By 10 a.m., when most Taipei residents are deep into their work moods, the Chung Hua Market Bazaar has just wakened from last night's late sleep.
One by one, a thousand-plus shops roll up their iron grills for the start of business, revealing the bazaar's ultra special feature—a compelling mixture of myriads of commodities.
On the second floor of the bazaar's fifth structure, the boss of a lottery ticket shop turns on a loud advertising tape: "Come buy a lottery ticket. Quickly. The top prize of NT$24 million was bought in this shop...." The voice breaks through the quiet ambience of the morning, reeking with strong business vitality.
Neighboring the lottery ticket shop is a small tea house with a dozen-odd rattan chairs. In sharp contrast to the noisy tape of the lottery ticket shop, the silent tea house customers, mostly aged, read newspapers, quietly play wei chi (go), or simply sit there, contemplating.
Buses now bring the market bazaar's first major group of possible customers. They turn out to be mostly a transit crowd, aiming at the morning showings in Hsimenting's famous "Movie Street", some ten minutes' walk west from the bazaar. The bazaar, however, does its best to interest such passersby, hoping some will become active consumers here by the chance appeal of various offerings.
Every few minutes, a train passes to or from the Taipei Railway Station across the back of the stretched-out bazaar. On the pedestrian overpasses traversing wide and busy Chung Hua Road, the moving shoppers feel the strong vibrations from the clacking trains. During the past quarter of a century, the Chung Hua Market Bazaar has experienced an unimaginable number of such vibrations; still, the eight three-story structures housing the shops of the bazaar stand firm—beckoning bargain-symbols of the downtown business district.
Current movie billboards in the area.
Time has not spared its tracings on the structures. The back walls most obviously reflect that aging, blackened by the coal-propelled trains of the past, which ran for years before the railway's modern electrification.
But recently, time has taken second place as a threat to the bazaar. Taipei mass-transit railway engineering has forced the issue, placing preservation or removal of the Chung Hua Market Bazaar directly before Taipei residents and the City Council.
Ask any Taipei citizen, "What's your view of the Chung Hua Market Bazaar situation?", and he will give you an emphatic answer, contrasting, especially, between the older and younger generations.
The long history of the market bazaar is also the tale of Taipei's overall transformation.
Wu Chia-shou belongs to a second-generation Chung Hua business family. Speaking of the rise of the bazaar, he sees it as "totally attributable to 'the benevolent leadership of our late President Chiang Kai-shek."
In the shop filled with electronic items, Wu, in his early 50s, also presides as chief of the Yan Hua Li (Borough), and has done so now for 20-plus years. He pulled out a rattan chair, dropped into it, and began to recount the history of the area:
In the year 1949, when the China mainland fell to the Communists, Wu Chia-shou's family, like many others, left for Taiwan. At first, these refugees crowded into temporary, technically-illegal shacks which were actually built by the Police and People's Association along the Chung Hua Road railway to accommodate the flood from the China mainland.
The Chung Hua Market Bazaar is a vast conglomerate catering to the recreational shopper, the bargain hunter, and the inner man.
Gradually, a total of 1,600 or so shacks struggled from the North Gate to the Lesser South Gate (between the two main city gates, it was originally in the old Taipei city wall before that was removed and the gates themselves preserved during the Japanese occupation period). To meet actual need, the inhabitants randomly expanded the shacks at will. Various street peddlers concentrated in the area, adding to the disorder and raggedness of a district long styled "the intestines of Taipei."
Between 1949 and 1959, proposals to renovate the area were raised many times by related agencies. However, restricted by the government's financial situation and other considerations, such programs withered.
"In 1959, President Chiang Kai-shek toured Chung Hua Road, viewing the sub-standard living conditions in this district. He instructed that it to be thoroughly redeveloped. And that's why I say the construction of our Chung Hua Market Bazaar is entirely attributable to the benevolent leadership of the late President," said Wu.
