rapprochement across the Strait, with the establishment of the “three-mini-links” program that allowed for direct, albeit restricted, travel from Xiamen to Kinmen. Landmark agreements signed in 2008 between the two sides of the Strait further opened up visitations, and Kinmen is now one of the most widely visited places in Taiwan.

Kinmen has plenty to offer visitors from Taiwan and China. Isolated for decades from modernization, the island retains the look and feel of traditional Chinese civilization, with ancient single-story compounds, some dating to the Ming Dynasty, more common than modern apartment blocks. Hosting just a single major industry – the making of Kaoliang – the air is clean and fresh, intermingling scents of grass and sea, along with the occasional cow

patty, in strong contrast to the smog hanging over Xiamen. And while the military still retains a strong presence in the area, most of the Cold War fortifications and armaments have been put on display, transforming the island into a vast museum. Kinmen has enough underground bunkers, seaside tunnels gouged into cliffs for harboring boats, decommissioned anti-aircraft guns, and old army tanks to fascinate kids and adults alike.

Now, though, Chinese and Taiwanese tourists have another reason to visit Kinmen Island: the largest duty free store in all of Asia. The Kinmen Ever Rich Golden Lake Plaza, on Greater Kinmen Island, is a brand-new, sixstory mega shopping center that brings together not only duty free shopping aimed at the Chinese tourist market, but also casual shopping for both local residents and visitors from Taiwan.

The complex even features Kinmen’s biggest-ever movie theater, a full sixscreen, 600-seat Cineplex.

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Ever Rich has said that it expects Golden Lake Plaza “to attract a large number of people to Kinmen, not just for shopping but also to enjoy good food, films and culture” – and that the development will inject “a new vitality into the development of Kinmen’s tourism industry.”

Completed in just two years, the mega shopping mall is a testament to Ever Rich’s commitment to Kinmen.

The company first began offering duty free services to Chinese tourists in 2005, not long after the inauguration of the “three mini links” between China and Taiwan, and it has operated a duty free shopping plaza at the ferry terminal since 2010. While the shopping plaza is exciting by itself, it’s just the first phase of a much bigger shopping and entertainment complex that Ever Rich is now busy constructing. Next year the company will be opening a 281-room, 5-star hotel, featuring a large banquet

hall and business conference center, as well as a spa, pool, gym, and professional banquet services, along with many other amenities.

For now, though, the excitement is centered on the shopping plaza. The first three floors are dedicated mainly to the Chinese tourist crowd, with all of the most desired luxury brands, including Gucci, Rolex, Ferragamo, Tod’s, and Bulgari, with Cartier, Prada, Burberry, Tiffany, and Armani set to join them soon.

Ever Rich has its own jewelry boutique here as well, with its own proprietary designs in jade, coral, and other local precious stones. Tobacco and liquors are also sold, including brands available exclusively through duty free channels, such as “Explorers Club” Scotch whiskies produced by Johnny Walker.

The fourth floor is duty-paid and caters to local Kinmen residents and Taiwanese visitors, with mass-market products and brands, including sportswear, art products, electronics, and even a book shop. The fifth floor, called “Hello Taiwan,” showcases goods from around Taiwan, such as teas, snacks, and souvenirs, along with Kinmen’s first supermarket stocked with imported goods, and in another first for Kinmen, a full-service bakery that will at last bring fresh baked goods to the island.

Ever Rich representatives note that the Hello Ta i w a n f l o o r p r o v i d e s great opportunities for tourists to stock up on souvenirs from some of Taiwan’s most popular tourist attractions, including Alishan, Sun Moon Lake, and the Ken-ting

seaside resort.

Visitors to Golden Lake Plaza are warmly greeted by attractive staff smartly dressed in the Ever Rich uniform that has become a familiar presence throughout the airports of Taiwan. From the number of elegant young ladies in attendance, visitors might be surprised to learn that nearly all are native to Kinmen, where 80% of the Golden Lake Plaza’s staff originates.

Offshore islands around the world offer opportunities for developing tourism into a major strategic economic resource, such as Hawaii and Guam for the United States, Okinawa for Japan, Indonesia’s Bali Island, and Phuket in Thailand. The recent surge in tourism to China’s Hainan Island and Jeju Island in Korea demonstrate the benefits generated by actively encouraging the tourism industry in developing offshore island economies. Kinmen is no exception. With a location so near to one of China’s great population centers, a unique, natural landscape, and traditional culture – along with a strong sense of corporate responsibility on the part of Ever Rich’s employees – Kinmen is in an excellent position to develop its tourism industry. Streamlining visa procedures and other tourism-related policies will help promote Kinmen’s tourism industry, further stimulating local economic development.

In the meanwhile, Ever Rich continues to promote Kinmen on both sides of the Strait by sponsoring cultural events and festivals, such as the Welcoming the City God festival, the Mid-Autumn Moon-cake Gambling Games, and the Kinmen International Marathon. In conjunction with Kinmen Country officials, Ever Rich anticipates a golden future for the Golden Gate.

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Left, massages usually begin with a relaxing foot bath in hot water to which medicinal herbs have been added.

PhoT o : rich MaT heson

Taiwan’s Ubiquitous Foot Massage Parlors Although the practice is steeped in Chinese tradition, the most famous practitioner is a Swiss Priest, “Father Wu.”

BY STEVEN CROOK

I

t seems impossible to walk very far in Taipei or other major Taiwan cities before coming across a storefront offering foot massage. The popularity of the practice in recent years is hardly surprising. All forms of massage appeal to those who want better health without taking medicine or who wish to relieve stress without the use of alcohol or electronic devices.

The principles of foot massage, also known as foot reflexology or zone therapy, mesh perfectly with the LOHAS (“lifestyles of health and sustainability”) philosophy adopted by many young, well-educated consumers. In addition, many tourists find that enjoying a foot massage is an excellent way to conclude a long day of sightseeing and shopping.

As a form of therapy, reflexology has been around for over 2,000 years. It is described in Huangdi Neijing, an ancient medical text known in English as The Yellow Emperor's Inner Canon or The 36

Medical Classic of the Yellow Emperor.

However, the discipline’s recent history – both here and on the Chinese mainland, where it originated – has been checkered.

During the Cultural Revolution, many practitioners in the People’s Republic of China dared not give massages to strangers lest they be attacked by Red Guards for perpetuating old customs and habits.

In Taiwan, there was no governmentrecognized national organization for foot masseurs and masseuses until 1991, and that association was technically a sports club registered with the Ministry of the Interior. Two years later, the Department of Health (now the Ministry of Health and Welfare) gave approval of sorts to traditional foot massage, categorizing it as a folk remedy. By removing the possibility that practitioners could be prosecuted for being “underground doctors,” the reform allowed foot masseurs and masseuses to talk more openly about the theory behind what they do, and how

reflexology may help some people.

Unlike Chinese herbal medicine treatments, foot massage is not covered by Taiwan’s National Health Insurance system. Nor is there a national system regulating the training of reflexology practitioners. Courses are offered by several different organizations, the cheapest and shortest being those offered by the Ministry of Labor’s Workforce Development Agency (WDA). These involve 54 hours of instruction spread over a month, and cost as little as NT$1,284. But experienced masseurs say that between four and 12 months’ training is required to attain real proficiency.

Although there is no clear scientific evidence to support the traditional Chinese notion that ailments of internal organs are treatable via particular nerve endings on the soles of the feet, medical opinion is fairly positive about the overall benefits of foot reflexology. According to the website of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Spirituality & Healing, “Research studies in the U.S. and around the world indicate positive benefits of reflexology for various conditions. In particular, there are several well-designed studies, funded by the National Cancer Institute and the National Institutes of Health that indicate reflexology’s promise as an intervention to reduce pain and enhance relaxation, sleep, and the reduction of psychological symptoms, such as anxiety and depression.”

The website also notes that reflexology seems to cause “an increase in blood flow to kidneys and to the intestines,” improved kidney function in kidney dialysis patients, lower blood pressure and reduced anxiety, plus pain reduction for those suffering from AIDS, osteoarthritis, diabetes, and other conditions.

Some benefits are even seen for cancer patients. The website states: “Studies showed reduction of pain, nausea, diarrhea or constipation, and improved quality of life with reflexology.”

Like other forms of massage, reflexology works via the body’s response to comfortable, non-threatening touch.

Massage prompts rapid and significant

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Foot massage falls in cortisol and arginine vasopressin levels. The former hormone is associated with stress; the latter, also a hormone, restricts blood vessels, so any reduction lowers blood pressure.

There are also direct physical effects.

