Taiwan's night markets, colorful, noisy, and aromatic (kind of), offer much to please both resident and visitor alike. But they also generate litter, territorial disputes, and occasional clashes with the law. How can these freewheeling vendors be made accountable without depriving customers of the unique pleasures they offer?
Night markets dazzle the senses. Long before first-time visitors see their destination, the buzz reaches out to them. The noise of many people gathered together in a confined space grows louder. Aromas waft through the night air, some familiar, others not, some pleasant, others, well.... When newcomers turn the corner, their first reaction is usually to stop dead while their eyes try to make sense of the rich but tangled tapestry in front of them.
There seem to be literally hundreds of vendors selling every kind of food imaginable--boiled, fried, grilled, steamed--all viewed through a sharp-scented haze of oily smoke. To the left, a stallholder is dishing up a plate of clams fried in eggs on what looks like a steel drum. Opposite him, lines of squid kebabs sizzle on an open grill. Ahead, a hawker is stuffing vegetable dumplings, while behind him someone whips up a cocktail of papaya chunks and milk in a rattly old blender. Which way to turn, where to go first? The energy all these customers exude as they scuttle around in search of food and other bargains would surely power Taipei's air conditioners for a week.
All very "touristy." But there is another side to Taiwan's night markets, one that is increasingly beginning to concern bureaucrats and citizens alike. What laws govern this motley crew of simple entrepreneurs? How do the economics of their trade shape up? And just how safe is soup served in a bowl that has been washed in a bucket of cold water on a wet floor by the side of the road?
Taiwan's crowded, noisy, bustling night markets can stand as a metaphor for the country's contradictory nature. On the one hand, they serve up cheap, ready-made, comfort food; on the other, they generate enough noise and garbage to blight many a neighborhood. Few of them operate in city-approved areas. Most of them set up their stalls illegally in parks, on sidewalks, some even blocking the frontages of regular daytime businesses.
According to statistics from the Taipei City Market Administration, there are some 5,600 licensed food vendors in the city, compared to an estimated 15,000 illegal hawkers. Standards of hygiene vary, and only licensed vendors are subject to sporadic--very sporadic--sanitation inspections by the city government's Bureau of Public Health. Given the number of vendors squeezed into the average night market, it seems amazing that the bureau, which is responsible for maintaining food hygiene within the city, claims not to be worried by the prospect of food poisoning. "If there are any cases, they're just one-offs," says a bureau representative who asked not to be named. "We don't bother to store information about that, because there haven't been any significant food-poisoning problems with vendors for several years."
All right, then, but who qualifies for a license? Under the Taipei City Street Hawkers Management Act, only those over fifty, the handicapped, and people on incomes of less than NT$11,625 (US$375) a month may apply. But opening a food stall is considered by many people to be such an appealing way of earning a living that few aspirants waste time on formalities. According to Wang Chen-hsiao, director of the first division of the Taipei City Market Administration, the cost of starting a food-stall business ranges from NT$30,000 to $50,000 (US$968 to $1,613). Once a vendor is up and running, overheads are negligible because unlicensed food vending is in practice rent- and tax-free. Then there are the joys of self-employment to savor. But all that pales into insignificance when set against the real reason why most food-stall vendors have chosen their way of life: The profits can be mouthwatering.
"Mr. Huang," an illegal food hawker who declines to be further identified, sells clam omelets on Ichang Street in central Taipei for NT$30 (97 cents) a serving. He admits to making around NT$100,000 (US$3,226) a month, more than twice the national average wage. During weekends and holiday seasons, his six-to-seven-hour daily shifts net him even more money. A report by the China Times daily last year found that 30 percent of all food vendors enjoy annual incomes in excess of NT$2 million (US$64,516), which helps explain why so many young people are increasingly attracted to the business, even on a part-time basis--the majority of vendors are under forty. "It's a quick and easy way to make a living in the city if you can't find a good job," Wang says.
