Extreme sports are taking off in Taiwan and
carrying people beyond their expectations.
In her childhood Candice Liu dreamed of soaring over the earth like a bird, and it made her euphoric. Four years ago while vacationing in Wanli on the northern coast of Taiwan, she caught sight of a marvelous spectacle--paragliding canopies of various colors sailing gracefully above a nearby hill. She had never seen paragliding, and she thought the human kites looked like beautiful giant jellyfish floating in the sky. She drove up the hill in search of the source of her excitement, and discovered dreamers of similar dreams and a launch site for paragliders. Liu joined them on the spot. "I simply love the feeling of flying on my own," she says.
Liu is one of a growing number of Taiwanese catching the bug for new challenges and extreme sports. While "extreme" is used to describe these sports, the term is vaguely defined. It suggests challenge for certain, and definitely something a little different from golf or badminton. The term is applied to almost any sport that looks like a bad idea at first glance--flying above the earth suspended by a plastic tarp, jumping from cliffs with only a springy cord to prevent death at the last moment, scaling a precipice like a human fly, and doing stunts in a giant manmade bowl on bicycles, in-line skates or skateboards.
Extreme sports got their first large-scale public introduction in 1995, when the sports channel ESPN initiated the X Games, in which competitors pushed their luck in 27 events in nine categories, from bungee jumping to skateboarding to rock climbing. These "sports" were once the hobbies of crazy kids and daredevils. But as Candice Liu has shown, they can provide the bliss of conquering fear and satisfying the imagination.
Today she comes to the Wanli site about four days a week to set sail on her own or to help out Peter Liu, the general instructor of a paragliders' club, from whom she learned the sport. Paragliding, not surprisingly, requires a little instruction, and Liu and others prep the aspiring fliers before they lift off. To become a paraglider--the term refers to the flying contraption and to the person who handles it--a student must be taught how to take off, how to control the canopy while airborne, and how to land as gracefully as a gull. Paragliders must also become keen observers of the sky, learning to read winds and predict rough weather. A glider can buy equipment of his or her own for a minimum of about NT$120,000 (US$3,750) or rent it for around NT$1,000 (US$31) per day.
Candice Liu's work as an instructor gives her time to indulge in her dreams and to share them with others. Today, the sight of the many colorful floating jellyfish, guided by old hands and new students, is a regular feature of Wanli's landscape. Yet the sport remains unknown to most people. Being extreme is one major reason why people love it or stay away from it. For some, the adrenaline rush of paragliding and other extreme sports is reward in itself; for the majority of people, the idea of flying hundreds of meters above the ground and preventing catastrophe only by pulling strings to control a canopy's movements is more terrifying than fun. "It does involve risks, but if you follow the safety rules, it's really quite safe," says Candice Liu. "All the accidents result from human errors." She adds wryly that Taiwan's expansive canopy of treetops provides a soft landing when things go wrong. "A forced landing on trees is rarely life-threatening," she says.
It is perhaps that cavalier, take-no-prisoners attitude that has made these sports fashionable today. Extreme sports, however, are not a new invention. Rock climbing was popular long before people described it as extreme. Bungee jumping began on a small island in the Pacific Archipelago of Vanuatu many centuries ago as a form of ritual vine jumping. Its modern-day incarnation was started in New Zealand by A.J. Hackett, who in 1987 jumped from the Eiffel Tower, capturing some publicity for the new sport. It has since caught on all over the world.
In Taiwan, locals who have taken up extreme sports abroad and foreign residents have spread interest in these unusual activities. Bungee jumping, for example, was introduced to Taiwan in 1991 by Cortney Smith, an American who established a club to teach locals about the sport. Over 30,000 Taiwanese have since experienced the thrill of a freefall, mostly at a couple of spots in northern Taiwan. Meg Luo, for example, found the experience both unnerving and exciting when she jumped for the first time last August. "It seemed to take a long time before reaching the lowest point of the jump," she says. "Maybe that's because I wanted the whole thing to end as soon as possible." Luo had jumped with the cord tied around her waist, as most beginners do. After it was all over, she wanted to do it again. "I just couldn't get enough of it," she says. Next time she would like to jump with the bungee attached to her ankles and face danger head on.
At one time in Taiwan, sports were considered an unnecessary diversion from studies or work. But the island's increasing prosperity ushered in an interest in leisure activities, and today the athletically minded are pushing the limits of sports.