Blood and lymph circulation improves as a result of the physical manipulation of soft tissue, and this means oxygen and nutrients are delivered more efficiently to muscle cells. By relaxing tissue, massage lessens muscle contractions and spasms.

It also helps straighten out nerves that have been compressed by contracting muscles. Consequently, those nerves can function better.

Each foot contains approximately 7,800 nerves, and at many of Taiwan’s foot-massage parlors, “maps” of the right and left soles are prominently displayed.

There are slight differences between the two sides, just as the human body is not quite symmetrical. The heart and spleen are located slightly to the left of the body’s midline, while the liver is on the right.

The pressure zones for the heart and spleen are on the right foot, while those for the liver and appendix are on the left.

Zones relating to the stomach, pancreas, lungs, bladder, and kidneys are in the same locations on the soles of both feet.

The area relating to the nose is on the outside of both big toes. A tiny spot on the bottom of the left foot’s big toe connects with the pituitary gland. Pressure zones for the anus and rectum are near the right heel.

Some charts have a point for the gallbladder on both feet; others mark it on the left foot only. All charts agree that the toes relate to the head, with pressure points for the ears, eyes, and sinuses.

However, only a minority of charts link the very tips of the toes with the brain.

A good introduction to foot charts can be found at www.wikihow.com/Read-aFoot-Reflexology-Chart.

four sessions.

“Foot massages seem to work for me, which is odd as I hardly use my legs in the office,” he says. “My co-worker said my internal organs were getting compressed because I spend too long at my desk each day, and that’s why I was suffering from poor circulation and digestion, even though I eat fairly well and exercise every Sunday. When he said I should try foot massage, I was very skeptical. But now I’d suggest it to anyone who’s feeling rundown.”

Foot massage is as local as beef noodles, yet Taiwan’s most famous practitioner is a Westerner, Father Josef Eugster.

Born in Switzerland in 1940, Father Josef has been working as a Catholic missionary in Taitung County since the late 1960s, and the story of how he came to embrace reflexology has been reported numerous times by local media. Father Josef was suffering from rheumatoid

arthritis in his knees, so a fellow missionary gave him a book, Good Health for the Future, adding that when he had applied the reflexology tips in the volume to his mother, the results were impressive.

(The book was written in German by Hedi Masafret; English-language editions are hard to come by).

In no time at all, Father Josef was a proficient self-taught reflexologist. Convinced of the discipline’s efficacy after his own health improved, he began to offer foot massages to members of his church.

As his reputation grew, people from other parts of Taiwan began seeking him out for treatment of chronic ailments. Among the soles he rubbed were those of the late President Chiang Ching-kuo. In 2003, he visited the Vatican and massaged the feet of the then pope, John Paul II. In 1982, Father Josef – better known within Taiwan by his Chinese name Wu Ro-shih – received an official warning

Theory and practice Acceptance of the concepts underlying foot reflexology is not necessary to recognize its effectiveness, says Lawrence Lin, an office worker in Taipei. A 32-yearold who says he has a strong dislike of quackery, Lin was won over after just

According to reflexology theory, particular spots on each foot relate to individual body parts.

PhoTo : wikiPedia

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Foot massage

Massaging feet requires hands that are strong as well as skilled.

from the Department of Health telling him that, by providing treatment without having any medical qualifications, he was breaking the law. That led to a relationship with Yumin Hospital in Nantou County, where he was permitted to give reflexology massages under doctors’ supervision.

Since the early 1980s, Father Josef has been promoting a variant of reflexology developed in association with Eugene Cheng, a former piano teacher. They have visited several countries, including the United States, to introduce their system.

Father Josef’s Method of Reflexology (www.fjmreflexology.com), a not-forprofit organization registered in Connecticut and affiliated with the Reflexology Association of America, trains and issues certificates to practitioners.

Many of those trained by the missionary have opened massage establishments in Taiwan, although they are no longer allowed to incorporate the Chinese words Wu Shenfu (吳神父; “Father Wu”) in the names of their parlors. Ten Foot Health (12F-1, 68 Renai Road, Section 4, Taipei, near the intersection of Renai and Dunhua South Roads; Tel: 02-2703-3199; open 9am-9pm daily; www.tenfoot.tw), is one that receives many foreign clients.

It also claims to be the oldest parlor in the capital adhering to Father Josef’s and Cheng’s principles. The price of a foot massage at Ten Foot is currently NT$500 for 30 minutes.

Though it lacks an English-language sign, Zuzu Massage Center (No. 5, Lane 38, Tonghua Street, Taipei; Tel: 02-27846567; open 11am-3am daily) is easy enough to find. It comes recommended by a number of hotel concierges, and is often visited by foreigners winding up 38

a day’s touring by having snacks at the Tonghua Street Night Market. The foot massages given here extend from the tips of your toes all the way to your kneecaps; at the time of writing, 40 minutes of work on your feet, calves and knees followed by 30 minutes of upper body massage cost NT$699. Like many massage businesses, Zuzu usually offers special deals during off-peak hours.

A standard routine Whether you go to Ten Foot, Zuzu, the much larger and more expensive Foot Massage Center (76 Nanjing East Road, Section 5, Taipei; Tel: 02-2762-2166; open 24 hours daily; valet parking available), or another massage parlor, the first part of your reflexology experience will be very similar. After removing your shoes and socks, you will be shown to a barcalounger. Before any massaging begins, you soak your feet in a small tub filled with hot water to which herbs have been added. At some point in the proceedings, you will be offered a cup of Chinese tea, and perhaps a snack such as salted peanuts, dried plums, or cherry tomatoes.

The masseur dries off your feet with a towel, and then works on one foot at a time, rubbing lotion on every part of your foot and calf, and even between your toes.

The kneading and pushing is relatively gentle at first, and if the masseur knows you are a first-timer, he will likely ask permission before increasing the pressure.

Some foot-massage aficionados insist that greater pain equals greater efficacy.

Others, including Father Josef, argue there is no need to suffer heroic amounts of agony. If one spot on your soles proves especially sensitive, the masseur may ask

PhoT os: rich MaT heson

if you have had health problems linked to the relevant internal organ.

Giving a foot massage is hard on the hands and arms, and masseurs employed by parlors are expected to put in very long hours. However, those doing the job see certain advantages. “I do believe Taipei has several excellent foot-masseurs who go to customers’ homes and earn NT$100,000 per month, tax free. I’ve been doing this less than two years, and I earn more now than I did as an office worker,” says one of Zuzu’s masseurs.

“When there are no customers, I can do what I want, so long as I don’t go too far from the parlor. There’s no unpaid overtime. And more customers always means more money in my pocket.”

Like many other reflexologists, he goes swimming in his free time. “My mentor told me that because masseurs constantly touch other people’s bodies, we are in danger of absorbing too much qi [“natural energy” or “life force”].

Swimming is a good way to get rid of it.” Rather than long-term damage to his hands or excess qi, he says he is more worried about his diet. “We’re right next to the night market, and when it’s quiet I often pop out for some fried chicken.”

Like others who work into the night, masseurs have learned how to handle individuals who have had too much to drink. “Usually we massage them very gently so they go to sleep,” explains the Zusu masseur.

Whether you hope reflexology can relieve chronic health problems, or you are patronizing the foot massage parlor purely out of curiosity, you may want to commit to memory this Mandarin phrase: Qing ni xiao li yi dian 請你小力一點– “not quite so hard, please!”

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The Huashan and Songshan Artistic Parks Cultural developments bring renewal to central Taipei

BY ABRAHAM GERBER

W

hen the members of the Golden Bough Theatre Group, in direct defiance of police orders, performed in the abandoned Huashan brewery in December 1997, they had no idea they would set a chain of events in motion that would transform Taipei.

Ever since the brewery closed in 1987, the site has been largely abandoned, unused except for its parking lot. Wang 40

Jung-yu, founder and artistic director of the theater group, recalls that at the time there were very few performance spaces in Taipei, and that finding a suitable venue was often impossible. The Huashan site presented a tempting venue, particularly as Wang had aspired to stage a performance within an abandoned building ever since performing in a World War II-era deserted factory while touring in Germany in 1995.

Huashan 1914 Creative Park photo : huashan 1914 cR eatiVe paRK

Although Wang investigated several possible sites upon his return from Germany, nothing quite worked out. “Just as I was at my wits’ end,” Wang explained, “a friend suggested to me that Huashan would be a great site.”

After “renting” the facility from the local ward leader in charge of Huashan’s parking lot, he and his troupe camped out on the site for more than a month of rehearsals. But shortly before his troupe was scheduled to perform, he was presented with an order from the true owners of the facility – Taiwan Tobacco & Liquor Corporation (TTLC) – banning the troupe from the site. The troupe defied the order, but while the police did not intervene immediately, they arrested Wang the following day.

