One of my favourite cities takes to cycling!

Kaohsiung embraces cycling

Taiwan Today

 

 

A man enjoys a ride on the bike path along the Love River, one of Kaohsiung City’s landmarks. (CNA)

By  Mark Caltonhill
 
On a warm spring Sunday afternoon, Hsu Ching-jan, his wife and 8-year-old daughter make their way towards downtown Kaohsiung City to go shopping and eat snacks before heading home. All are riding newish-looking bicycles and are wearing regulation helmets and brightly colored cycle jerseys. They are just three of a great many cyclists thronging the car-free bike paths running along both sides of the Love River near the city’s harbor.

“We come here once or twice a month,” said Hsu. “Actually, it was my daughter Cindy’s idea originally. She’d heard about it from her classmates.”

This is typical of the way the pleasures of cycling spread by word of mouth. The Internet is similarly abuzz with recommendations.

“After many years of avoiding Taiwan’s second largest city [Kaohsiung], I recently went back,” Andrew Kerslake, a U.S. citizen residing in Taichung, wrote on his blog Taiwan in Cycles last fall. “The place had totally been transformed into a large friendly metropole with a small town feel.”