"The deepening dusk touches off a
glistening play of neon.
The high-rises soar skyward: traffic bustles
through the crowded streets.
A zigzag freeway spans the winding river.
Red-tinted twilight clouds spot a fading blue sky.
People pour ceaselessly in roaring waves,
into the streets.
I lose myself within it all, until finally I
come again to understand
The thriving night of the northern city,
Reborn in my heart."
The thriving night of the northern city,
reborn in my heart."
— from the song,
Night in the Northern City
Taipei doesn't have the shimmering lights of Hongkong harbor, the forceful throb of Tokyo, or the nightclubs of Manila. Not here, too, the falsetto aura of Singapore's gay street, or the quaint but cosmopolitan air of Penang's tropical evenings.
And, Taipei-after-dark is only hinted at in these lines from the local ballad in its honor, popularized by singer Miss Yang Li-su.
The essence of Taipei's night is not to be discovered in the artificiality of its Western-style cabarets, the plate-glass isolation atop its high-rises, or the superficial offerings along the well-beaten tourist paths. Its vitality rises among Taipei's people—among the thousands who pour out into the streets each night down the back alleys to the river-front, and into the long, narrow, brightly lit markets that come alive only when the sun sets—into the streets and markets in such convivial swarms that a carnival is evoked. But the atmosphere is one of a community sharing its leisure, till the early hours.
Kushu (the old name for Wu County in Chiangshu Province on the mainland) is described by an ancient poet: Vendors of the night market sell water chestnuts and lotus roots; in spring, the boats carry young beauties....
Taipei's night markets, in contrast, feature only those beauties intent on shopping or snacking. Innumerable prepared food stalls offer myriad gastronomic specialties, and other vendors sell most everything, from clothing, stationery, kitchenware, jewelry, and toys, to deerhorn aphrodisiacs and electronic calculators. Among all this, the rich and powerful and the poor sit side by side, on long wooden benches or around small round tables, enjoying foods from the same pots-oyster-rice noodles, succulent dumplings, shark's fin stew. Lightly-clad housewives haggle over the prices of items of choice. And fortune tellers, portrait painters, masseurs, cobblers, umbrella makers, and medicine men... all come to sell their services.
Although historical records show that in 1888, Taipei was the first city with electric lighting in all China, no one has really traced when Taipei's special night markets came into being nor bothered to record their relative rise and fall.
The City's endless subtropical night, the eating habits of its food-oriented people, the pastime of gaining petty marketplace advantages, and the scarcity or expense of other cultural and entertainment activities are among the reasons for the continuing popularity of the street markets in the modern city. Additionally, Taipei's night markets offer a bouquet of enchanting and mystical highlights. In any case, they playa vital role in the recreational and economic lives of the city's 2.3 million inhabitants.
Step up here, folks. Step right up here and try some of this fresh cobra gall and blood. You'll note an instant improvement in your eyesight whether you're near or farsighted. It's good for low blood pressure and general circulation. Hurry, folks, don't miss your chance.... "
Shouting his pitch over a microphone, a hoarsethroated hawker in his 20s grabs an unfortunate reptile behind its head and swings it around several times to attract a larger audience. Then hanging the cobra head-up with a noose, he deftly makes a long incision with a pair of small scissors along its underside. And within seconds, he has excavated a bright blue gall which he holds aloft like a trophy, again shouting for possible patrons. His assistant, meanwhile, collects in a glass the dark-red blood oozing from the body.
This scene takes place nightly in Hua Hsi Street in the Wanhua district, a block from the magnificent Lungshan Temple. It's the city's largest night market, with a history of over twenty years.
Hua Hsi Street flaunts neatly-lined, fixed stands along a spacious walking passage-a rarity at other night markets, and a product of specific government improvement efforts in 1980.
The adventurous-minded tourist who prefers a truly exploratory cultural journey instead of cursory sensations at vulgar area souvenir shops, may witness some of the oddities involved in traditional Taiwanese folk medicine at herb shops along the street.
At the Kungfu Shop, a vigorous, barechested young man holds high a strength-giving elixir, attempting to catch the eye of a prospective customer. At his back, two martial arts masters are wrestling. So intense is their concentration that big drops of perspiration flow from their bare arms and breasts. Still farther back, rows of glass jars containing mystical powdered materials fill wooden shelves along three walls-a backdrop to the live commercial being staged.
At the Ta Fa Mountain Products Center, the carcasses of snakes swing gently in the breeze in front of the door, riveting the eye. Countless dark-tinted, vari-sized living snakes furtively twist in the murky corners of cramped cages, hardly arousing anyone's attention. The strong smells of this area are not for the queasy. In the shop's brightly lit innards, wall-high glass cases display an array of snake wines at about NT$1,500 (US$37.50) the bottle; a complete snake is visible inside, suspended in the wine. The prices go up according to select variations. For instance, gall wine is NT$2,000, and snake genital wipe, NT$2,500.
There are other "clinics" and medicine stores along Hua Hsi Street, all boasting secret prescriptions "handed down from generation to generation," or "secret Imperial Court formulas." Centuries of tradition hold sway here. It is impossible to know what percentage of the promised cures has a claim on fact.
Since the palates of the island's residents quite naturally tend toward seafood, Hua Hsi Street, like other Taipei night markets without exception, offers this most significant of gourmet attractions to hungry night owls. Many kinds of fish, shellfish, eel, squid, crab, and shrimp are displayed either swimming freely in very large glass aquariums near each shop's entrance or lying on crushed ice, waiting for the patron to order.