After repeated debate, three principles to guide the reconstruction of the area were adopted:
—To assure accommodations for the original residents and their livelihoods by reconstructing shop-homes for each, as closely as possible, on the original sites of their shacks.
—To defray the government's financial burden, construction expenses should be borne by the residents themselves via the paying of rents, with the land proprietary rights remaining with the city government.
—For appearance and durability, the new structures should be three-story, reinforced concrete buildings.
One year later, the reconstruction was completed. Covering a linear distance of 1,171 meters, the new three-floor Chung Hua Market Bazaar was divided by roads into eight structures with a total number of 1,644 shop-flats.
Fortune tellers serve those who seek special justice.
In addition to the original shack-residents along the Chung Hua Road railway, these flats would also accommodate street peddlers from other areas of downtown Taipei.
On April 1, 1961, the Chung Hua Market Bazaar formally opened for business—a great event at that time. It was a little like the change from Cinderella to princess, the rickety-rackety shacks giving way to an area dolled up in brand new, tidy, white market buildings which triumphantly brought about the prosperity of the entire Hsimenting district.
"Almost every kind of trade goods you can think of are to be found in the Chung Hua Market Bazaar—it is more complete than any department store," said Wu. And seeming to find that description inadequate, he added, "On the second floor of the first structure, there were even wineshops and tearooms earlier."
Twenty years ago, when people from middle and south Taiwan traveled to Taipei, the first thing they did after stepping off the train was to walk along the railway to the shops of the Chung Hua Market Bazaar. Foreign sightseers also made the bazaar one of their necessary shopping destinations.
Many shops' histories are as long as that of the market bazaar—almost symbols of it. Among them, the Cheng Pei Ping (Real Peking), though having passed through several different managers, has long enjoyed a special reputation for its roast Peking duck; the Tien Hsin Shih Chieh (World of Pastry) is known far and wide for its tidiness, delicious tasties, and low prices.
Its special historical background has made the bazaar a home for activities of all kinds, each with its own long story.
One of the bazaar's special features is a series of fortune-telling shops concentrated on its second and, especially, third floors. In times of trouble or imagined trouble, people seek to learn of things unknown or uncontrollable, to seek solutions for their problems.
Perhaps the specific locations of the shops are due to their modest space requirements, about three ping—36 square feet—on the second and third floors, and even smaller on the first floor.
Street portraits remain the anchor of both aspiring and disillusioned artists.
For a long time, the Chung Hua Market Bazaar occupied the leading place in the city's dealings in antiques and in stamp and ancient coin collection. Foreign sightseers to the ROC, after visiting the historical Chinese treasure center, the National Palace Museum, would often be inspired to join local shoppers and probe the market bazaar's antique fair for items like those they had just seen. In that golden time, every Chung Hua antique store made a fortune.
When the nights fell in those days, eight giant neon signs on the bazaar's roofs radiated splendid light displays across the entire area.
But the market's best times have gradually faded. Standing on the outside corridor along the market structure's third floor, one can fully witness that decline. In addition to fortune-telling shops and seamstresses taking clothing for repair, the floor now accommodates cheap housing. Along the long corridor, drying laundry and old wooden and rattan chairs are randomly disposed, and children ride bicycles or roller-skate. It is a damaging scene for a vital, heavy-business commercial fair.
Many shop owners put the blame for the decline on the lack of parking paces along Chung Hua Road. "Years ago, tourist buses could stop directly in front of our shops. Now, people want to come in cars. But as everyone knows, it is impossible to find a parking space in downtown Taipei. And the customers go elsewhere," grunted the boss of a souvenir shop.
The rise of new city shopping centers in the eastern and western districts of Taipei and along Chung Shan North Road is a reflection of the fickleness of the consumers.
