Giant and Ramen Noodles

July 23

On our last day of traveling, the first stop was the Giant factory in Taichung. Giant is one of the three biggest bicycle manufacturers in the world. I actually found the presentation part of our tour pretty interesting. It definitely made me more interested in buying one of their bikes. The factory tour was actually kind of fun as well. It was interesting to see each different part in the assembly line and how the bikes come together. It also reminded me of why I got a college education. The best part about the tour was when he let us pick up the frame of one of the carbon fiber bikes. Those things are so light! I’d want to get one, except I know they cost around $16,000US to get a completed one. I guess I will stick with my $150 one instead.

Between our two factory visits for the day, we encountered a problem that I am already much too familiar with. When the bus pulled off the exit ramp, the engine died. Subsequent attempts to turn it over proved to be unsuccessful. Finally after about 5 minutes, the bus finally was able to get started. We then found out that the bus was running on fumes. Luckily, we made it far enough to reach a gas station and were able to fill up. Considering the other bad luck that I’ve had on bus rides, I was ecstatic to find out that it was only a problem with gas.

The second visit brought us to the Uni-President Enterprises Corporation. The first thing we did was take a tour of the area where they manufacture ramen noodles. For the people that know how much I love ramen noodles, they would understand how excited I was to see them being made. I just wanted to hop the barrier and eat some right there. Luckily, the heat prevented me from being very hungry.

On the second part of the tour, they showed us a video basically on how their products can change the world. During the video, I discovered how much power the company had in Taiwan. Much of the food and drink that is available for purchase is made by them, plus they operate the 7-Elevens and Starbucks in the country. To fully realize how many 7-Elevens are in Taiwan, you need to go there and see for yourself. I imagine it’s the equivalent of trying to find a Starbucks in Seattle (before half of them went bankrupt). They have a dominant position in the country. The other thing that I realized during the video was that marketing a food company is difficult. Food is not a glamorous product, but the producers did a decent job.

After the tour, we went into Tainan City. The city has more history than any other place in Taiwan because it was the first city that the Dutch founded when they arrived in the 1600s. We went to a tree house museum where a gigantic tree was. I guess I missed the part that described why it was so significant, but it was kind of interesting.

After that, we had a few hours to get food. I went with Mangmang and Ms. Bao, the professor from Beijing. We decided to wait until we got back to Kaohsiung to get dinner, so we walked around for awhile. We finally stopped at a park and sat next to this group of older guys that looked like they hung around the park a lot. Of course, seeing that I was white, they proceeded to practice all of the English they knew, which was comprised of “Hello,” and “How are you?” The rest of the time they spent talking to the other two that knew Chinese. It was somewhat disturbing because one of the guys kept walking around, flipping up his shirt, and rubbing his belly while talking. I was trying hard not to laugh the whole time. After a few minutes we decided to walk around somewhere else.

After another hour-long trip, we were finally back at Wenzao. I went with Mangmang for some beef noodles. I added some extra spice to them and they were quite good. I could definitely get used to the spicy food around here. My time here is getting much too short now.

Once again, thanks to Grace for the pictures. Although I did take the middle one because you can see Grace in the picture!