Now that the Shilin Night Market has been turned into an almost sanitized theme-park version of itself, the Taipei City Government has set its eyes on the Shida Night Market in the warren of small alleys behind National Taiwan Normal University. It wants to turn the area into what it calls a “college town.”
It has been years since Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) was at school, so someone should tell him that there already is a thriving college town in the area, one that has existed for decades, and that it’s growing popularity is a sign that businesses in the area are doing something right. What the vendors do need to improve on, however, is being better neighbors to their non-university residents and there are several ways in which city authorities can help with this, without resorting to brickbats.
The mayor first created waves when he said in November last year that the market area would not be allowed to expand because of complaints from and a demonstration on Oct. 26 by residents fed up with the trash and noise. At the time, the city government said it had received complaints about 506 of the 647 registered businesses in the night market.
That is a lot of complaints, but the city’s reaction has been to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Earlier this month, city authorities began a crackdown on vendors, targeting both illegal and legal ones. About 75 vendors have received notices saying that they are violating regulations regarding signage, roadside encroachment or other infractions, and if they don’t clean up their act, they risk being evicted.
Part of the problem is that the “official” night market area encompasses a residential zone and that land-use regulations bar the use of roads less than 8m wide in residential zones for commercial purposes, but most of the alleys in that area barely exceed 8m. Nothing can be done to widen those pathways, so residents (and their cars and motorcycles) and businesses will have to learn to coexist.
Another part of the problem has been the expansion in the number of restaurants, drink shops and take-away places in the area — as opposed to eyeglass shops, bookshops and stationery stores — all of which help draw an ever increasing number of people to dine in the area, thereby boosting revenues (and taxable income), but also creating problems with odors, noise and trash.
Requiring kitchen and/or food-stall cooking areas to be properly ventilated would go a long way toward resolving some of the odor complaints. Installing more public trashcans and having more frequent trash pick-ups would go a long way toward eliminating the trash problem. As with other night markets, or city streets in general, you can walk a long way before spotting a trash can. A jokester once remarked that there are more 7-Elevens and other convenience stores in Taipei than there are trash cans.
Night markets are a major tourism draw for Taiwan in general and Taipei in particular, even outranking places like Taipei 101 and the National Palace Museum in surveys. To keep people coming, you need to have the right mix of vendors and crowds, not a gentrified place changed beyond recognition.
Taipei authorities already have a mixed reputation when it comes to “revitalizing” markets, cleaning them up only to see them lose the features that made them charming.
Their efforts to clean up Shilin took another step forward on Thursday with the groundbreaking for the Taipei Performing Arts Center on the site of the former temporary home of the Shilin Night Market. Amid all the hoopla about turning the facility into a “cultural centerpiece for northern Taipei,” no one was explaining how, even with an MRT station right across the street, the area is going to cope with the 3,100 people the center could hold if all three theaters were full plus the crowds at the market.
It would be better if city officials focused on ensuring that Shilin survives their gentrification efforts before they make a start on another night market.
As the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its People’s Liberation Army (PLA) reach the point of confidence that they can start and win a war to destroy the democratic culture on Taiwan, any future decision to do so may likely be directly affected by the CCP’s ability to promote wars on the Korean Peninsula, in Europe, or, as most recently, on the Indian subcontinent. It stands to reason that the Trump Administration’s success early on May 10 to convince India and Pakistan to deescalate their four-day conventional military conflict, assessed to be close to a nuclear weapons exchange, also served to
The recent aerial clash between Pakistan and India offers a glimpse of how China is narrowing the gap in military airpower with the US. It is a warning not just for Washington, but for Taipei, too. Claims from both sides remain contested, but a broader picture is emerging among experts who track China’s air force and fighter jet development: Beijing’s defense systems are growing increasingly credible. Pakistan said its deployment of Chinese-manufactured J-10C fighters downed multiple Indian aircraft, although New Delhi denies this. There are caveats: Even if Islamabad’s claims are accurate, Beijing’s equipment does not offer a direct comparison
After India’s punitive precision strikes targeting what New Delhi called nine terrorist sites inside Pakistan, reactions poured in from governments around the world. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) issued a statement on May 10, opposing terrorism and expressing concern about the growing tensions between India and Pakistan. The statement noticeably expressed support for the Indian government’s right to maintain its national security and act against terrorists. The ministry said that it “works closely with democratic partners worldwide in staunch opposition to international terrorism” and expressed “firm support for all legitimate and necessary actions taken by the government of India
Minister of National Defense Wellington Koo (顧立雄) has said that the armed forces must reach a high level of combat readiness by 2027. That date was not simply picked out of a hat. It has been bandied around since 2021, and was mentioned most recently by US Senator John Cornyn during a question to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio at a US Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Tuesday. It first surfaced during a hearing in the US in 2021, when then-US Navy admiral Philip Davidson, who was head of the US Indo-Pacific Command, said: “The threat [of military
RSS