Taipei’s night market woes
During Taiwan People’s Party Chairman Ko Wen-je’s (柯文哲) eight years as mayor of Taipei, countless unscrupulous vendors set up food carts and stands in the city’s night markets.
That was perhaps fitting, given that Ko has been accused of alleged profiteering in the Core Pacific City redevelopment scandal.
Despite “redeveloping” elsewhere, Taipei after eight years of Ko still lacks needed infrastructure and there has been scant external investment.
Tourism has been dealt a death blow.
Shilin Night Market was once a hot spot for foreign tourists, and it was hard to imagine a few stalls habitually entrapping visitors with exorbitant prices, yet this year, when a South Korean pop star visited the market, one fruit vendor demanded an astonishing NT$300 for a single mango.
The poor reputation of Shilin Night Market’s vendors has spread far and wide.
Even though rodents are not considered the main culprit in the tourist spot’s economic death spiral, the old saying still rings true: “A single rat dropping ruins the whole soup.”
Business in the market is bleak, rendering it little more than a ghost town.
The unethical fruit vendors were banned from the market, but the only thing prohibition did was send them packing to tourist shopping areas around Ximending. Last month, a report said that tourists from Hong Kong had been charged NT$699 for two measly bags of fruit. That kind of behavior is wrecking the reputation of Taipei’s small tourist shops.
The city tried to improve the situation by inviting Japanese idol Satoshi Tsumabuki to serve as a tourist ambassador, but that is unlikely to make up for Taipei’s name being dragged through the mud all across the Internet.
If the Taipei Office of Commerce does not get serious about dealing with unscrupulous street vendors — by carrying out strict inspections to stop price gouging, issuing public notices to vendors about business ethics and other efforts to keep them honest at all times — then vendors are just going to continue damaging the city’s reputation.
All of Taipei’s night markets and commercial areas, which look virtually identical to each other, would gradually dwindle away.
Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) just returned from a trip to the US, bringing back several ideas for urban redevelopment, but ultimately the city still needs to consider that if it does not remedy the price-gouging situation, then what good would any of Chiang’s plans do?
Tourism development needs to start with the management of small vendors.
Wang Hsi-chang
Taipei
Teachers’ struggles
After reading Tsai Jr-keng’s (蔡志鏗) article about showing respect to teachers (“Maintaining respect for educators,” Sept. 28, page 8), I, as an educator on the front lines, have a different take on the issue.
Tsai wrote that “the acceptance of good teachers has no correlation with the past, present or future — it is entirely dependent on teachers’ attitudes and behavior.”
This is not wrong per se, but it seems that being planted firmly in an unfriendly environment as an educator, it is not enough for a teacher to strive to improve things on their own, or take up the entire burden of education as their own cross to bear.
Who would chase the ideal of becoming a great teacher if they knew they would bear the brunt of so much hostility and insults, as we often are?
It was only a few years ago that parents would address me in student’s communication booklets or report cards, or through text messages by using the formal character for “you” (您). After just a handful of years, parents instead use the much more direct and informal character “you” (你), which is less respectful. Just from the way they address me, it is obvious that the social standing of teachers has plummeted.
Many teachers strive every day to do their best, but are criticized by parents, sometimes to the point of abuse.
It is a losing battle for educators. After good teachers have been tormented and abused, while bending over backward for their students, they endlessly lament that “we run ourselves ragged all for them.”
Not long ago, I knew a ninth-grade teacher who asked their students to organize and pass their homework to the front of the class. One of students said: “Is everyone becoming a teacher these days so lazy? Why don’t you pick it up yourself?”
If a ninth grader could behave so rudely, then why should teachers bother to put their heart and soul into their work and pay such a heavy toll to receive little else but scorn? It is difficult to soldier on with so much negativity dumped onto teachers daily.
Classroom environments are undeniably turning acrimonious.
Not all teachers are blameless or run a perfect ship, and to some extent, people who do not look up to educators are indeed the end products of a few bad teachers. Even so, we must keep doing our duty, even when we do not want to. We should not expect too much, too often with star-filled, hopeful eyes.
Sheng Ni-tsai
Chiayi City
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