The journey has the Giant brand stamped all over it. Last year the firm launched its very own travel agency arranging cycling holidays. So, on our first day of cycling on the northeast coast at Pinglin, we meet guide Ho Chien-Lo (‘Jones’), a Giant employee. We are issued new-looking bicycles from a support van emblazoned: ‘Ride Life Ride Giant’. Most days start from one of an island-wide network of Giant sales and cycle rental stations that offered the latest accessories and facilities such as showers and cafés. Such investment is seemingly paying off for Giant – its domestic bike sales have soared in recent years.
Jones leads us out of Pinglin into the surrounding forested hills on a cycle-route described in a local brochure as a ‘Mountain Wilderness Heaven Excursion’.
It is indeed a small slice of natural heaven in diametric contrast to Taipei City just half an hour away. We puff our way along the supremely well signposted Jingualiao (‘Gold River’) Cycleway.
At first, billowing forests of Formosan sweet gums and maple resonate with cicadas and the occasional screech of macaques. Exuberant tropical butterflies flitter by, expending less effort than my straining calves as we climb. Shoveljaw carp loll in the tannin-coloured river.The forest eventually gives way to neatly ordered rows of tea bushes. The hills around Pinglin are dotted with tea-plantations that feed a national obsession for the beverage. The tea grown in this area includes Bao-Chong, a highly cherished type of Oolong.
Tsai ‘Ray’-Tan is the third-generation grower of a four-hectare tea plantation. His operation is very traditional. We dismount by one of his plantations and Tsai shows us how he selects the choicest leaves and buds on a four-year-old tea bush that is the optimum age for picking. The drying process is underway outside his small factory over the road. His 82-year-old uncle, shaded under a straw sampan, spreads drying tealeaves on large wicker platters that resemble oversized lily pads.
Inside we sip his green Bao-Chung tea. ‘It can be ready to drink in just 13 hours from harvest, drying, and heating,’ says Tsai. He tells us 20,000 leaves may be needed to create around one kilo. The tea has a light, fragrant taste and is soon to feature again in a most surprising way.
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