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C u lt u r a l Pa r k s What happened next surprised even Wang. The Golden Bough’s act of civil disobedience struck a chord within an artistic community frustrated by the city’s lack of space for artistic events. This lead to large-scale protests against the TTLC that not only secured Wang’s release, but also resulted in preservation of the Huashan brewery.

“Our efforts at that time weren’t really seeking to preserve the building” he said. “We knew that it was already slated to become the new Legislative Yuan building and were just trying to use it while we could.”

At the same time, Taipei City began to pursue a policy of urban renewal centered on creating green and cultural spaces that would transform Taipei’s cityscape. This drive has led to the establishment of the Huashan and Songshan artistic districts on prime Taipei real estate, as well as other future projects that symbolize Taipei’s commitment to a new form of urban development.

Huashan Cultural District Today’s Huashan is where Taipei residents go to relax. The old brewery’s central smokestack, with its boiler and distillation rooms, has been preserved as the heart of the complex. While the aged walls of the surrounding maze of warehouses and dormitories appear

unchanged, their interiors have been transformed into a beehive of exhibition halls, theatres, auditoriums, shops, and restaurants. Roughly 8,000 people mill around the district’s web of footpaths every day, with almost 20,000 visiting on peak weekends.

“To ordinary visitors, what’s striking about Huashan is how intimate it feels,” says Lee Cheng-fang, Huashan’s operations manager, “people feel very at ease and comfortable here – it’s the kind of place you can stop by in shorts and flipflops to walk your dog. Even though young people are our core demographic, the atmosphere is also very familyfriendly.”

The district’s diverse array of activities and events contribute to the enjoyable atmosphere. The district hosts two to five exhibits every season, and this year’s include everything from the winning images of the Cross Strait News Photography competition to wedding shawls and to artworks created by students from universities around Taiwan. Since July 2013, the district has invited one artist every month to work and live onsite, giving visitors an opportunity to observe the creative process first-hand.

Exhibits are not just limited to artworks. Companies also sponsor exhibits that allow visitors to try their products.

In Starbucks’ case, this includes opportunities to observe hand-drip coffee

techniques. Huashan also occasionally sponsors a variety of activity fairs with themes ranging from painting to Chinese calligraphy. For example, this year’s Maker Faire featured hobbyists for a wide variety of equipment, with a special focus on robotics.

In addition to exhibits and activities, Huashan also holds over 1,800 performances per year. Between several dedicated outdoor theaters, the Legacy concert hall, and numerous smaller venues, there are performances to be seen every day, from traditional music to local rock performances. Furthermore, Huashan hosts bilingual events such as “You Are the Story You Tell,” a story-telling and acting workshop featuring both American and Taiwanese speakers. Of particular interest is the new Spot Theater, which showcases independent films from around the world as well as numerous local films with English subtitles.

From stone oven-baked pizza at Alleycat’s to the traditional Taiwanese buffet offered at Chingye-Shinleyuan, Huashan’s numerous themed restaurants have food that accommodate all palettes.

Some establishments integrate different functions under one roof to create a more relaxed atmosphere. For example, VVG Thinking in Huashan’s northwest corner combines a first-floor coffeehouse with a second-floor bookstore and art boutique featuring handcrafted items

Some of the activities at Huashan: the Maker Faire for hobbyists, left, and the tutorial area of the Huashan Preview Show, right. photos: abraham gerber

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C u lt u r a l Pa r k s

The Songshan Cultural and Creative Park is a beehive of activity, attracting some 300,000 visitors a month on average. photo : songshan cultuRal anD cReatiVe paRK

from local artists. According to Lee Cheng-fang, the small spaces provided in the nooks and crannies throughout Huashan are an important venue for sales by many artists who cannot open their own shops or stands.

Songshan Cultural Park After Huashan’s successful development, the Taipei City Government moved to create more artistic districts as part of a wider strategy of urban renewal.

Of these, the largest is the recently completed Songshan Cultural and Creative Park, located across from the National Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hall, right next to the future site of the Taipei Dome. It has already become one of the hottest sites in east Taipei, with around 300,000 visitors per month.

If Huashan is a beehive, Songshan Park is an urban oasis featuring some of the largest green space in eastern Taipei.

The park is located on the site of what was once Taiwan’s largest tobacco fac42

tory, from which it has inherited not only aged buildings, but also lush trees and one of the largest pools in eastern Taipei.

“Fire was the factory’s greatest fear,” said Songshan’s Chief Marketing Officer Chao Chuan-ling in The China Times in 2013, “therefore, its design particularly emphasizes lowering the temperature of the surrounding area.” The park’s pool and large number of old trees keep the site cool and comfortable.

When the old Songshan factory was established in 1937, it was designed to be a working village complete with gardens, public baths, nursery, pharmacy, and convenience store. Today, the park is a synthesis of old and new, preserving the tobacco factory and warehouses while being complemented by the Taipei New Horizon high-rise, featuring an Eslite bookstore and shops. These two areas serve complementary roles, helping to round out the district.

The refurbished buildings of the old tobacco factory are now home to numerous art exhibits and performances

throughout the year. These include everything from wooden carvings to teddy bears, photos from international photo exhibits, and Japanese Manga and Chinese characters. Every weekend, the district’s boulevards are also home to an outdoor handicraft market featuring roughly 50 local artists. “Within the historical sites [of Songshan], our clear policy is to support students and experimentation,” says Liu Wei-kong, director of Taipei’s Cultural Bureau, the administrating agency for Songshan, “What we’ve done is to build a stage, enabling those who can tell stories to have a place where they can be seen.”

In addition, Taipei New Horizon provides a variety of shopping and dining alternatives. It also provides numerous opportunities to learn and experience art, by integrating artist workshops with their stores, and providing visitors the opportunity to watch demonstrations of the making of such products as hand-made glass, gold ornaments, and pottery.

Beyond exhibits and shops, Song-

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C u lt u r a l Pa r k s

shan is home to the offices of the Taiwan Design Center as well as important design museums. These museums include both one devoted to the history of industrial design in Taiwan, as well as a Red Dot museum where visitors touch and use a variety of products that have won the Red Dot International Industrial Design Award. The newly-opened American Innovation Center rounds out the district’s international flavor with its exhibits and a 3-D printer.

Future developments The presence of museums and the Taiwan Design Center hints at Taipei’s grand vision for Songshan. In a speech formally inaugurating the art district in 2012, Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin called Songshan the future “cultural hub” of the greater Chinese cultural world and the “foundation” of Taipei’s drive to be the 2016 World Design Capital.

“In Songshan we’ve created a kind of creative ecology,” says Director Liu of Taipei’s Cultural Bureau. He notes that the art district often hosts workshops, forums, and other events for the arts community. “If you want to see the most creative things in Taipei, you go to Songshan,” he says. “If you want to create influence, you go to Songshan.”

Songshan is a part of wider city plans to increase the livability of Taipei, adds Liu, forecasting that the number of cultural and artistic hubs in Taipei will continue to grow. Other than Huashan and Songshan, Taipei already has several active art communities, including the Treasure Hill Artistic Village, a maze of old houses and footpaths stacked on a hill overlooking Taipei’s riverfront near Gongguan. Future developments under construction include the Taipei Artistic Center and the Taipei Popular Music Center.

In addition to Huashan and Songshan, the city also plans to develop a similar large converted site at the Taipei Railway Workshop. Located next to Songshan and the future site of the Taipei Dome, the former railway repair shop will complement the two sites by providing a window into Taipei’s past. The Taipei Railway Workshop will be converted into a museum that will preserve half of the original

artifacts, unlike Huashan and Songshan, where the artifacts had been removed to make way for the new facilities.

Cultural districts are a key part of the city government’s desire to make Taipei more livable - a quest that includes developing artistic communities along certain roads such as Yongkang and Kuling Streets. The city government has worked to develop these areas by providing design assistance to local businesses, modeling their efforts on cities like London and Helsinki.

“Taipei’s development has already begun to produce our own story and model” says the Cultural Bureau’s Liu. He observes that the development of the MRT system and the popular YouBikes program has led to improved air quality, while the proliferation of convenience stores and improvement of city services has led to a higher quality of life. “In terms of facilities, Taipei has gotten better and better in recent years,” he says. The development of cultural districts will help push the city to a new level.

The main entrance to the Huashan 1914 Cultural and Creative District is located along Zhongxiao Road near its intersection with Bade, Hangzho and Jinshan Roads. It can be reached by MRT

photo : wiK ipeD ia

via the Shandao Temple and Zhongxiao Xinsheng stations. For more information on Huashan, see their English website: http://www.huashan1914.com/en/.

