Jonathan Biddle – Made in Taiwan

Tag: Trends

  • Road Cycling Taiwan

    Road Cycling Taiwan

    I have been pretty quiet on here recently, but I have some good excuses; a new road bike, an iPad 2 and a PS3 has meant virtually no time writing or sorting photos. Hopefully, things will return to some semblance of balance (though probably not).

    First and foremost, is a heart-breakingly beautiful new road bike that is so far beyond my abilities to exploit it is silly. It’s a Cervélo Soloist carbon frame finished in a custom Cantabrian hue, littered with filthy bits of SRAM Red and Zipp wheels so gloriously spendy I feel guilty just thinking about them. It neatly eliminates both performance excuses and likely upgrade paths for the coming years, and I absolutely love it.

    A carbon virgin, I was expecting an unforgiving, jarring ride, but instead it provides a pleasantly beech cricket bat snap and crack, and while not exactly sofa-like in ride cosseting waftiness, I do not come back from rides pummelled and abused. I am, though, still getting used to the strange plasticky sounds that emanate when you miss a gear or hit something in the road: imagine watching a toddler abuse some cheap electronic product and you get the picture; you know it isn’t going to break but you can’t help but grimace.

    What it does do, however, is bloody shift. I ride a pretty swift fixed-gear bike here in Taipei, and riding the same roads at full tilt on this is like night and day; rise up out of the saddle and you demolish traffic light count-downs with a satisfying ‘whooosh!’ as the air molecules try their best to react to a set of Zipps on spin cycle. The higher gearing than a mountain bike leaves you fewer places to retreat to when you are sweating and puffing on a climb, but the stiffness and Fedex efficiency when you start dancing in the saddle is extremely entertaining.

    Plans are afoot for several summer trips, but for now, let me show you some photos of the wee beastie, and some Garmin data from a couple of our rides; my next toy for sure.

    First ride out to the fruit stand on route 106 (photo taken with my iPhone and filtered to death in Instagram)
    Pausing for a rest and grabbing some vitamins.
    I notice I am hardly taking any photos on these rides; trying my best to keep up, combined with few opportunities for rest stops.
    At the top of the Pinglin climb and looking a little harassed! The bike is pretty though, eh!
    Domestique
    Tony, in one of his regular attempts to violate me. I guess it is the lycra.
    A bromance flourishes! Abe and I made it out to Shihding today, but will leave the climb for next time!

    Cycling computer has come on a long way in the last ten years. Garmin is leading the charge to map, geo-tag and socialise riding, and their services look like just the ticket to explore some of the more obscure routes around Taipei. The first one is the ride up to the Pinglin budda (where I look like I am going to fall over above). The second one is our ride to the coast – before lunch!

    [custom_field field=”map_2″ this_post=”1″ limit=”1″ between=”, ” /]

    [custom_field field=”map_1″ this_post=”1″ limit=”1″ between=”, ” /]

  • DIY Sous Vide

    DIY Sous Vide

    Our friend Dave, who is an engineer at Microsoft in Seattle, paid us a visit last week. Reports had been circulating that he had assembled his own Sous Vide; a device that enables highly-accurate temperature control for cooking, in the manner of Heston Blumenthal.

    By first vacuuming the food into sealed bags, then immersing it a water bath, it is possible to cook meats and other food stuffs in a way that prevents over-cooking, and because you can cook over more sustained periods of time, it can extract better results from cheaper cuts of meat.

    Buying ready-made, commercial Sous-Vides is still very expensive, so Dave lead the way in bringing a temperature controller and the major components over from the USA. All that was left was to fashion an enclosure, and assemble it all together. After heading to the tool district, we found a cornucopia of electronics component shops, and had immense fun selecting the most clicky, over-the-top switches and widgets for the control box.

    Results? Melt-in-mouth good, but without disintegrating. I wonder, in fact, if some of the more famous steak houses cook their steaks in this way; we had a relatively good value cut, but it would be interesting to see the results with even better meat.

    Next project are eggs; apparently it’s possible to cook poached eggs in the shell that, once opened, are more like custard.

    The control box.
    Bringing the water up to temperature.
    Dropping the vacuum-packed meat into the water.
    Bubbling away …
    Plonk
    Cutting open the packs of meat, and suddenly filling the kitchen with rather a nice smell!
    You still need to finish it off in a pan to attain the colour, and to add a touch of caramelised burnt flavour to the meat. The Lodge cast-iron pan that I idiotically hand-carried back from the USA (6kg!) does the job perfectly; better than non-stick.
    Served with pureed cauliflower and jus of bell pepper. Yum!
  • Protected: First Words from B

    Protected: First Words from B

    This content is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

  • HiRecruit 2010

    HiRecruit 2010

    The Taiwanese government’s HiRecruit campaign aims to attract professional talent to the island.  This year, they asked me to talk about what brought me here, and why other people should do the same thing.  Check out the video below:

    Obviously what I really cared about was that I looked good on the bike … 🙂

  • Skype Group Video

    Skype Group Video

    Well it only took SIX YEARS.  Skype has finally added group video calling to its (all-be-it Beta) services, and we just gave it a test drive for the first time.  It took a few seconds to get going, but once in … it was a resounding success.  Apparently they will be adding it to their ‘Premium’ service offering from next year, though I am not sure how much money that will mean for us poor customers.  No matter; hilarious fun.  Here’s a link if you want to upgrade.

