One Stop Shopping

If you find yourself in Taiwan and need a toy truck, any size or style of underpants, AA batteries, a deck of playing cards, a fried chicken leg, purple nail polish, a pineapple, a plastic wash tub, baked goods, a t-shirt with a catchy slogan, a comb, any part of a pig, a knife, veggie peeler or other kitchen gadget, a CD by a Chinese or Japanese pop star or just about anything else to make your life more comfortable, you can find it for cheap at a night market.

Think small town fair with crazy asian street food combined with an outdoor five and dime. Crowded. Kids everywhere. Screaming, laughing, running. Noise. Sing-song sales pitches blaring from cheap speakers. Even the lighting is weird. Strings of those curly fluorescent bulbs hang overhead casting their slightly eerie glow over it all.

Oh, and the smells. One might expect all the delightfully exotic aromas of the far east to mingle through the air of the Taiwanese night market, right? There are plenty of less offensive smells to the night market, but there’s one that clings to my olfactory memory banks like a fragrant nightmare. Taiwan’s favorite street food…the aptly named stinky tofu. To my western snout, stinky tofu smells like dirty socks times 100 and that is putting it nicely. (Yes, I’ve tried it. And once is enough.) They sell a lot of stinky tofu at the night market. I think you catch my drift.

In our town, Shuelli, Thursday is market night. In the big cities markets can be found any night of the week.

I’ve put in several appearances at the Shuelli night market. As I waded through the crowd the first time I figured it was my movie-star good looks and radiant personality that attracted so many stares from young and old alike. But Peiling pointed out that people here almost never see a middle aged white guy in the flesh. So I was just a walking freak show.

And that gave me an idea. We’ll set up a booth. I’ll hide behind a curtain and Peiling will charge NT$100 ($3 US) for a peek at the handsome American uncle. We’ll be easy to find. Right between the underpants and the stinky tofu.