Lin Li-yu, who has been in the business of antique trading through the whole history of the Chung Hua Market Bazaar, complains, "Previously, I started business at 8 a.m. and closed at 10 p.m. Now it is all reversed, starting at 10 a.m. and closing at 8 p.m. Some shops even close down in the afternoons." She had just retrieved a Ching Dynasty porcelain in a failed transaction, and she added, shaking her head for emphasis, "Many of my neighbors have ended their businesses."
Facing the second-floor-stairs entrance to the market bazaar's first structure, the Kuchinko Scrolls and Antiques Trading Service was once famous throughout Taiwan. Now the shop is only half the size of the original. Its once other half now holds a computer store.
The antiques and updated computer products are in interesting contrast, reflecting the very soul of the market bazaar, contorted now by time shifts.
In addition, changes in business practices in the Chung Hua Market Bazaar probably have more than a little to do with the overall decline.
The splendid neon signs of the bazaar have faded, having been dismantled because of age. But they shine on in shoppers' memories, as the bazaar itself approches a final reckoning.
Customers visiting the old bazaar will never forget its particular trading style. Shopowners would set exorbitant prices, then expect customers to bargain. The experienced customer would discount the price by 50 percent, then divide that result by two. Any who failed to apply that formula could certainly consider themselves taken.
Customers gradually came to compare prices among at least three shops as the safest way to prevent later regrets. The shop owners claim that the old trading methods no longer exist because that practice forced ruinous competition among themselves, aggravated by the pressures from all the new department store. The overall result is a continued business decline.
The most prosperous trade in the bazaar is in electronic products, including computers, concentrated in the market's first and second blocks.
Some observers say this area of the Chung Hua Market Bazaar is now the most representative place in the Republic of China to check the country's scientific and technological production level. From miniature audio device to quadraphonic and octophonic family audio, automobile audio, hi-fi video, and video recorders, to all the highly sophisticated computer products—the Chung Hua Market Bazaar has almost become the country's electronic products fair.
Here, you can buy a walk-type cassette player for only US$10, a 16-bit computer for only US$500. The low prices account for the shops' popularity. Many students of electronics buy parts and assemble the items themselves; and many take advantage of part-time job opportunities here.
Many traditional professions still live on in the Chung Hua Market Bazaar. Usually, they have been passed on from a former generation, and many artisans now are the sole examples remaining in Taiwan. One example: On the second floor of the eighth block, Li Yu-hsiu is now the only Peking Opera-shoemaker in Taiwan. His late father was opera-shoemaker for the famous Mei Lan-fang. Li followed his father, learning opera-shoemaking for more than 20 years.
From May this year, the eight giant neon lights of the Chung Hua Market Bazaar have ceased their shining, and the evening enchantment of Hsimenting is the victim—no more red and blue-dyed evening skies, a real disappointment to habitues of the downtown night scene. Soon, the old framing for the neons will be removed.
Some assert that removal of the neons indicates that the Chung Hua Market Bazaar's fate is set—that all the debate is merely window dressing.
The original 20-year rent period expired in 1981. And ever since, proposals to eliminate the Chung Hua Market Bazaar have been ceaselessly raised by city councilmen.
"The market bazaar has long occupied city road areas; it has become the biggest unlicensed structure in Taipei. Its dinginess and disorder is reminiscent of the old shacks of 20 years ago. The government previously built the market bazaar in order to take care of needy refugees from the mainland. However, they have since prospered with all Taiwan. Therefore, the Chung Hua Market Bazaar should be removed," contend antagonistic city councilmen.
Businessmen in the bazaar do not specifically oppose the demise of the structures, but they insist that the area should be reconstructed as a modern shopping center.
"Though the residents signed contracts with the government recognizing that the proprietary rights for the market bazaar belong to the government, they still have the idea the 'this house is mine,' because the construction fees were raised by themselves. They have really paid a high price to build this market bazaar," contends Wu Chia-shou.
No matter. Whether Chung Hua Market Bazaar is redeveloped or not, no one can deny its special historical impact.
What will it be tomorrow? Perhaps even the third-floor fortune-tellers can not tell for sure.