None of this bodes well for people who live in the vicinity, however. Yu Chun-chieh, 30, resides near Shihlin night market, one of Taipei's largest. He looks on haggling with nearby vendors as a sport, and for the variety of food and goods they sell he compares them to a wayside department store. But that is only half the story. "I love being able to buy cheap, delicious snacks from vendors, but I can't stand the garbage and the noise," he says. "I've complained to the police several times, but the problem refuses to go away."
Unfortunately, Taiwan does not have a uniform code regulating street vendors, and each of the island's municipalities and county governments has its own agencies and rules concerning the management of food-and-drink enterprises. In Taipei, the City Market Administration wields powers of management, planning, and consultation, but by a strange legislative quirk it does not have the power to clamp down on excessive noise or book unlicensed food vendors. Under the Taipei City Street Hawkers Management Act, that is the police department's responsibility. "We're always happy to assist legal vendors anyway we can, but we have no choice but to close down the illegal ones," says Chen Tien-yo, director of Kueilin Precinct in Taipei's Wanhua district.
Wanhua, located in southeast Taipei not far from the Tamsui River, illustrates all the joys and sorrows of market vending. It is home to Hwahsi tourist night market, the oldest and most famous--some would say notorious--institution of its kind in the city. Until last February, Taipei's only remaining row of legal brothels paralleled the market's main drag, but Hwahsi's biggest draw used to be the public killing and skinning of snakes for consumption. Stalls featured snake-gutting shows where a mixture of the animal's blood and bile, touted as a strength-inducing tonic with aphrodisiac powers, was drained and sold in shot glasses or added to soup.
With the passage of the Animal Protection Law in 1998, this type of entertainment became illegal, and food vendors now have to compete hard for the custom of the hundreds of people who visit the area daily. "There aren't any more shows to draw the crowds, and this has really put a dent in our business," says Chu Che-liang, chairman of the Hwahsi Autonomous Committee of the Hwahsi tourist night market. "My earnings have plunged to less than NT$50,000 (US$1,613) a month since the snake shows were banned."
An increase in the number of illegal food vendors around Snake Alley has made things worse for licensed sellers such as Chu, and also for police director Chen. Most violators cook and sell their treats out of specially designed trucks that enable them to make a quick getaway at the first sniff of a cop. "It's a difficult problem," Chen says. "We just don't have enough manpower to enforce these laws, and we have lots of other things to do."
The police chief also knows that there are certain unspoken limitations on his powers. Neighborhood ties can prove unexpectedly strong. Families get to know the local vendors every bit as well as the police, and Chen admits that enforcing the rules too strictly might well lead to protests in front of his station, perhaps backed by neighborhood leaders. "It happened once before, and it was a really tough one to solve," he says. "It's not that we're afraid of protests, but as human beings we do have compassion. Some of the hawkers here are in the low-income bracket, and they have strong ties with the neighborhood. No one likes to see their friends down and out."
Most illegal hawkers are fined a paltry NT$1,200 (US$39) if they are caught without a license, a scale fee laid down by road traffic legislation. "We write these tickets just about every day," says Lu Cheng-hui, an officer attached to Kueilin Precinct. "But we simply don't have the manpower to do it all day long." Most of the time he concentrates on hawkers located around main intersections or more congested areas. A band of illegal food vendors, however, can be daunting to an understaffed neighborhood police force. "Sometimes vendors team up and hit us with a lawsuit for 'inappropriate' law enforcement, stuff like that," Lu says. Not surprisingly, hawkers hardly ever have their stands confiscated.
Vendors who obstruct public parking spaces and use wooden planks and other materials to "reserve" their spots overnight cause further problems. Any resident who tries to move these temporary blockades and park his car in a vendor's spot is likely to find his vehicle with four flat tires in the morning. "When vendors see us coming, they just move their things out of sight and put them back when we leave," Chen says. "We can't send somebody to stand guard twenty-four hours a day." Besides, vandalism perpetrated in the middle of the night is hard to nail. "We need concrete evidence that a vehicle was damaged by a particular vendor before we take any action."