The Songshan Cultural and Creative Park is located at 133 Guangfu South Road, Xinyi District, Taipei City. It can be reached by MRT via the Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hall Station. For more information on Songshan, visit their English website: http://www.songshanculturalpark.org/en/.

Complementing the old tobacco factory and warehouses is the new Taipei New Horizon high-rise, featuring am Eslite bookstore, restaurants, and other shops. photo : wiKipeDia

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FRIDAY NIGHT In a city truly brimming with restaurants and eateries, one dinner spot stands out—DOZO’s, on Taipei’s east side (No. 102, Guangfu South Road, Taipei; Tel: 02-2778-1135; dozoizakaya. com). DOZO serves Japanese fusion cuisine prepared with great attention to detail. The interior is open and stylish, accented by a collection of Japanese art images projected on a large, vacant wall.

Additionally, on Fridays and Saturdays, drummers and sometimes flutists perform brief, lively shows twice each night. Coupled with sake cocktails and big Japanese beers, DOZO is a great way to kickoff the weekend. ⇢ MRT Blue Line: Sun Yat Sen Memorial Hall Station

photos: joe seydewitz, wiK ipedia

48 Hours In Taipei The city offers a blend of convenience, culture, natural beauty and great food.

By Joe Seydewitz

T

aipei seems to be getting more and more recognition these days for being a great Asian destination. Some take note of Taipei’s relaxed vibe, while others call it “Asia’s best kept secret.” Either way, the city offers a wide variety of delicious foods, cultural landmarks, and natural beauty in a remarkably laid back urban setting.

The city is small enough to cover in just a couple of days, but be prepared; Taipei is one of the world’s most densely populated cities and crowds and chaotic bustle are the norm, especially on weekends. With that in mind, the following 44

itinerary offers plenty of excitement and adventure that will introduce you to some of the great “off-the-beaten-path” spots in the city while minimizing crowds. And reflecting the truly international history and global outlook of the city, many of the spots aren’t necessarily Taiwanese in origin but are still very much part of the local lifestyle.

The tour starts on Friday night, on the assumption that many readers will be working most of that day, and finishes on Sunday afternoon, with plenty of time remaining to catch your evening flight home.

After dinner, take a taxi or short stroll down Zhongxiao East Road toward the W Hotel and its popular Woobar (10F, No.10, Zhongxiao East Road, Section 5, Taipei; Tel: 02-7703-8887). The atmosphere is fashionable, with cool lounge music on the sound system and fantastic drinks. Wina Chen, the hotel’s director of marketing and communications, says that signature drinks made by some of Taipei’s best bartenders are some of Woobar’s prime attractions. The bar offers an impressive variety of flavored mojitos and martinis, along with “unique ginger and dragon fruit-infused vodkas that taste great and help provide our foreign clients with a really special Taiwan experience,” says Chen. ⇢ MRT Blue Line: Taipei City Hall Station Before you head back to your hotel and call it a night, enjoy a little foot therapy in one of Taipei’s many foot massage establishments. A great way to wind down the busy work week while adhering to our relaxing theme, Taiwanese foot massage is rooted in Chinese medicine and provides benefits beyond simply easing a little discomfort. My masseuse at Villa Spa (No. 298, Bade Rd., Section 2, Taipei; 02-8772-2286), Chow ZhengChun, explains that foot massage is designed to stimulate nerves throughout the body by triggering key pressure points

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A W e e k e n d i n TA i p e i

on the bottoms of one’s feet. “Clients receive great health benefits,” she assures. ⇢ MRT Blue Line: Zhongxiao Fuxing Station

SATURDAY START YOUR DAY AT A CAFÉ Taipei is teeming with cafes and coffee sellers, and considering how many sellers roast their beans on site, it’s not uncommon to happen upon a rich coffee aroma as you stroll down any given street.

Local brands Cama Coffee (No.15, Anhe Road, Section 1, Taipei; Tel: 02-87730578) and Wilbrook (No.2, Alley 5, Lane 12, Bade Road, Section 3, Taipei; Tel: 02-2579-0272) offer delicious cups at affordable prices. Their locations are simple, yet they offer accommodating and pleasant places to sit down, relax and take in Taipei’s early hours. If Seattle coffee culture is more your style, Taipei has many Starbucks scattered around the city as well.

After enjoying a cup, work your way toward the nearby hills for a little exercise. Being surrounded by mountains, Taipei offers locals and tourists many wonderful opportunities to escape the city and enjoy a spirited walk through hilly, natural beauty. To enjoy as much of Taipei as possible without journeying too far, after finishing your coffee, make your way over to conveniently located Elephant Mountain. The City recently completed the Xinyi branch of MRT Red Line, so you can easily take the subway almost right to the trailhead.

Elephant Mountain is the most famous of the Four Beasts Mountains due to its proximity to the city and spectacular views, particularly of the famous, towering Taipei 101 building. The trail consists mostly of stairs that keep climbing and climbing, and many people enjoy taking a break to enjoy the city view at one of the many lookout platforms along the way. ⇢ MRT Red Line: Xiangshan Station A little spirited exercise has a way of rousing one’s appetite, so it’s time to start thinking about lunch. Din Tai Fung (No. 194, Xinyi Road, Section 2, Taipei; Tel: 02-2321-8927) is arguably the most

famous restaurant in Taipei, and their steamed dumplings and noodle dishes are wonderful, but they’re not the only game in town. Great dumpling and noodle shops are as ubiquitous in Taipei as pizzaby-the-slice joints are in New York City.

So after you get some exercise at Elephant Mountain, stroll back into the city and track down a delicious Taiwan lunch. ⇢ MRT Red/Yellow Lines: Dongmen Station Located near the Sun Yat Sen Memorial Hall is a great noodle and dumpling spot called Mazendo (No.24, Lane 280, Guangfu South Road, Taipei; Tel: 02-2773-5559). In a city filled with delicious beef noodle shops, Mazendo is still first choice; the beef is always tender, the broth rich and flavorful, and their noodles are perfectly al dente. Along with wonderful dumplings and noodles, Mazendo offers a stylish yet unpretentious atmosphere. Combined with jazz music floating in the background and an open kitchen design, the restaurant has a great youthful vibe. ⇢ MRT Blue Line: Sun Yat Sen Memorial Hall Station After lunch you have a couple great options: stroll back over to the Sun Yat Sen (SYS) Memorial Hall, or make your way by convenient public transportation to the Chiang Kai Shek (CKS) Memorial Hall. Each location houses a giant statue

of its namesake, Dr. Sun Yat Sen and Generalissimo Chiang Kai Shek, respectively, within monumental structures designed according to classical Chinese themes.

Their grounds are equally beautiful, replete with lush parks, koi and turtlefilled ponds, and expansive courtyards, while at CKS you can also enjoy the splendor of the National Theater and National Concert Hall buildings, each designed in traditional Chinese palace style.

Additionally, both grand memorials also house art galleries. The several galleries inside SYS are particularly inviting because aside from generally being free to the public, they display artworks representative of a variety of artistic styles in a spacious atmosphere. One need not fight the crowds to browse a mix of professional and amateur calligraphy, sculpture, painting, and more.

“The galleries are available for anyone to show their work,” explained gallery volunteer, Ms. Lin. At the time of my visit, the gallery was showing numerous works celebrating renowned artist Li Chi-mau, as well as several created by him. The marquee item was a walllength depiction of camel races done on rice paper in a Chinese ink and wash painting style, inspired by the artist’s visit to Saudi Arabia.

SYS ⇢ MRT Blue Line: Sun Yat Sen Memorial Hall Station CKS ⇢ MRT Green/Red Lines: Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall Station

pHoTo : TourIsm bureau

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A W e e k e n d i n TA i p e i

photo : joe seydewitz

After strolling around the city all day, take a short break before dinner at your hotel or perhaps in a coffee shop. Taipei offers many great choices for dinner, and you’ll want to be well rested before diving in. Locals generally suggest eating at the night markets due to the lively environment, variety of foods and low prices; not a bad option, if you want to sample popular street foods like oyster omelet, fried (stinky) tofu and barbecued squidon-a-stick, to name just a few. Many night markets are easily accessible by a brief MRT ride and really are a must-see feature of Taiwanese culture.