    Benjamin enjoying the internet from a different angle.

  • You’ll Find Innovative Technology in Taiwan!

    Things get exciting at about 1:35 in …

  • Yangtze Rail

    Kunshan station at sunset.  Along with the track hardware, the stations are impressive in their design intent.

    Beyond the Expo, the biggest impact to my China experience on this trip was the incredible improvements in the transport infrastructure, and in particular, the trains.  Most of our suppliers are located in the Yangtze River Delta region; an unimaginably dull expanse of land stretching west of Shanghai for several hundred kilometres.  Just imagine The Fens in East Anglia, but many hundreds of times larger, and packed with factories relocated from Taiwan.

    Getting around usually means relying on suppliers to send cars out to your hotel; the distances involved and the vagaries of travel in China leave you with little choice.  This does rather put you at the mercy of your vendors, though, and usually results in unwelcome round-table lunches and forced conversation, invariably discussing positive aspects of life in England, shortcomings of life in Taiwan, and which local Chinese town has the most famous foodstuffs.  Any way to prise this control away, and return the day to me is most welcome.  For this reason, the new rail networks being installed throughout China are a breath of fresh air, and offer as formative a change to my life as the Taiwan High Speed Rail.  It really opens up the area to exploration, allows increased connection to local travelers, and means I no longer need to stay so close to the vendors in Kunshan; a town of few features beyond the walls of the Swissotel.

    [mappress mapid=”1″]

    The Chinese high-speed rail network is expanding at an exasperating pace; the Beijing-Shanghai line was started in April 2008, and will be completed in Summer 2011, with trains operating at 380 kmh (240 mph).  Britain, I am embarrassed to write, has plans for high-speed lines to be completed in 2025, operating at a meagre 250 kmh (155 mph).  Our peak speed, Eurostar excepted, has not increased since the Mallard in 1938, when it set a record of 125 mph.  Does anyone in Whitehall understand what is going on here?  China is going to blow us into the weeds, at a rate that we cannot even begin to comprehend.  Britain, time to wake up.

    But this isn’t about the British Rail, this is about the newly completed Shanghai-Nanjing Huning Line.  Opened in July this year, it connects the major cities along the Yangtze; Shanghai-Kunshan-Suzhou-Wuxi-Nanjing, and several other cities you have never heard of before with populations over 4 million people.  But know these city names; they will enter common parlance as the reach of China extends.

    I still remember my first trip to Shanghai in 2006; at the weekend, I turned up at the train station wishing to buy tickets to go to Suzhou.  Huge queue, wall of people, unhelpful staff, crap Chinese, no dice.  Defeat.  Several more trips, and late nights, friends and all manner of distractions mean that I still don’t manage to escape.  Yes, I manage to make it to Hangzhou with Anke and Lars – but nothing under my own steam, as it were.  That is why, turning up to the station, facing the automated touch screens, punching in the coordinates, and receiving those tickets felt so good; I was finally free of the shackles.  Kunshan?  17 minutes.  Suzhou?  24 minutes, sir.  Nanjing, over 300 km away, is dispatched in a mere hour and ten minutes.  All your stations are belong to us.

    The stations match the track hardware in intent, matching or exceeding the architecture in Taiwan, and certainly better than the great majority of stations in the UK (though they ain’t no St. Pancras).  On that note, it was also amusing that at every opportunity China Rail made a point of including Taiwan on their network maps; cheeky, eh?  You can see the map here.

    With internet ticket sales apparently around the corner, these new tracks really open up this corner of China to exploration; something I really look forward to in subsequent trips.  Here are some photos of my first adventures.

    Kids hang outside Kunshan station on their rides

    Enjoying the sunlight

    Fading light

    Symmetry

    One of the regional trains.

    … and the more Shinkansen-ish high-speed trains.

    Transport cops on alert during Expo – all stations had x-ray detectors.

    End of the line in Nanjing.

    Threads on display outside the station.

    The Chinese ability to make pointlessly large displays of flowers is unmatched.

    View from near the station over to Nanjing downtown.

    … and venturing further away … workpeople at rest.

    Novelty petrol stations on the route to one of our vendors.

    Amusing views from the car.

    Team photos – a common sight.

    … but no matter how good the transport system, with 1.3 billion people wanting to travel some people are going to have to wait.  And wait they do, for painfully long periods of time.