Many businesses in night-market areas are actually opposed to police crackdowns on illegal food stalls. "Street vendors don't hurt my earnings at all, they just bring more people to my store," says Tsao Ling-chen, who sells clothes near a small night market in Taipei County. "I think other storeowners would agree that most of these vendors actually help us attract customers." Economic experts certainly agree--more than 75 percent of a panel of economists polled in a recent report for the Taipei City Market Administration said they believed hawkers had made a real contribution to the city's economy. But since most of these vendors are illegal and do not pay taxes, just how much of a contribution is hard to assess.
The Taipei City Government bought the idea that food vendors could be an economic asset, but it was becoming increasingly worried by the problems of garbage, noise, and tax evasion that seemed to be piling up. In the hope of solving them, it turned to Singapore as a role model. The government there stopped issuing food-vendor licenses about two decades ago, as a means of encouraging young people to go into other lines of business. Vendors are herded together in designated areas, where the authorities can keep an eye on their activities. The city-state has long had strict public health laws, and all food stands are subject to regular and stringent government inspections. Taiwan's food laws, on the other hand, lack the same hard-nosed focus on the interests of the consumer, which are all too often subordinated to the stallholder's right to make profits.
That may be about to change, however. The Hawkers Act, currently awaiting its second reading in the legislature, was modeled on Singapore's food-vendor laws. If the draft survives parliamentary passage unscathed, it will facilitate coordination between various government agencies with responsibility for food stands and grant them sweeping regulatory powers. But for all its good intentions, the law still sidesteps other vending issues, such as noise pollution.
Meanwhile, the Taipei City Government is trying out a version of the Singapore model at Hwahsi night market. Chu Che-liang of the night-market committee says the gearing of the area into a tourist-friendly street was relatively easy to implement, and the environment has changed for the better as a result. There are now 136 stalls inside the market, and each vendor must pay a monthly maintenance fee of NT$1,500 (US$48). "The food court has definitely been a step in the right direction, despite the fact that we don't have any other attractions besides food now," Chu says. "If there are any complaints from local residents, the committee investigates them. We also work closely with the police and the Bureau of Public Health."
The city is laying out a park close to Snake Alley and next to another popular landmark, the century-old Lungshan Temple, both within easy reach of a newly opened subway station. A shopping plaza is planned for the space beneath the park. "Once that's completed, it will be a valuable adjunct to Hwahsi market," says the City Market Administration's Wang Chen-hsiao. "Society has changed so much, and city planning has to change with it."
The vendors who used to occupy the site of the planned park have been relocated to adjacent Sanshui Street until the project is finished. "I've been at this temporary market for five months now, and my business is even better than when I was an illegal vendor in other places," says Hsieh Yung-hsin, a dumpling seller. "People like this area, because the environment seems cleaner."
But installing food courts is an expensive process. According to a 1995 report by the Taipei City Market Administration, creating a space for just one vendor costs roughly NT$1.5 million (US$48,387), although the figure obviously varies with the amount of space required. (The same report showed that 30 percent of vendors favored "the sidewalk" as their preferred business location.) As long ago as 1988, when the Chili night market was built in Shihpai, northwest Taipei, it cost the administration roughly NT$100 million (US$3.23 million), a figure that did not include the price of the land, in order to install a hundred vendors.
Another problem is that while food-vendor committees and designated shopping plazas may look like a picture-perfect way to keep hawkers safe and legal, scores of illegal vendors still flock to Hwahsi Street and other well-known sites. Many of them prefer to dispense with a license, because that gives them the advantage of mobility--when customers move on, so can they. "Mr. Lin" has been selling steamed dumplings from a stall parked in a street near the perennially popular Chienkuo Flower Market for almost five years now. "Business is pretty good, especially in the evenings when people get off work," he says. "If ever I became a legal vendor, I don't think my profits would be as high as they are now."
Despite the cost and other drawbacks, the administration will continue to plan night markets with an eye to having all vendors work with the community and not just do their own thing. "This is the best way for food vendors to develop with the city," Wang Chen-hsiao says. The latest project involves upgrading Chingkuang Market, the city's oldest imported-goods market, and more will follow. One day, perhaps all hawkers will become a legitimate part of what makes Taipei special, rather than beyond-the-fringe tax cheats and neighborhood nuisances. But selling the sizzle that makes them unique will still be the name of the game.