Well, although bikes have been scared off the streets a lot by scooters and cars, there are some die hards. Yeah! Also, around university campuses and nearby, you can find pockets of resistance. (This is helped by the fact that the scooters are banned from the campus.) I was talking about this with two physicists, Chong-Sun Chu (who, it turned out, was visiting from Durham) and Pei-Ming Ho (of National Taiwan University), as we walked along somewhere on the NTU campus (poor guys must have been so bored by me going on about it) and I expressed my hope that I might see more folding bikes here than, say, in Los Angeles. This expectation was based on my belief/hope that things here might more open regards the variety of things you can do with bikes to make them useful for everyday life. They both said that they'd never noticed any, and that they were not common at all. Pei-Ming conjectured (quite reasonably) that maybe they are too expensive here. So I expressed my sadness at this and made the point that if there was enough demand, the price need not be any higher than for a regular bike, and that now the city has a subway system, folders would be just perfect for getting around and some people could stop using scooters so much....blah blah blah.... Anyway, not easily discouraged, the next morning I decided that on my way to breakfast I would keep an eye out for them, and see how many I could see. I would not go out of my way, but just see what I could see while I hunted for some tasty noodles with dumplings down a side street somewhere....(as one does). I saw 11 of them! In about half an hour, I think. Most of them were parked, but that's ok. I took pictures of all of them as I went. People must have thought I was a nut. (Yeah, I know what you're thinking....) In fact, over my time in Taipei and Hsinchu, I saw many. In fact, I saw a model from most folding bike manufacturers I'd heard of. No sign of the Brompton though.... Very sad not to see one. Anyway, here are four:
A week later on, Pei-Ming mentioned to me that after I told him that I saw some, he started seeing them too. He'd just not thought to look out for them! Then he'd gone home and checked and found the the prices are pretty good. He's thinking that they might useful and maybe he'll get one....Excellent! -cvj
