![[ Oysters Everywhere! ] ChiaYi Land and Coastal Ride Part 1 嘉義老廟蚵港騎之一](http://modernblackhand.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/chiayi-land-and-coastal-ride-1.jpg "[ Oysters Everywhere! ] ChiaYi Land and Coastal Ride Part 1 嘉義老廟蚵港騎之一")
- ChiaYi Land and Coastal Ride Summary
- Background
- Start: YanShui
- ChiaYi Farm Lands
- National Palace Museum & Sugar Factory Complex
- PuZi River Bike Path & Temple
- DongShi Harbor
- Continue to Part 2!
- Also Recommended:
- Taiwan Bike Routes Map
- [ Race with Rain Clouds! ] TaoYuan Coastal Bike Path Ride Part 1 桃園濱海自行車道騎之一
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ChiaYi Land and Coastal Ride Summary
- Self Ride
- Starting/ending Location: near YanShui Township (鹽水)
- Bike Length: ~ 110 km.
- Hill profile: Flat.
- Good for: Base training.
- CAUTION:
- Be aware of scooters riding on opposite direction.
- Route Highlights:
- YanShui old buildings 鹽水古蹟
- National Palace Museum Southern Branch 故宮南院
- SuanTou old sugar factory district 蒜頭糖廠
- Bengangkou harbor temple 笨港口港口宮
- Dongshi Fisherman’s Wharf 東石漁人碼頭
- BuDai salt fields 布袋鹽田
- HaoMei street art 好美里戶外彩繪
- NanKunShen Temple 南鯤鯓代天府
Background
The ChiaYi Land and Coastal Ride was the 5th effort after TaoYuan Coastal Bike Path Ride, to develop near 100 km Taiwan shore riding route.
After developing the coastal rout in TaoYuan I decided to go south of TaiChung for new coastal routes. ChangHua (彰化)’s coast looks too boring, and YunLin (雲林) has the notorious MaiLiao chemical plant complex (麥寮六輕). Thus ChaiYi became the obvious choice for a coastal route.
Start: YanShui
Our ChiaYi Land and Coastal Ride started at the YanShui (鹽水) Town. YanShui was one of the oldest towns in Taiwan, and was famous for its annual “bee firecracker” (蜂炮) event during Lantern Festival.
Town’s old street.
Goose meat restaurant.
One amazing building at YanShui was its Catholic church. The church was built with traditional Chinese style, and all the people in the drawings were also dressed in traditional Chinese style.
Chinese style Bible drawings.
Chinese styled church construction.
As an old town, YanShui also had many old streets to explore.
Temple in a narrow alley.
“Octagonal Pavilion (八角樓)”, a house with octagonal construction.
A huge temple donation list.
Another famous temple in YanShui was Wu temple (鹽水武廟), the starting point of “bee firecracker” event.
GuanYu (關羽), an ancient general and is often worshiped in Taiwan for his loyalty and bravery.
Another GuanYu statue.
Temple side.
ChiaYi Farm Lands
After leaving YanShui, our ChiaYi Land and Coastal Ride headed through rural lands.
A cow farm.
The place was called “flooded harbor”, LOL.
In southern Taiwan like ChiaYi there were many impressive temples.
Crossing a sluice. A complex irrigation system was placed at ChiaYi 100 years ago to support growing crops.
And to my surprise, there was actually some bike paths in ChiaYi.
A chicken farm.
Traditional buildings.
Passing expressway.
Goose!
One of the cool things riding in rural ChiaYi was to see all these old houses, some were deserted like this one.
National Palace Museum & Sugar Factory Complex
After some time riding through farm lands our ChiaYi Land and Coastal Ride encountered two big museums. At the south was the southern branch of the famous National Palace Museum (故宮南院), a big open park with a modern building.
Museum north entrance.
The modern building. There was some nice bike paths inside the park.
At north there was an old sugar factory complex called “SuanTou sugar factory” (蒜頭糖廠), with SuanTou being “garlic” in Chinese. Formerly a cane sugar processing factory 100 years ago, now the area was a mixture of preserved factories, old Japanese dormitories, cultural park as well as residential buildings.
SuanTou sugar factory entrance.
ChiaYi mascot: a pair of bears, one carrying a hoe and the other wearing a straw hat.
Optimus Prime’s new weapon.
Old factory building.
Probably this was the sugar cane entrance.
Trains that formerly carried sugar canes.
Temple with a smile : ).
Old Japanese dormitory.
Great place for shooting ghost movies…
PuZi River Bike Path & Temple
From SuanTou sugar factory our ChiaYi Land and Coastal Ride got onto a nice bike path towards the coast. The starting point was marked by a cool bridge.
Bridge monument.
“No smoking on Long-live bridge”. If you smoke Taiwanese cigarette this was a nice pun.
Crossing river.
Decent surface.
At the end of the bike path there was a cool temple.
Shoot me in the head!
A massive temple has wide roads at front and an impressive archway.
After we passed the big temple, we become very close to the coast, and the air was full of oyster smell. It seemed that ChaiYi’s coastal areas were particularly rich of oyster farming.
Hills of oyster shells.
Here the country road side was full of oyster shells. Some were in plastic buckets, while others were attached on plastic/metal stripes.
DongShi Harbor
Soon our ChiaYi Land and Coastal Ride reached the coastal harbors. Here the areas were divided by the seawall: inside were many fish farms, while outsides were harbors for oyster harvest.
There were many fish farm pools very close to each other.
Loads of oyster harvest!
Oyster harvesting boats & shells.