  • Shanghai Trendspotting

    Shanghai is a huge, vibrant, emergent city that has had the world’s gaze upon it for at least the last five years.  I might argue, however, that there has not been a any cultural development coming out of the city that has really influenced the rest of the world; and ‘modern Chinese style’ doesn’t count – I think it just as likely that this fad is being spun by foreign design agencies eyeing Shanghai.  No, there is not yet a Harajuku, Carnaby Street or South Compton that is setting the world’s imagination alight, and no youth culture, musical or style trends that have had any meaningful effect outside of China.

    But that is not to say it won’t happen.

    This trip, far more than any previous visit, I was struck by the sophistication of the young people on the trains, buses, and on the street.  They were dressing more cohesively, colouring their hair, flaunting their iPods and demonstrating the embers of individuality that a large city like Shanghai should be driving.  The general manner of people (ie: selfish and rude) also suggests to me a capacity for individualistic, independent thought; probably more-so than what I see in Taiwan.  I could be entirely wrong about that though; who knows what a Quasi-Communist education does to you.

    But no, this trip I saw people dressed in some tasteful clothes, expressively vulgar clothes, and a whole host of trying their best to piece together a ‘look’.  It will be interesting to see how this evolves since the media is so restricted.

    A local lad stands proudly, showing off his purple mane.

    The other thing I couldn’t help noticing were the number of Sony PSPs and Nintendo DSs on display during underground train rides.  It’s perfectly possible that these were fakes, and simple movie players instead of bona-fide games units, but it was interesting none the less.  What I found more surprising were the sheer number of female players; clearly the macho game scene of the west is translated a bit differently here.

    Indeed, on my last day, I came across a Nintendo demonstration area in the mall beneath the hotel.  A hoard of girls were demonstrating the things you could do with the DS to a delighted crowd of females and children; boyfriends and fathers in tow.  There were tables showing-off make-up games, cameras and games … I have heard of female purchasers being persuaded by tangible benefits rather than brutal features, and it was interesting to see this demonstrated.

    Make-up apps.  Isn’t it funny that I now say ‘app’.

    Other stands welcoming a stream of visitors.

    But this is still China, and demonstrations of wealth still rule the school.  Ferraris and Porsches were everywhere, and there were as many Bentleys and Rolls Royces as you could shake a stick at.  Best of all was this modified Buick (a premium brand in China, bizarrely!) … smooth.

    Gin & Juice

    But as I have said before, I maintain that what makes Beijing cool is the Chinese (the rock music, the art …), what drives Shanghai are the foreigners.  Tony and Kelly took me to a British-style gastropub called The Waterhouse.  Serving hearty, modern food in a distressed warehouse atmosphere, it offered the perfect vantage point for looking out at Pudong and the amazing developments happening there.

    New York’s scene is, by definition, driven by immigrants and foreigners.  And maybe Shanghai’s will be in a generation’s time, blurring the line between what ‘foreign’ and domestic Chinese trends mean.

    View from The Waterhouse restaurant roof bar (avoid the cocktails, though).

  • Britain: A Showroom for Chinese Automobiles

    There is little that is more depressing than considering the slow, lingering death of the British car industry, but in China at least, the heart of British industry beats strong.  In a complex turn of events, both Rover and MG were bought by SAIC, and for reasons I cannot quite fathom they changed the name of Rover to ‘Roewe‘.

    I have been chatting to taxi drivers and other people during this trip, and it seems that many people consider the brands to be British, and they do seem to actually be respected.  It’s odd just how much resonance the ‘noble and rich’ side of British aristocracy carries here, with all the glitz and trimmings.  Perhaps that will be what the UK becomes; a showroom for Chinese automobiles.

    The Roewe 750 … rather like the Rover 75

    MG – alive and kicking in Shanghai

    Interesing that they spell out the whole ‘Morris Garages’ nomenclature … I doubt many people in the UK know it means that.  With so many Chinese companies shortening their names to TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms), like HTC, KHS and DEM, perhaps it makes sense to spell out its ‘Englishness’.

    Yes, it really says that.

  • Taikang Road

    So I am here in China for the first time in six months or so; at least since joining the Latitude design team.

    I am here during Expo, and I will be sure to take the chance to go and take a look at it in the next fortnight, hopefully finding a way to avoid some of the worst queues. But before I even step foot in the Expo, I can see the collateral effects that it is having on the city.

    Taikang Road (where I am sitting right now) was one of my favourite design spots in the city, always offering an easily-accessible good vibe, some interesting design, and all washed down with a good cappuccino.

    Now? Well there are still the design shops, but it’s been heavily cleaned up, and some of the more interesting businesses have made way for little more than tourist nick-nack outlets. Not unpleasant, exactly, but it’s certainly lost some of the pioneering atmosphere that it once had.

    I suppose every ex-pat had the same stories; “I remember when this place was authentic.”. At least it has not been demolished to make way for a shopping centre – though the street opposite has managed to sprout one in the last six months.

    What’s the next project for China after the Olympics and Expo? I asked the taxi driver this afternoon if China could just relax for a bit, and he laughed a knowing laugh of “no, our next project is the world.”