The last snake restaurant in Taipei’s Huaxi Street Night Market (華西街觀光夜市), also known as “Snake Alley,” is to close today, with second-generation owner Kuo Yi-chien (郭懿堅) saying the shop is to be converted into a hot pot restaurant.
Six decades ago, Huaxi Street in the city’s Wanhua District (萬華) was a red-light district that featured brothels, street performers and snake-meat restaurants, said Kuo, who inherited his father’s restaurant, which has only ever served snake.
There were as many as eight snake restaurants in the area’s heyday, but the only two other remaining restaurants with snake on the menu now manly sell softshell turtle meat, Kuo said.
Photo: CNA
His father, Kuo Lai-kung (郭來貢), opened the Asia Snake Meat Store (亞洲蛇肉店) in his 20s and marketed his snake dishes and snake wine by slaughtering the animals in front of customers, he said.
The store was widely recognized because his father considered himself the nation’s top snake expert and kept an orangutan named A-bao (阿寶) trained to catch snakes, Kuo Yi-chien said.
However, as public awareness grew about the need for animal protection, the government banned the killing of protected species.
Meanwhile, the busker culture on Huaxi Street was dying out, which is why their family decided to stop serving snake, Kuo Yi-chien said.
As the store on No. 49 closes for the last time today, actor Kuo Tzu-chien (郭子乾) is to perform a mock snake slaughter at 10:30am and attendees will be given imitation snakes as souvernirs.
Sharing the news about the store’s closure on Facebook yesterday, cultural studies expert Jason Cheung (張哲生) recalled how tourists from around the world used to swarm to the street to watch snake-killing performances.
Kuo Lai-kung was a friend of Cheung’s father and both participated in China Youth Corps activities, Cheung said, adding that he has visited many places with them since childhood.
The store’s closure arouses complex emotions, because it not only signals the end of a restaurant, but the end of an era, Cheung said.
Many people expressed regret online over the store’s closure, with one saying that their skin problems were cured after they drank snake soup on the street.
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 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
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
CHANGING LANDSCAPE: Many of the part-time programs for educators were no longer needed, as many teachers obtain a graduate degree before joining the workforce, experts said Taiwanese universities this year canceled 86 programs, Ministry of Education data showed, with educators attributing the closures to the nation’s low birthrate as well as shifting trends. Fifty-three of the shuttered programs were part-time postgraduate degree programs, about 62 percent of the total, the most in the past five years, the data showed. National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU) discontinued the most part-time master’s programs, at 16: chemistry, life science, earth science, physics, fine arts, music, special education, health promotion and health education, educational psychology and counseling, education, design, Chinese as a second language, library and information sciences, mechatronics engineering, history, physical education