But if you want to sit at a table and enjoy a fantastic meal, investigating one of the many restaurants offering roast duck is highly recommended. Known as Peking duck, the meal is more associated with northern China, but as many Taipei restaurants do it so well, you’d be remiss not to try. Several major hotels with inhouse restaurants, as well as a number of other fine establishments around the city, serve this succulent fare. The Yi Yuan restaurant (頤園北京餐廳) at the Westin Hotel (B2, No. 133 Nanjing East Road, Section 3, Taipei; 02-8770-6565), and the Chao Jiang Yan (潮江燕) restaurant (3F, No. 1, Qingcheng Street, Taipei; 02-8712-3535), are both renowned for the quality of their Peking duck. ⇢ MRT Brown Line: Nanjing East Road Station 46

Peking duck should generally be ordered in advance, as properly roasting a whole duck takes some time and most restaurants that specialize in serving it only prepare the pre-ordered birds. That said, you may be able to order at the time of seating, but you may be in for a long wait. Nevertheless, the birds are always great – crispy skin, juicy meat and several traditional accompaniments like thin pancakes, plum sauce and spring onions.

Delicious! Plus in most such restaurants the chef will carve the bird at your table.

If you’ve still got energy after your feast, work your way toward one of Taipei’s many lounge bars. Taipei is filled with unexpected hotspots, and don’t be surprised to walk down a quiet alley and suddenly find a lively lounge bar full of patrons enjoying Taiwanese and Japanese draft beers, well-mixed drinks and an array of single-malt Scotches and whiskeys. The popular Speakeasy bar (No. 554, Guangfu South Road, Taipei; Tel: 02-2705-0300) in the city’s Daan District boasts an extensive collection of Irish whiskeys and fresh Guinness on tap.

Nearby MOD (No. 40, Alley 4, Lane 345, Renai Rd., Sec.4; Tel: 02-27314221) likewise offers an impressive list of single malt Japanese whiskies and singlemalt Scotches. Additionally, MOD is conveniently located next to a cigar shop, so this is a slam dunk after-dinner destination for those who enjoy a cigar with their drink.

Speakeasy ⇢ MRT Red Line: Xinyi/Anhe Station MOD ⇢ MRT Blue Line: Zhongxiao/ Dunhua Station

cious eggs, sausage, salad, cheeses, meats and breads served together on a lengthy wooden plank. ⇢ MRT Blue Line: Sun Yat Sen Memorial Hall Station If you still have a few more hours before you have to head to the airport, take your full belly for a final relaxing stroll in beautiful and historically significant 228 Memorial Peace Park. Memorializing a tragic moment in Taiwan’s postWWII history when many protestors were killed, 228 Memorial Peace Park is a lovely little area of old trees, ponds, statues, Chinese pagodas, pathways, and historical relics. Street entertainers perform as children enjoy the playgrounds, while elders practice tai chi, and many simply stroll or relax on benches near turtle and koi-filled ponds. 228 Memorial Peace Park provides a little something for everyone. ⇢ MRT Red/Green Lines: NTU Hospital Station Phew! You just enjoyed 48 hours in Taipei. With any luck you did so in a relaxing manner in the absence of crowds, maximizing enjoyment without leaving the metro area. Of course Taipei offers numerous other interesting sites and great eateries, so plan to sculpt a different itinerary during your next visit. Nonetheless this brief guide should certainly help you enjoy one of Asia’s best-kept secrets.

SUNDAY MORNING Saturday was a busy day, so sleep in on Sunday. After you wake up and put your things together for your trip back home, work your way over to Wendell’s German Bakery and Bistro (No. 28, Lane 260, Guangfu South Road, Taipei; Tel: 02-2711-8919) for its celebrated Sunday brunch. Along with many German offerings like sausages, pork knuckle, and fresh baked breads and desserts, Wendell’s Sunday brunch is so hearty it’s appropriately named ‘brunch for two.’

Bring along a friend to share the deli-

photo : tourism bureau

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photo : mandarin oriental hotel

photo : mandarin oriental h otel

photo : marriott h otel

Tourism Boom Brings New Hotels The latest developments include the opening of the Mandarin Oriental and preparations by the Marriott to enter the market.

BY JANE RICKARDS photo : hotel coZZi

T

he length of the chandelier hanging in the lobby of the newly opened Mandarin Oriental Taipei is over twice a person’s height and glitters with more than 50,000 crystal beads.

Created by noted Czech designer Tafana Dvorakova, it is emblematic of the luxury hotel chain’s embrace of opulent living.

Michelin-starred chef Mario Cittadini, who presides over the hotel’s Italian restaurant, Bencotto, can cook up a duck according to a 2,000-year-old recipe designed for a Roman emperor, says Luanne Li, the hotel’s Director of Communications. Frank Hasnoot, winner of a World Chocolate Master title in 2011, makes the hotel’s cakes and pastries, while its French restaurant, Coco, sells a signature scent – created exclusively for the hotel by an Argentine perfumer – made of flowers and fir trees from Yilan County.

Since the hotel’s opening in May, the Mandarin Oriental Taipei on Dunhua 48

North Road has attracted a steady flow of fashionable and moneyed Taiwanese patrons. But members of Taiwan’s hospitality industry see the arrival of this upscale hotel as much more than a novelty to be enjoyed by wealthy Taiwanese and Chinese nouveau riche. Rather, they say, it could be a commercial game changer.

They expect that the presence of the Mandarin Oriental – owned by the local Kai Tai Fung International but managed by the international luxury hotel chain the Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group – to boost room rates for Taiwanese five-star hotels, raise industry service standards, and spawn a new market of wealthy travelers.

Press materials boast that the hotel’s 303 rooms, each a minimum of 55 square meters, are the most spacious in Taipei.

Room rates start at NT$16,500 (US$550) per night, plus 15% service charge

and tax, and can go up to NT$60,000 (US$2,000) per night for a stay in one of the hotel’s two presidential suites that are almost 400-square-meters large. In contrast, negotiated room rates in other five-star hotels in Taipei can be as low as NT$7,000.

Amy Hsueh, Group CEO for the Regent Taipei, notes that room rates for Taipei hotels rose a few years ago after other international brands, such as the W and Le Meridien, entered the market.

“The rates on average went up NT$500 to NT$1,000 a night,” she says. “It’s good for Taipei to have bigger players joining the market.”

Achim Von Hake, general manager of The Sherwood Taipei, which is just a short walk from the Mandarin Oriental, is also optimistic, saying this luxury hotel will spur high-end retailers and restaurateurs to set up shop in the neighborhood.

He expresses confidence that the elegant

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hotels

Sherwood can withstand the competition, as 65% of his business comes from repeat customers. Still, he is considering adding on new services, such as transfers to the nearby Taipei Songshan Airport, to respond to the competition.

Li says she expects the Mandarin Oriental’s guests to be spread evenly among Japanese, Taiwanese, Chinese, Singaporeans, and Hong Kongers.

Hotels in Taiwan generally are continuing to see strong growth on the back of a tourism boom that started over five years ago with Taiwan’s opening to Chinese tourists. Hoteliers say the outlook is sunny, and no one at this point is talking about market saturation.

“Chinese tourists will continue to come, and other countries in Southeast Asia will increase the tourism market,” says Lisa Wang, group director of Business, Sales and Marketing for the Cathay Hospitality Management Group.

Von Hake reports that The Sherwood Taipei has a 75% occupancy rate, which he thinks is about average for hotels in Taipei.

Tourism Bureau statistics show that visitors to Taiwan last year reached a historic high of 8.02 million, up 9.64% year-on-year. Visitor numbers are expected to climb further this year. Mainland Chinese, numbering 2.87 million, were still Taiwan’s largest source of visitors last year, with growth year-on-year of 11.15%. The second-highest group

One of the four-star, "urban-style" Hotel Cozzis opened in Taipei by Cathay Hospitality Management. photo : hotel coZZi

consisted of Japanese visitors at 1.42 million, but their numbers were down 0.75% from 2012 due to the depreciation of the yen.

One major new trend noted by hoteliers is an increase in tourists from Hong Kong, Macau, and Southeast Asian nations. A total of 1.18 million visitors came from Hong Kong and Macau last year, an increase of 16.43% from the year before. Malaysian arrivals numbered over 394,000 (up 15.63%) and the more than 364,000 Singaporean visitors represented an 11.45% increase. Von Hake attributes

this trend to aggressive promotions in these countries from the Taiwanese Tourism Bureau. Cathay’s Wang also notes that the economies in those nations are improving, giving Southeast Asians more money to spend on travel.

In contrast, visitors from the United States, Taiwan’s largest source of Western visitors, numbered only a little over 414,000 last year, growing just 0.64% year-on-year. In contrast to destinations such as Bali in Indonesia and Phuket in Thailand, Taiwan still does not attract large numbers of Westerners. The reason, suggests The Regent’s Amy Hsueh, is because many people in Western nations still think of Taipei as an “industrial city.”

