We're At The 2017 Taipei Cycle Show
If shiny new bikes and fresh gear are the kinds of things that make you quiver, you'll be happy to hear that the winter dry season has come to an end with the kickoff of the 30th annual Taipei Cycle Show. And after a journey of around 10,000 kilometers, a few bowls of airplane congee and something else that may or may not have been cubed meat, as well as quick 300kph jaunt on the local bullet train, we're here to show you what's new, what's interesting, and what's super weird.
To be honest, there's probably going to be a whole bunch of the last thing, with the Taipei Cycle Show always home to a large selection of wacky goods.
The show itself runs over five days and is spread over 58,000 square meters inside, and partly outside, of the Nangang Exhibition Center. Unlike other trade shows that are laid out over a single story, the six-floor Nangang Exhibition Center is essentially a vertical plethora of everything bicycle, from mountain bikes of every description to the oddest folding commuter and pogo sticks that would surely cost me an arm and a leg in medical expenses.
In other words, the place is batshit crazy in the best kind of two-wheeled, and sometimes no-wheeled, way.
 |
We're not just here to do the usual trade show shoot-and-run, however. Taiwan and China are both home to an absolutely massive amount of manufacturing facilities, especially of the cycling variety, and we'll be visiting aluminum frame and component factories in Taiwan before flying to China to investigate carbon production with the kind of uninhibited access to Asian manufacturing that has never been granted to the media before, let alone a trio with both photo and video cameras in hand.
 |
We've already spent three days in Taichung, a city 130km south of Taipei where you'll find a large amount of frame and component factories. While there, we visited Genio's aluminum manufacturing facility that produces Pivot's alloy frames, among others, as well as PMG, a component builder that constructs everything from relatively inexpensive alloy parts to high-end carbon components. PMG also allowed us to see and film their test facility—picture multiple rooms full of large, loud robot-looking machines that are putting a lifetime's worth of abuse into a component in a relatively brief amount of time—and also the much quieter and clinical-like lab that's home to employees checking tolerances and running microscopes.
 |
 |
Get ready to be inundated with coverage from the 30th annual Taipei Cycle Show that kicks off later today. Want to see something in particular? Let us know in the comment section below.
Author Info:
Must Read This Week
Sign Up for the Pinkbike Newsletter - All the Biggest, Most Interesting Stories in your Inbox
PB Newsletter Signup
*edit - the contact info, not the inside of said factories.
The welder in the background has ran coloured welding sleeves.
They are leather pull over sleeves that welders can wear to offer the protection of leather on the arm without the heat of a full leather jacket. Very common in the welding industry.
No way to do this at home and sell at a price that mountain bikers wouldn't bitch about.
So if a stranger walks up to you and says hey my car is broken down, I notice you're not working today and your car is paid off , how about you let me use it today.
Dammit I hate the liberal's tho they always take the resources for them self here
Btw I just quickly googled salaries USA vs Taiwan for engineers and in average monthly net is $4700 vs $4100. Makes you wonder, huh?
In China is a little different off course.
You often have to dig to find where a product is actually made, and then you have to hope it'll be as good as what's produced in Asia.
Hope are one of the rare exception where you have quality made locally, and easy to find, but still, while their hubs are made in the UK, aren't their rims produced in Asia or somethin' ?
I pay $300 for jeans because they are made by one guy in Ohio and I know where the fabric comes from and how it's made. That is a choice I have made with almost all of my clothing (minus riding shorts and jerseys), it's much tougher to do for a bike and it's components.
Lirl