Of all the extreme sports today, B3--boarding (skateboarding), blading (rollerblading) and bicycling--is perhaps the most popular. It is a central interest of the Chinese Taipei Extreme Sports Association. Chiang Chih-ming, the organization's director, has been a rollerblading enthusiast for years. He first glimpsed on TV the wavy manmade structures that B3 enthusiasts use. Skateboarding never looked so fun. Chiang later visited Bangkok, where he got the chance to try out professional B3 facilities. These structures allow skateboarders, bikers and bladers to keep their momentum by rolling up and down curved walls designed to allow riders to reach high speeds in a small space--and to perform the daredevil tricks that make the sports so much fun to watch. Chiang wanted one for Taiwan, and largely through his efforts, the island's first professional B3 facilities were opened to the public in 2000. The Chinese Taipei Extreme Sports Association was established the following year, and people have been in extreme motion ever since.
B3 sports attract many athletes because they give free range to self-expression and personal style, which explains their popularity among people under 25, who enjoy impressing the audience with stunts of their own design. "These sports are rather creative. Their technical difficulties are constantly changing, and so you keep seeing newly designed facilities to meet the needs of the athletes," says Chiang.
There are 29 B3 facilities in Taiwan today, and Chiang credits them with spreading interest in the sports. "These venues are magnets for B3 sports aficionados," he says. "They help popularize the sport by providing a place to watch the extreme sporters in action." The completion of the first B3 sports park allowed Taiwan to host its first international B3 sports contest in 2002.
Rock climbing has an even longer history in Taiwan. Two decades ago, the Chinese Taipei Alpine Association, Taiwan's leading promoter and organizer of mountain-climbing activities, held contests for local climbers on Taiwan's first artificial vertical obstacle courses. Rock climbing in Taiwan got a boost in 1998 from the Seventh Asian Sport Climbing Championship, which was the first international climbing event to take place in Taiwan. Mark Ma, a rock-climbing instructor, estimates that the number of artificial climbing walls in public places, such as parks and schools, increased threefold after the games. He reckons that there are now over 300 of these walls.
Ma believes that the growing interest in sports that push the limit reflects the need to blow off a little steam and take a break from the work world. He says that many of the people coming to him for climbing instruction are businessmen and techies doing stressful jobs. "They need a little excitement to liberate themselves from the daily grind," he says.
Part of that liberation for climbers comes about by doing things they did not know they could do. "I thought rock climbing was beyond me before, but now I know I can do it," says Ano Law, who climbs once a week with his wife. "I have a new understanding of my body since taking up the sport," Law says.
Those benefits are often lost on parents, however, who see "extreme" as a giant danger sign. "They are afraid their children will get hurt by taking up extreme sports," Chiang says. "Being labeled 'extreme' can be disadvantageous for a sport's development."
Even though they are catching on, extreme sports are not likely to achieve the popularity of basketball or soccer. For one, they are generally highly individualistic in nature, pitting a single person against his own fears. Even instructors, notes Ma, can be much more interested in their own achievements than in promoting the sports. He points out that there are hundreds of licensed rock-climbing instructors but that few of them teach their skills. "Many obtain licenses mainly for the purpose of enjoying a sense of achievement," he says. "They're not interested in teaching."
Chiang Chih-ming points out that extreme sports are still relatively young, and so too, he says, are most of the athletes working for the Chinese Taipei Extreme Sports Association and its 10 branches around Taiwan. "Too young to have a serious attitude about the promotional aspects, they're more interested in seeking excitement from the sports," he says.
Nonetheless, interest is growing. B3 sports, for example, will be included in the first Asian Indoor Games, a major sports event in the region scheduled for this month in Bangkok. Chiang is also lobbying the National Council on Physical Fitness and Sports for the inclusion of B3 sports in Taiwan's National Games. And last year the first Taiwan Open for paragliders was held in Taitung, southeastern Taiwan. The early August event attracted 110 athletes, more than 80 of whom were overseas competitors, up from around 20 in 2004. Over the last year, the Chinese Taipei Aerosport Association has also opened more offices to promote paragliding activities, and paragliders hope that their sport will be included in the next World Games, scheduled for 2009 in the southern Taiwanese city of Kaohsiung. Already organizers for the World Games have added rock climbing to the list of competitions.
Extreme, it would seem, is slowly entering the mainstream, as extreme sports begin to take off. "You can't expect the wind to be favorable at any moment you want to fly," says paraglider Candice Liu, looking at the expanse of ocean beneath the Wanli flying site. "But if you wait long enough, you will be rewarded with an extremely good wind sooner or later. And it will send you soaring."