An overhead sign advertises shrimp marinated in wine or carbonadoed shrimp at NT$100 (US$2.50) per plate. Right below, four medium-sized shrimp, strung together, gradually turn red over a fire.
Turning at the street-end, visitors find themselves on Kwang Chou Street, joining the nearby alleys to a covered market-a vendors' paradise. This is a very natural development resulting from the area's geographical proximity to the landmark Lungshan Temple, Taipei's oldest and most famous Buddhist temple.
Just forty-four meters in diameter, the Circle, located at the junction of Nanking W. Road, Chungking N. Road, Tien Shui Road, and Ning Hsia Road, was once Taipei's oldest night market and most famous eating place.
Some say that around the turn of the century, the Circle area was nothing more than an empty lot where the four roads met, a place where children came to play.
But it wasn't long before four-story buildings and private homes began to rise in the surrounding area. The city government decided to turn the area into a miniature park, and a circle of trees was planted.
Years passed; the trees around the Circle grew taller and thicker, and the grass inside, greener. People started coming at all times of the day to sit on the stone benches beneath the trees to play chess, or just to meet friends and talk. Dusk would find bigger crowds there, walking or watching the chess players, listening to old men tell tales of the past.
One day, a fruit peddler stopped by the Circle of trees before moving on to his regular selling stations. He sold out that afternoon to those relaxing at the Circle. He came back the next day with more fruit, and sold it out too. The news spread, as it always seems to, and others of his profession quickly followed. Then one of the peddlers became dissatisfied with the small amount of goods he could carryon his shoulders and started bringing a pushcart load. As such peddlers in creased, the crowd also increased, and the Circle became a regular afternoon market.
To gain legitimacy for this existing but illegal situation, about forty years ago, a man named Wang, acting as a representative of all the vendors at the Circle, negotiated with city government officials. A compromise was reached whereby the city consented to the peddlers doing business there so long as they adhered to regulations drawn up by the authorities-their numbers would be limited; they could not start doing business before 5 p.m. (when a bell would be rung as a signal); they would have to stop and leave by midnight. Because of these restrictions, the Circle became a night market.
As time passed, the city limits grew outward to include the Circle. The rice paddies to the north were now covered with tall buildings, and the fish ponds to the east were filled in. The cemetary to the south was removed to another site. A red-light district began to nourish to the west. A bit further away, a host of entertainment establishments arose-theaters, night clubs, and dance halls.
As transportation became more convenient, people began to come here from all parts of the island to sell their produce at the Circle, and the Circle could not hold them all. So the vendors obtained the government's permission to use both sides of Chungking N. Road, that section extending from the Circle all the way to Chang An West Road.
The ever-increasing community of peddlers not only helped to bring more business to the area, but also brought along a flavor of the country, which made the Circle a bastion of folk culture in the midst of the metropolis.
Offering 40-some food stands, the Circle listed innumerable gourmet specialties- inlcuding oa chien (oyster omelette), tong kuei duck, sesame chicken, mushroom soup, stuffed dumplings, and many others. Adventurous gourmet or timid glutton, you could always satisfy your appetite at remarkably reasonable prices.
However, as the ancient Chinese saying goes, beautiful flowers never last long, and enchanting scenery exists but a short time. And Taipei, which has been growing by leaps and bounds over recent years, has seen this and other precious evidences of its past disappear in the rush to modernization.
The Circle's "arms" were among the first items to go, cut off to make way for street expansion. It seems as if every update of the urban renewal plan over the past decades immediately resulted in some decline of the Circle. Now, almost all its stands have closed down. When night falls, the circular island is no longer suddenly decked with lights, but is almost totally silent and dark. It is in intensive and pathetic contrast now with the heavy night traffic streaking by, and the bustling scene at Ning Hsia Road, which is now more thriving than ever; indeed, it has replaced Chungking N. Road as this area's major attraction.
People seem, for no reason, to love the new and desert the old. When one night market declines, a replacement arises. The area including Ta Tung Street, Wen Lin Road, and Hsiao Pei Street in Shihlin, a suburb of Taipei, has in recent years become one of the most popular of the metro night markets, an equal to those in the Kung Kuan and Ching Mei districts and along Tung Hwa Street.
Past the Grand Hotel and a railroad crossing, entering cars immediately find themselves in difficulty. The human tides now swarm from every direction, preventing vehicular motion, forcing the cars to detour.
Shihlin market's sudden expansion has been into narrow alleys, chuckfull of portable clothing stands. They even line the walks in front of its permanent ready-to-wear shops and shoe stores. Nearby Ming Chuan College, exclusively for girls, is doubtless a partial reason for the original marketing boom let.
The Ark Coffee Shop, an area eye-focus for its unique frontal decoration, continuously lends to its surroundings the beat of quick tempo pop music, intensifying the already too restive ambience. Inside the Ark, teenagers hum to melodies intoned to a guitar. A board at the entrance lists the names of part-time amateur singers. Next door, a bric-a-brac shop, named the Chaplin, displays an array of folk artifacts; it is a rarity among the mass of conventional stores and vendors specializing in modern consumer goods.
The Shihlin market is known for several culinary specialties, among them, large sausages, a big pastry "stuffed" with a smaller cake, and honey-bean ices. The stuffed pastry begins with small fried pastries stuffed with either sweet sesame or salty grated scallions; these are wrapped in (stuffed into) a tissue-thin wafer blanket. Watching a vendor make this Taiwanese savory fare is as much fun as the eating.
Another, older Taipei top pop song once announced, Today, I Will Not Go Home. Taipei's night markets probably are the major stimulants for such sentiments-favorite summertime alternatives to an evening with the "tube."