Author Chris van Laak
Photographer James Ramsey
Editor Chih Yi Chen
Taipei is not unique in that it has a citywide bike-sharing system. What sets it apart from other global cities, however, is that its ubiquitous YouBikes have become part of the local culture since the system was inaugurated in 2009. No wonder other cities and counties in Taiwan have also adapted the bikes, which are made by Taiwanese bicycle behemoth Giant. The system first expanded to New Taipei City, in 2014, and was then gradually introduced in nine other cities and counties: Changhua and Taichung (both 2014), Hsinchu (2016), Kaohsiung and Chiayi (2020), Pingtung and Tainan (2023), and Miaoli and Taitung (2024).
Where are you from, bike?
A nice gimmick is that each bike bears the emblem of the city where it’s originally from. At YouBike stations in Taipei, about 20 percent of bikes are from New Taipei City, the suburban administrative unit encircling the capital, with a few from Taoyuan sprinkled in here and there. Needless to say, the systems are compatible with each other, so there are no hard limits to how far you can ride across the country, even though trips to far-away cities are officially discouraged.
Once I found myself riding a bike, originally from Taoyuan, in New Taipei City’s Xizhi District (汐止區) and I tried to imagine how it had gotten there. It might have migrated there gradually, with many people riding it slowly eastward, one journey at a time. The nearest YouBike station in Taoyuan was 52km away from where I took the bike.
It’s also possible that one person made the trip at once, but how likely would that be?
‘Misusing’ the system
James Ramsey has made such a trip. From New Taipei City, via Taipei to Taoyuan and then further down the west coast to Kaohsiung—and it wasn’t even planned.
“The nice thing about YouBikes is that you can be spontaneous. You can just jump right on and cycle to your destination,” said Ramsey, who is now based in London.
He did the trip last fall when he no longer worked for the UK-based company that sponsored his Taiwan Gold Card but felt like he wanted to spend some extra time in Taiwan and do another deep dive into its culture. That this would come at the cost of the worst saddle sore of his life wasn’t part of the initial plan.
“I just decided that, as I had nothing to do, I’d just head back to Taipei for a bit, for no specific reason. It wasn’t on my mind to get a YouBike and cycle down Taiwan,” he said.
Dreams and reality
During afternoon tea sessions and late-night conversations in Taipei bars, I have heard many people speculating about the possibility to do such a long-distance YouBike trip, basically ever since the bikes were first introduced in other places along the west coast, but no one I knew had followed through on it, until I met Ramsey.
“I wanted to do something to challenge myself,” he said, adding that his initial, equally spontaneous plan was not to cycle, but run all the way from Keelung to Kaohsiung.
“I came up with the idea because I was looking at the map and it seemed very attainable to do that for some reason,” he said.
He started on Heping Island (和平島) near the Port of Kaohsiung, but it soon dawned on him that his plan was a bit too ambitious.
“When I got to New Taipei City I realized I might have to include YouBikes,” he said. “I slept the night in Taipei and got a YouBike in front of my house the next morning.”
Bucking the trend
Many Taiwanese adventure enthusiasts have three challenges on their bucket list: Climbing Yushan, the country’s highest mountain; swimming across Sun Moon Lake (日月潭), its largest body of water; and cycling around Taiwan. The 1,200km around-the-island trip usually takes seven to 12 days.
Ramsey has surely encountered some well equipped cyclists on their street or tour bikes who were cycling back up the west coast toward Taipei. For them it was the second, less exciting half of their trip, which is known in Chinese as huandao (環島), as they usually start by riding down the spectacular east coast highway.
“The west coast is less scenic, but it made me appreciate the nuances of Taiwanese culture, such as farmers selling fruits at the side of the road,” said Ramsey. “There’s so much to experience.”
He hadn’t advertised his six-day trip beforehand, but when he started posting about it on Instagram, focusing on local delicacies in each of the cities he passed through, many people started contacting him.
Among them were some foreigners, but most of them were Taiwanese, including some who offered to take him on sightseeing trips in their hometown once he passed through.
“My trip resonated with them because they, too, ride YouBikes every day,” he said. “There’s something about YouBike. It’s just the Taiwanese way of doing things.”
‘So many places to go’
When I asked him whether he meant to send a message by “misusing” the YouBike system for his halfway-around-the-island trip, Ramsey immediately said yes—even though there was no grandiose purpose to his trip.
Among the few others who have done the trip were groups who did it for charity, for example.
For Ramsey, it was simply a way to express his love of Taiwan and its YouBike culture, and encourage others to get active, too.
“You don’t have to cycle all the way down Taiwan, but there are so many other places to go. From Taipei you can easily cycle all the way to Tamsui, for example,” he said.
Officially, you’re not supposed to ride a Youbike across city limits, with the Taoyuan-New Taipei City-Taipei cluster being the exception. In reality, you might incur a modest additional fee for an “excessive” trip.
When I contacted the operator of the system in Taipei to ask how many out-of-city YouBikes they usually return to their places of origin, I did not receive an answer.
How many have done it?
From Instagrammers to charity cyclists, it is difficult to say how (un)common it actually is that people do long-distance YouBike trips. Neither Ramsey nor I have met anyone else who has done it, at least not all the way down the coast.
It might be difficult to imagine in times of social media, but people might do it every now and again, without letting the Internet know.
A friend of mine once YouBiked from Taichung to Hsinchu after breaking up with her boyfriend. It was an exercise she needed to release stress, but she didn’t feel the need to talk about it.
After all, long-distance YouBike trips might be more common than it seems. The only way to find out would be to look out for bikes bearing the emblem of far-away cities at every YouBike station you come across.