The 3-star advantage According to the Tourism Bureau, 143 new hotels were established from April last year to April this year, with the majority of them three-star hotels. Hoteliers say Taiwan’s three-star hotel market, where room rates range from NT$3,000 to NT$5,000, continues to show the most growth potential.

The venerable Grand Hotel, a Taipei icon, is undergoing extensive renovations. photo : grand hotel

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pHoTo : Tourism Bureau

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photo : grand h otel

Cathay’s Wang notes that the global financial crisis has caused many businesses to cut costs by sending their commercial travelers to less expensive hotels, while Von Hake says three-star hotels are well-suited to group tours from Asia.

Owing to their affordability, three-star hotels are also suited to the FIT (free and independent traveler) market, which Taiwan has been gradually opening up to Chinese tourists since 2011. “This segment has a lot of potential,” says Hsueh.

“We see more and more FITs from China.

There’s tremendous growth in this particular market.”

Hsueh observes that the high price of land in Taipei will be a deterrent to the entrance of many more five-star hotels.

There are more opportunities to build three-star hotels “because one can easily convert an old building into a nice, chic designer hotel,” she notes.

Soon the Marriott International Hotel chain of the United States will be coming to town. Three Marriott hotels have been franchised out to different companies.

The Leefoo Tourism Group has an agreement to build a Courtyard by Marriott in Nankang, slated to open in 2016, and the Cathay Hospitality Management company will also build a Courtyard by Marriott hotel in downtown Taipei by 2018. The Courtyard by Marriott brand is aimed primarily at business travelers.

Von Hake reports that the owner of the Sherwood, the Yihwa International 50

Corp., has built a complex in Dazhi that will include a 320-room Taipei Marriott Hotel. It is scheduled to have its soft opening in the first quarter of next year, with some additional construction to be completed at a later date.

With a total of 1,760 square meters of event space, including conference rooms and a ballroom that can host up to 2,000 guests, the Taipei Marriott Hotel will be aimed at accommodating Taiwan’s growing MICE (meetings, incentives, conferences, and exhibitions) business. Von Hake estimates that 25% to 35% of tourists in Taiwan are involved in MICE activities, and he expects the proportion to go up to at least 40% in the next five years.

He notes that the Marriott brand has a strong presence in Chinese and regional MICE markets, and the Taipei Marriott Hotel plans to set up a professional sales team to organize events and host MICE operators from around the region.

Taiwan is increasingly popular with MICE operators based in China, Hong Kong, and Singapore, as living costs here are relatively cheap compared with other Asian locations. It is also considered to be a relatively new destination in the sense that many Asians have not been to Taiwan before. Beitou’s hot springs and the National Palace Museum are considered attractive destinations for day trips to complement the meetings or exhibitions.

“The China market, especially

photo : hotel coZZi

Shanghai, has a strong representation of influential corporations seeking venues and places to host regional, quarterly or annual meetings and incentives trips,” Von Hake says. “Taiwan is at the upper levels of their preferred list of destinations because of the price tag.”

As a MICE trip is often a reward for employees for their good work performance in the past year, a top hotel is usually required. In Taiwan, “they can enjoy five-star service and still pay a reasonable rate,” Hsueh notes.

Government aid for MICE The MICE business has also been spurred by the Bureau of Foreign Trade under the Ministry of Economic Affairs, which in 2013 introduced a three-year pilot program for the MICE industry called “Meet Taiwan,” with subsidies for bringing international events to Taiwan.

The Mandarin Oriental Taipei is also interested in hosting MICE events and has a team of event planners. Li notes that its 960-square-meter grand ballroom, currently the largest in Taipei, can seat 1,200.

The FIH Regent Group, which owns the Regent Taipei, also has plans for expansion. In 2008, it created its “Silks Place” brand of hotels and has established a Silks Place Taroko and Silks Place Yilan. A Silks Place Tainan, which has already had its soft opening, will have

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photo : hotel coZZi

its grand opening in September.

Hsueh says the company is seeking to attract MICE business to its Silks Place hotels, with the aim of increasing the group’s MICE segment by 5-10% annually. Since the ballroom at the Regent Taipei is frequently booked up with weddings, Hsueh says, the company in the future will build large ballrooms in its Silks Place hotels.

In 2009, the group also created a three-star hotel brand called “Just Sleep.”

Already three Just Sleep hotels are operating in Taipei, with two more in Hualien and Kaohsiung. At the end of the year, the group will open additional Just Sleep hotels in Kaoshiung and in the hot springs district of Jiaoxi in Yilan County.

In June 2010, the FIH Regent Group acquired the Regent brand from the Carlson Group, including the Regent’s worldwide trademarks and licensing rights, as well as management contracts. It became the first Taiwanese company to own an international luxury hotel brand, with a total of 17 planned and existing hotels across the world.

Last year, the group opened two more Regent hotels, in Bali and Phuket, and this August it will open another in Croatia. In China, there are plans for Regent hotels in Chongqing, Xian, and Harbin.

Inspired by the tourism boom, the Cathay Real Estate Development Co. in 2012 created a new subsidiary, Cathay Hospitality Management, with plans

photo : mandarin oriental hotel

to set up eight hotels in five years. The company has created a four-star hotel brand known as “Hotel Cozzi,” featuring a comfortable urban style. Two Cozzibranded hotels have opened in Taipei with 70% occupancy, reports Wang. A third Hotel Cozzi is set to open in Tainan at the end of the year and there are plans for two more hotels in Kaohsiung.

The company also launched a boutique hotel, the Madison Taipei, in April.

Named after Madison Avenue in New York, the 124-room hotel on Dunhua South Road aims to attract Westerners and has a whiskey-based theme, Wang says. A whiskey bar offers whiskey from five areas of the world including Scotland, the United States, Japan, continental Europe, and South America, Wang says, while whiskey-flavored chocolates are placed next to the beds. Wang reports a 50% occupancy rate at present. Plans call for another Madison in Taipei or Shanghai if the company can find the right location.

Besides the projected Courtyard by Marriott hotel, Cathay has loose plans to build a Crowne Plaza hotel, under license from the InterContinental Hotels Group, on land belonging to the parent company near the high-speed rail station in Taoyuan.

Even the venerable Grand Hotel Taipei is feeling the pinch and is undertaking its first major renovations. “We felt the pressure to improve our competitive-

ness,” says Cynthia Chen, the hotel’s public relations manager.

The hotel, a Taipei landmark designed in 1973 to resemble a Qing Dynasty Palace, will retain its iconic red columns, gold roof tiling, and sculptures of sacred Chinese monsters squatting on its upswept rafters. The renovations will focus on the interiors.

The first stage, renovating three floors of guest rooms, started last October and finished in March, incorporating more modern designs and fittings.

The Golden Dragon restaurant with its gilded dragon sculptures dating back to a Shinto shrine under the Japanese occupation has seen its faded paintings restored. The second stage of renovations will finish in September.

Meanwhile, heavy coin-shaped room keys have been replaced with IC cards in an attempt to keep up with the times.

Windowless rooms that used to house bodyguards for protecting heads of state will be revamped to offer more brightness and enlarge the sense of space. The hotel, which belongs to the Duan Mou Foundation under the Ministry of Transportation and Communications, was riddled with debt for years, but since 2012 has been turning a small profit, Chen says. She attributes this turnaround to the work of general manager Johnson Chiang, who previously worked at the Lai Lai Sheraton. Taiwan’s tourism boom has undoubtedly also helped. taiwan business topics • july 2014

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Three Guys, Two Beers, One Dream Redpoint and Steve’s Brew are on a mission to bring American-style craft beers to the Taiwan market.

BY TIMOTHY FERRY

S

teve Chicorel, Spencer Jemelka, and Doug Pierce took very different paths to Taiwan, but all three share a passion for American-style craft beer and a devotion to beer making. Now, all three are trying to turn this passion into a viable business model that will not only raise the quality of beers available in Taiwan, but make them some money as well. In recent months Steve Chicorel’s microbrewery, Steve’s Brew, has finalized production and his Kraft Brew lager is available in major stores, including Costco. Jemelka and Pierce have partnered to create Redpoint Brewery, and their first India Pale Ale – called Tai PA – is available in many of Taipei’s trendiest bars 52

and restaurants.

These two startups are following a track set by microbreweries and brewpubs in the United States, where the craft beer industry is already huge and continues to grow. According to the U.S.-based Brewers Association, craft brewers are smallscale, generally with annual production of 15,000 barrels of beer or less (one barrel equals 31 gallons or 117.35 liters). They are also usually independent, with fewer than 25% owned or controlled by a major brewer or other large economic interest.

