Night Market

Night markets are a big part of life in Taipei. This is when street is kind of blocked off (blocked off, but not to scooters), and shops open, and vendors set up shop in the middle of the street, and a zillion people show up to shop, watch other people, and just wander up and down. Picture a hippy street fair on steroids. This is capitalism at its most unfettered. The vendors in the middle of the street are supposed to have permits, but none of them do, so they travel light, and if and when the cops show up, they pack up and take off quickly. We saw this happen with a bag merchant. Probably enough merchandise to fill a small store was packed up by three people and carted off in a matter of minutes.

So, we went to the biggest one, the Shilin market (there are many scattered throughout town.) People were selling food, clothing, plastic crap, more food, cds, dvds, more clothing, even more food, etc. There is a separate section that is mostly food and games (like carnival style games – shoot the balloons, toss the ring around the bottle, etc. One of these involved catching live crayfish with a hook – maybe then you got to eat what you caught?) I’m told the food isn’t actually very good, but it looked and smelled good in that street fair lots of salt and grease kind of way. We were pretty sure there was nothing vegetarian. After that, you cross a few streets to get to the actual market, which is a very close street and lots of even closer alleys running off to the side. People mill through at a slow pace. People ride their scooters, some to deliver goods, some no doubt just to look cool. I would have had a better time, but I eventually just got really sick of the scooter exhaust. At a market like this in the states, I would have felt like people were constantly trying to take advantage of me (“Carnie” isn’t an insult for nothing), but only rarely did anyone bother us here. They no doubt figured they’d have just as much of a language problem as we do. I don’t know why we weren’t targeted as tourists, and subjected to the usual tourist scams anywhere in Taiwan (perhaps we were, but it was so skillful we didn’t notice, but I doubt it.)

There was one (I’m guessing really intoxicated) gentleman who really wanted to show us his ten words of English, over and over again and loudly. I kind of got the impression he wanted an English teacher, but he had so little English it was hard to tell. He was friendly enough, but awfully insistent on something. I just don’t know what it was.

There was one disturbing moment, which was a beggar on the sidewalk, who was missing at least one hand, and, I would guess from his behavior, part of his mind. He seemed to be violently bowing to everyone over and over again, from a sitting position - I thought he was hitting his head on the pavement. I must have had a stunned look on my face, as Ev turned to me and said, "There are no social services here. None." It wasn't a happy moment. If you can't fend for yourself, and your family can't or isn't willing, you starve to death, it's that simple.