Liouhe Night Market (六合夜市) in Kaohsiung City is the most popular night market in the country, followed by Taipei City’s Shilin Night Market (士林夜市) and Yilan County’s Luodong Night Market (羅東夜市), an online survey showed yesterday.
Liouhe garnered the highest votes in each of the six categories for being the “most eco-friendly,” “most tourist-friendly,” “most charismatic,” “most organized,” “most popular” as well as the night market with the best food. The votes fluctuated drastically during the process, with Huayuan (花園) Night Market in Tainan taking an early lead.
The focus, however, soon shifted to the race between Shilin and Liouhe, commonly referred to as the most famous night markets in the north and south respectively. At times, Luodong looked like it might upset the big two, but settled for third.
PHOTO: CHANG CHUNG-YI, TAIPEI TIMES
The survey, organized by the Tourism Bureau, was launched last month and ended at midnight yesterday.
The validity of the survey has come into question, however, as supporters may have inflated the votes by voting multiple times. Others said the survey inadvertently turned night markets into places to mobilize voter support for political candidates competing in the November special municipality elections.
Tourism Bureau Deputy Director-General Wayne Liu (劉喜臨) said that as both the elections and night markets were part of people’s lives, any interaction between the two was “natural.”
“The purpose of the survey is for visitors and local governments to pay more attention to the content and quality of night markets,” Liu said.
Liu said the competition involved three stages. First, a group of judges recruited by the bureau selected 10 night markets from 30 recommended by county and city governments. The second stage was the online survey.
“The first stage counted for 20 percent of the total score, as did the second stage. The remaining 60 percent will be given by seven judges recruited by the bureau to pay impromptu visits to each night market,” Liu said. “They will include travel agents handling in-bound tours, gourmet and travel writers from abroad.”
The results of the third stage of the competition will be announced next Wednesday.
The other night markets included in the survey were Miaokou (廟口) in Keelung, Huaxi Street (華西街) and Ningxia (寧夏) in Taipei City, Wunhua Road (文化路) in Chiayi City and Jhonghua Street (中華街) in Fongshan City (鳳山), Kaohsiung County.
A crowd of over 200 people gathered outside the Taipei District Court as two sisters indicted for abusing a 1-year-old boy to death attended a preliminary hearing in the case yesterday afternoon. The crowd held up signs and chanted slogans calling for aggravated penalties in child abuse cases and asking for no bail and “capital punishment.” They also held white flowers in memory of the boy, nicknamed Kai Kai (剴剴), who was allegedly tortured to death by the sisters in December 2023. The boy died four months after being placed in full-time foster care with the
Taiwan yesterday condemned the recent increase in Chinese coast guard-escorted fishing vessels operating illegally in waters around the Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島) in the South China Sea. Unusually large groupings of Chinese fishing vessels began to appear around the islands on Feb. 15, when at least six motherships and 29 smaller boats were sighted, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said in a news release. While CGA vessels were dispatched to expel the Chinese boats, Chinese coast guard ships trespassed into Taiwan’s restricted waters and unsuccessfully attempted to interfere, the CGA said. Due to the provocation, the CGA initiated an operation to increase
A Taiwanese woman on Sunday was injured by a small piece of masonry that fell from the dome of St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican during a visit to the church. The tourist, identified as Hsu Yun-chen (許芸禎), was struck on the forehead while she and her tour group were near Michelangelo’s sculpture Pieta. Hsu was rushed to a hospital, the group’s guide to the church, Fu Jing, said yesterday. Hsu was found not to have serious injuries and was able to continue her tour as scheduled, Fu added. Mathew Lee (李世明), Taiwan’s recently retired ambassador to the Holy See, said he met
The Shanlan Express (山嵐號), or “Mountain Mist Express,” is scheduled to launch on April 19 as part of the centennial celebration of the inauguration of the Taitung Line. The tourism express train was renovated from the Taiwan Railway Corp’s EMU500 commuter trains. It has four carriages and a seating capacity of 60 passengers. Lion Travel is arranging railway tours for the express service. Several news outlets were invited to experience the pilot tour on the new express train service, which is to operate between Hualien Railway Station and Chihshang (池上) Railway Station in Taitung County. It would also be the first tourism service
RSS