And they are traditional, brewing beers from the basic ingredients of water, malt, hops, and grain. That said, they are also innovative, interpreting traditional recipes

with modern twists and flavoring beers with different natural ingredients.

Craft brewers are taking the United States by storm. Even as beer production in the United States declined by 1.9% in 2013, production of craft beers surged 17.2% to exceed 15 million barrels. They now account for 7.8% of total U.S. beer production, up from 6.5% in 2012, tripling production volume in less than a decade. Beer imports to the United States also declined, down 0.6% in 2013, while craft beer exports from the United States surged by 49%. From a sales perspective, the numbers are even more exciting; craft beers recorded sales of US$14.3 billion last year, worth over 14% of the US$100 billion U.S. beer market. The United States is now home to more than 2,700 beer makers, providing primary and secondary employment for some 300,000 workers.

Now, Redpoint and Steve’s Brew are trying to bring this beer magic to Taiwan.

Beer sales in Taiwan come to around US$2.7 billion annually, a small figure next to the United States or China, but not chump change either. The market has also stagnated, with no growth in production or sales for the past five years. Taiwan Beer, a product of the state-owned Taiwan Tobacco and Liquor Corp., dominates the scene with a nearly 72% market share. Imports account for nearly all the remainder. But the lack of growth in the market in recent years has not discouraged the nascent beer makers, who view it as a sign of restlessness on the part of beer drinkers eager for something new to whet their palettes.

Redpoint and Steve’s Brew aren’t the first craft brewers on the market. Gordon Biersch, a chain of brewpubs from California, has already become established in Taiwan, with four restaurants serving their craft beers. Le Ble d’Or, a local startup, has also been in business for nearly a decade and is becoming increasingly popular.

So is there room for another two craft brews in Taiwan’s market?

According to Redpoint and Steve’s

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Craft beers Brew, the answer is an unequivocal yes.

Both see the market as clearly in its infancy and believe that the more players who enter the market, the more the market will grow. Both firms also lament the fact that brewpubs are illegal in Taiwan, as breweries are considered industries that must be located within industrial parks.

Nevertheless, the future looks bright for the beer-making industry in Taiwan.

Taiwan Business TOPICS recently discussed the craft beer industry with the companies:

So how did you get started?

Redpoint (Pierce): Spencer and I started brewing together about two-anda-half years ago. We met playing rugby.

We started with the idea of creating a different kind of brew for ourselves, because we are beer-drinkers and because of the lack of beer in the Taiwan environment that was what we would call “higherquality.” We made so much that we started giving it to our friends, and then our friends said “hey this is really good, why don’t you make a business out of this?” We said okay, we’ll think about it.

But then we started thinking about it in a more earnest manner about a year-and-ahalf or two years ago.

Showing off their beers are Steve Chicorel of Steve's Brew, left, and Doug Pierce and Spencer Jemelka of Redpoint, right. photos: stEVE's BREW, REDpoINt

We decided in September 2012 to start to really make this a business. We put together a five-year business plan, and were pretty confident about the numbers based upon the market that we surveyed.

We needed a substantial amount of money, so we went to the capital markets and got around 75% of the capital funds that we were asking for, but couldn't find money afterwards. We hit a brick wall. Spencer and I took a step back and reevaluated what we wanted to do.

Plan B was bootstrapping ourselves, and that’s what we did. We walked away from the funding that we had received.

I put in some money and he put in some money, and we decided to do the business by ourselves. We kicked it off and brewed this recipe in various forms over a number of times to try to dial it in. It took us a long time, there’s no doubt.

Commercially, we’ve been open for about two-and-a-half months. We contract a brewery in Hsinchu to do the production.

Steve’s Brew (Chicorel): I’ve been making home brew since 1989. That’s why it says 1989 on the label. One Thanksgiving a couple of years ago, I

was deep frying a turkey on my roof.

One of my neighbors (an executive at a prominent retail chain) came over and tried my turkey and my home brew and said “Steve, you should brand this.” If he hadn't suggested it, I wouldn’t have done this. So I owe it to him to give me the idea of going commercial. But just because he suggested it didn’t mean they were going to buy it. So I still had to make a good beer. I can’t just do it out of my kitchen. So I had to find a brewery and the right first recipe to convince a good percentage of the beer market that this was worth buying. Eventually we found a brewery. Our brew master was trained at the Doemens Academy in Munich, a very highly regarded brew masters school. I’m the front guy who comes up with the recipes, but he’s the guy that makes the brewery work.

I made it my goal to get into Costco.

But Costco has very strict rules. Their SGS inspectors come in and look at a factory before they agree to sell the product that’s made here. We failed once, and we failed a second time. The third time we got it.

It took a while. We really had to work

Redpoint is brewing an India pale ale (IPA) that it hopes will have just the right balance of bitterness, aroma, and flavor. photo : REDpoINt

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Craft beers at it. To have a product at Costco you have to meet a very high standard.

Is Taiwan ready for craft beers?

Redpoint (Jemelka): We think that the Taiwanese can absolutely get into appreciating the process of crafting beer. If you look at the whole brewing scene here, it has expanded year on year.

Pierce: They take a keen interest in understanding new beers. They’re very switched on. “Beer geeks” love craft beer.

But it’s not just the “beer geeks” that like to drink this type of beer, it’s the young generation who go abroad and the thirtysomethings that have traveled for business and have tasted something like that.

Jemelka: I think Taiwanese-consumers are not as price-sensitive anymore, and they’re willing to go out and spend on craft beer. Particularly, I think a lot of young Taiwanese have gone abroad, or they have friends who are going abroad.

And they’ve heard of craft beers and are willing to spend a bit more to try that.

You can see how craft beer is really starting to take off. Just look at Welcome supermarkets; their beer collection has expanded since I’ve been here.

Steve’s Brew (Chicorel): 7-11’s always a nice barometer for our society here in Taiwan. What you see there is what people seem to want. And if you’ve noticed, you’re not just seeing Taiwan, Asahi, and Heineken anymore; you’re starting to see Guinness, and ales, and stouts and strong beer. So you’re starting to see more variations and that’s because of demand.

There’s US$2 billion worth of beer sold every year. Now, China’s about US$65 billion, but US$2 billion ain’t a bad number for beer. And that community is growing. It’s Taiwan people and foreigners alike who are embracing the glory of more complex beers. There’s an untapped market here.

How did you customize your beer for the local market?

Redpoint (Pierce): We wanted an ale that had hops, flavors that were IPA (India pale ale) in nature, but did not overpower a Taiwanese palette. The hops make it the IPA. The Taiwanese are just 54

starting to appreciate flavors like bitterness. Bitterness should be appreciated because it’s a great flavor, and bitterness can come in a multitude of different types.

So we actually brewed this beer to be this “sessionable” – that’s a technical term for beer that people want to drink three or more of, which is hard to do with an IPA. We orchestrated the grain build to be light enough but flavorful enough for people to be able to have a few and still be happy with the flavor.

It’s amazing what people think the taste is. Some people taste honey and lemon together. Some people taste lemon.

Some people taste passion fruit. Everybody’s palate is different.

Steve’s Brew (Chicorel): Steve’s Brew is a lager. Lager is fermented in a colder environment, and ale is fermented in a warmer environment. What happened with lagering is that people discovered it has a smoother taste.

I bring down the hoppiness of my beers, but push up the aroma and flavor.

And I do that because Taiwan people aren’t used to real hoppy beers. You shouldn’t just run scared from bitterness. We should just add more flavor, add more aroma, and just find that right level of bitterness that we like. So I think you’ll find our beer to be less bitter than Taiwan Beer.

The taste is very round. Yet there’s hoppiness, there is a bitterness to it. So I think we’ve found the magical formula.

And all my ales, and everything else from this point on, will have that magic balance of bitterness, aroma and flavor that people will want to pay just a little bit more for. And that’s what craft beer is all about. Giving people a little bit more.

Or maybe a lot more, depending on what beer you’re drinking.

What about competition in the market?

Redpoint (Pierce): There’s an advantage of being first, and we are first in a number of different areas. We’re the first local brewers for IPA. Competition is absolutely great. If there’s no competition for my beer, then there’s no market for my beer. Competition brings markets. That means there are people wanting to drink.

The way we make people want to drink is by making good quality, fresh beer, locally brewed and supporting the local economy.

We want to educate the beer culture to a new thing that’s craft beer.

Steve’s (Chicorel): I don’t see anybody as competition because this is a movement that needs synergy, so the more people doing this – making different beers, making craft brew – the better. We’re all helping support the (craft beer) community. And I want to find partners because Taiwan is just a steppingstone for China.

Who are your customers?

Redpoint (Jemelka): You get a nice cross-section of customers on a website called Untappd (https://untappd.com/).

