Wed, Jun 25, 2014 page5

• Trio to race across Eurasia next month

  UNDETERRED: Despite possible visa issues and a vehicle without air-conditioning, the trio are determined to enter this year’s Mongol Rally and help promote Taiwan

  • By Hsueh Chia-chun and Sean Lin / Staff reporter, with staff writer
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  “When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it,” Paulo Coelho wrote in his 1988 bestseller, The Alchemist.

  This is the motto of Chiang Chih-peng (江志鵬), 37, and his two co-pilots as they prepare for the Mongol Rally, a daunting race across Eurasia — in a decrepit car with a 1-liter engine.

  This year’s race is to start on July 20 in London and concludes in Ulan Bator, the Mongolian capital, spanning 16,000km.

  

  Chiang Chih-peng, left, and Yu Kuan-feng hold a Republic of China flag at a promotion in Taipei on Monday last week for their bid in this year’s Mongol Rally from England to Mongolia.

  Photo: Hsieh Chia-chun, Taipei Times

  Participants can choose any route between the two destinations, but can only drive an old car with a 1,000cc engine.

  As crazy as it may sound, finishing the race is the dream of Chiang and his teammates, he said.

  Chiang’s team, the Taiwan Bear, consists of his female colleague Yu Kuan-feng (余冠鳳) and Philip Lu (呂鴻祥), 55, a retired IT worker whom the pair met on the Internet.

  Seeing Taiwanese drivers compete the previous two years prompted Chiang to participate in this year’s event, he said.

  “The essence of this race is adventure: To be adventurous, you cannot be too fancy,” he said.

  Yu, 34, said that she and Chiang have always wanted to take part in the rally that debuted in 2001, but it was not until she saw Kano — a film about a high-school baseball team from Taiwan fighting their way into the final of Koshien, the Japanese National High-School Baseball Championship — this year, that she finally made up her mind.

  “I took maternity leave to compete in the Mongol Rally. I asked Chiang: ‘Are you coming, or not?’ ‘I’m in,’ he agreed without a second thought,” she said.

  After recruiting Lu from the Web, the Taiwan Bear were operational in April.

  The high-spirited trio quickly signed up for the rally.

  Instead of taking the easy way through Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Russia and ending in Mongolia, the team opted for a much more challenging route starting from the UK and passing through France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, the Czech Republic, Austria, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, before finally arriving in Kazakhstan, Russia, and concluding in Mongolia.

  According to Yu, it is a path of the unknown, as it covers terrain spanning meadows, highlands and deserts.

  They might even encounter tornadoes, he said.

  Yu said that most Central Asian governments only issue visas to Taiwanese visitors by invitation from locals, adding that the trio are to drive a beat-up vehicle without air-conditioning.

  Despite this, the trio are undeterred, he said, and are determined to travel to promote Taiwan.

  With a Formosan black bear banner covering the car, and equipped with chopsticks and self-made pineapple cakes as gifts, they hope to introduce Taiwan to the world, the Taiwan Bear team said.

  They even plan to play Taiwanese movies with a projector between stops, the team said.

  Chiang said that research institute Academia Sinica has sponsored them with some equipment.

  Chiang has invited the public to follow them on their journey through GPS, adding that the information they gather in foreign lands is to be used in future Academia Sinica research. Their progress can be followed at: www.facebook.com/2014TaiwanBear.
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