We have quite a number of reviews from the site already. You can see the type of people who are drinking our beer. Girls also drink our beer. Since our beer is a bit more expensive, I’m guessing that it will be people with a little more expendable income who will be drinking it.

Steve’s Brew (Chicorel): In general customers are going to skew more male for beer, so we’re trying to also introduce a beer that women can like. We’re not just coming up with an IPA or a real “man’s beer” – I’m coming up with an “everyman’s beer.” And everywoman too.

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Siemens Green+ Wins on the Green at AmCham Golf Championship 2014

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espite windy conditions that challenged even the most experienced golfers, the 58 participants and spectators alike had a great time under clear skies at the AmCham Golf Championship 2014, held June 13th at the Formosa First Country Club in Taoyuan County. In a nail biter of a finish, with less than a point separating the top two teams, Siemens Green+ walked away with the championship, while Team ACE took second position and AP Sanfu A placed third.

Playing Texas Scramble with a shotgun start, the championship included a number of “hole events” to keep the action moving. Sam Lin, of Team ACE, took the JTI sponsored Hole #2 “Nearest to the Pin” prize, as well as the Aon-supported Holes #9 and 11 “Longest Drive” awards, while Scott Faul took the JTI Hole #17 Nearest to the Pin prize. Coca Cola’s and Corning’s “On the Green” prizes were welcomed by many players, but no one was able to snag the brand-new Ford Kuga, at stake in the Ford sponsored Hole #6 “Hole in One” contest.

hole in one sponsor

AmCham Taipei and all participants are grateful to the generosity of sponsors in making the event a great success.

Nike Golf was the Champion prize sponsor, and Team Siemens Green+ walked away with not only a handsome trophy but also some great Nike Golf gear. Team ACE did well too, winning room vouchers at some of Taiwan’s best hotels, including Grand Hyatt Taipei, The Sherwood Taipei, Howard Plaza Hotel and Silks Place Taroko, as well as Ballantine’s sports bags from Pernod Ricard. The Grand Hyatt Taipei, and Shangri-La’s Far Eastern Plaza Hotel Taipei contributed food and beverage vouchers for the third place prize, and Team AP Sanfu A should be very relaxed with their winnings of KS Golden Margarita, bourbon, and champagne, contributed by Costco.

AmCham wishes to thank all participants and supporters for making this year’s event great fun. AmCham also extends a special thanks to Lee Wood for his expert advice on all things golf related. See you in 2015!

champion sponsor

hole event sponsors

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s e e i n g ta i w a n

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Off the Beaten Path in Central Taiwan

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n most countries, the capital city attracts the lion’s share of tourist arrivals. Yet it is equally true that, to get to know a country, exploring beyond the seat of government is imperative.

Ta i w a n i s n o e x c e p tio n . Ta ip ei has the world-class National Palace Museum, Beitou hot springs, and Taipei 101 among its many attractions. Yet to leave the island without having seen anything of central, southern, or eastern Taiwan would be to miss much of Taiwan’s loveliest scenery and most authentic culture.

A s pa rt o f t h e Ta i w a n To u r i s m Bureau’s efforts to let potential visitors know how much Taiwan has to offer, its International Spotlight program aims to draw the attention of discerning travelers beyond the obvious. In the little-visited nooks showcased by the Spotlight, tourists can sample local delicacies, appreciate traditional crafts, and savor unique scenes. Details of tour themes and special offers throughout Taiwan can be found on the International Spotlight’s Chinese-JapaneseEnglish website (http://intlspotlight. taiwan.net.tw). 交 通 部 觀 光 局 廣 告 TTB AD

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The “LOHAS International Spotlight Central Region,” jointly organized by the Tourism Bureau and the iSee Taiwan Foundation, reflects the ideals and principles of LOHAS (“Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability”) that are favored by an increasing number of younger, well-educated consumers. The initiative’s focus is on the cities of Taichung and Chiayi.

Either serves as an excellent base for those eager to delve into Central Taiwan’s stunning diversity. The coastal town of Lugang, for example, is famous for its delectable snacks and historic character, while Sun Moon Lake is renowned for its lovely scenery and temperate climate. The region’s interior boasts also several of Taiwan’s highest mountains – peaks well over 3,000 meters high – as well as remote communities where the Austronesian languages of Taiwan’s aboriginal minority are still spoken.

Taichung, which has a population of 2.71 million, has long been regarded as one of Taiwan’s most livable cities.

Its reputation as a culinary center received a further boost earlier this year

when Lanshu Chen, head chef at the city’s Le Moût Restaurant, received the Veuve Clicquot Asia’s Best Female Chef Award. Chen has described her food as a fusion of classic French cuisine, local produce, and ingredients from all over the world. iSee Taiwan Foundation is a not-forprofit organization that devises creative tourism programs in an effort to introduce Taiwan’s physical and cultural splendor to the rest of the world. Those aiming to stay in one place for a few days and dig a little deeper will find the foundation’s “slow travel” approach very much to their liking.

The foundation has organized a range of “LOHAS Workshops” in Taichung City, among them one hosted by Chun Shui Tang, the tea-house chain where pearl milk tea (also known as “bubble tea”) is said to have been invented.

Pearl milk tea – a blend of black tea, tapioca balls (the chewy “pearls”), syrupy sweetener, and cream – has e m e r g e d a s o n e o f Ta i w a n ’s m o s t successful culinary exports. This refreshing beverage, usually drunk cold, is now enjoyed as far away as Singapore, London, and Florida. Participants in the workshop will learn the secrets of making delicious pearl milk tea.

O n e o f Ta i c h u n g ’s n e w e r t o u rist attractions is a reconstruction of a pre-World War II building. What is now called the Natural Ways Six Arts

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Cultural Center was once a dojo (a place where Japanese martial arts were studied) attached to a jail. It is a quintessentially Japanese structure, one of several built in Taiwan during Japan’s 1895-1945 occupation of the island.

The center’s name alludes to the six disciplines ancient Chinese regarded as key to a gentleman’s education: rites, music, calligraphy, mathematics, charioteering, and archery.

Each weekend, the center is the venue for classes in which specialists instruct locals and visitors in the tea ceremony, ikebana (the Japanese art of flower arrangement), the martial art kendo, the board game Go, as well as archery and other disciplines. The classical approach to archery emphasizes mental composure, and the sessions here are an opportunity to use traditional bows made of bamboo.

Among other options are cake- and tea-making classes, plus experience in coffee roasting and brewing. Most workshops require registration five to seven days in advance. For details, look at iSee Taiwan Foundation’s ChineseJ a p a n e s e - E n g l i s h w e b s i t e ( w w w. lohaspot.com.tw).

Also offered are short tours of Taichung led by local experts, among them a newspaper reporter, an avid cyclist, a photographer, a musician, and a chef.

For those who prefer to move at their own speed, the website outlines itineraries involving a mix of walk-

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ing, short taxi journeys, and bus rides.

One not-to-be-missed attraction is the Calligraphy Greenway. As with the finest examples of traditional Chinese calligraphy, the use of space is key to the appeal of this green belt.

Over the course of a day, urban explorers can follow the Greenway (which has its own bilingual website, www.calligraphygreenway.org.tw) to the National Museum of Natural Science and National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts. Adjacent to the former is a spacious botanical garden – be sure to go into the 31-meter-high conical greenhouse – while the latter has a permanent exhibition featuring 82 works by major Taiwanese artists.

Chiayi City is 86 kilometers south

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of Taichung and much smaller (population: 271,000), yet iSee Taiwan Foundation has found more than enough to keep curious tourists busy for at least two days.

A pr ime de s tinat i on i s Cypress Forestry Life Village, a cluster of Japanese-style bungalows originally built for timber-industry executives and their families. Recently refurbished, the village contains several art spaces and is within walking distance of Alishan Forest Railway Garage Park and Chiayi Motive Power Wood Sculpture Museum. At the former, train fans can get a close look at some of the locomotives and cars that ply the famous narrow-gauge mountain railway between Chiayi and the mountain resort of Alishan. Sculpture Museum, once a power station, now exhibits prize-winning wood carvings.

Visitors to Chiayi looking for places to eat or relax over a coffee should click on the “LOHAS Spots” section of the website. Also listed are three stores where Alishan’s world-renowned oolong tea can be sampled and bought.

To learn more about Taiwan’s spectacular attractions, and to gather practical information about the trains and buses that link the island’s airports with Taichung and Chiayi, visit the Tourism Bureau’s website (www.taiwan. net.tw). If you are already in Taiwan, call the free tourism hotline at 0800011-765 for answers to every kind of travel-related question.

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