People of the Night 2 (中壢夜市人像)

This is the second post in my People of the Night Photo Project that I'll be working on over the next few months. In this post, I am continuing to introduce some of the vendors at the Zhongli Night Market (中壢夜市), a large open-air night market near where I live. Each post will contain five shots and will introduce a little bit about what these people do for a living. 

If you haven't seen the first post in the series, please click here to be brought back to check it out. Thanks for coming and I hope you like the shots! 

View fullsize

1. BBQ Corn (烤玉米)

When I first arrived in Taiwan, my friend and I went to the night market and she ordered some BBQ corn. I looked at it and wondered why she would want to eat a burnt piece of corn. To the naked eye it just looks like a burnt cob of corn. Fast forward eight years and these are one of my favourite things to eat at the night market. The corn is cooked at high heat and the cook constantly spreads a Taiwanese satay sauce on it - which gives off the burnt look and makes the corn incredibly delicious. I'm also a big fan of this particular stall which is the most popular at the night market and often requires a bit of a wait. 

View fullsize

2. Braised Snacks (滷味) 

Braising food is a popular style of cooking in Taiwan and one of the most popular kinds of braised food is "Lu-Wei" (滷味) which more or less translates literally as "Braised Flavour." 

You can find vendors selling Lu-Wei on almost every street around the country. Each of them will have their own flavour of soup to braise the food in as well as a different set of ingredients that can be added. This particular vendor is the most popular in the night market - They have a pretty big stall with a wide variety of vegetables, tofu, meat to boil in the hot soy-sauce based soup. This kind of food is great, especially in winter and the best thing about it is that you get to choose all your own ingredients! 

View fullsize

3. Quail Eggs (鳥蛋串) 

Quail Eggs are small eggs that taste more or less the same as a chicken egg. They look much cooler when they're in the shell though. The eggs at this kind of stand are fried in a special pan and which makes them form into a ball. When they're ready, they are put on a stick and topped with pepper, chili sauce, ketchup or soy bean paste and eaten like a kebab. This vendor is also selling Tea-Eggs (茶葉蛋) which are hard-boiled eggs braised in a soy-sauce and tea leaf based soup that turns the eggs brown. Tea-Eggs seem to be pretty popular among the foreign crowds and my friends are constantly buying them as they're sold at every 7-11 location around the country. 

View fullsize

4. The Versatility of the Night Market

Taiwan is a country of fads - Something that is popular this week may likely be pushed to the sidelines in favour of the newest big thing next week. The night markets around Taiwan have their staple vendors that will be there every day of the year no matter what is popular - but night markets are predominately a fad-driven industry - which means that if your stall is not "in fashion" anymore, your business will suffer. When this happens, vendors basically have to adapt their business strategy. In this shot we see a woman with a stall that was originally selling roasted candy chestnuts (糖炒栗子) but if you look closely at the stall she covered her sign's logo with some handwriting. Business likely wasn't very good, so she started selling quail eggs as a way to stay in business. 

View fullsize

5. Dessert Stand (甜點) 

One thing I miss the most from home is all the great desserts my mom makes. Taiwan has improved quite a lot in recent years when it comes to the availability of western-styled desserts and snacks but I think the basic concept of what constitutes a great dessert can be a bit different for Taiwanese and westerners. I do miss certain sweet foods from home, but Taiwan has some amazing desserts of its own and I've come to love them just as much as what we have in Canada.

In this shot we have a stall set up selling hot cereal-like desserts made from natural ingredients (almonds, soy beans, taro, red beans etc.) This vendor has won several awards for their ability to provide great tasting food at the night market while being the healthiest of all the vendors. This type of dessert is obviously not what I'm used to bug on a cold winter night, it hits the spot! 

People of the Night (中壢夜市人像)

View fullsize

- Introduction - 

One of my personal goals in photography this year is to improve my skills with street photography. I'm really interested in the compelling work street photographers are able to produce that tell stories of the lives of every day people and that was an area I wanted to really work on. 

I wanted to come up with an interesting way to take these kinds of shots and integrate them in a Taiwan-related theme as a photo project that would be done over a period of time. What I decided to start with is taking candid street-style portraits of the vendors at night markets and to tell a bit of their story. 

Over the next few weeks, I'm going to be posting blogs each with five street shots from the night market and I'll introduce a bit about what that person sells - similar to what the "Humans of New York" photoblogger does.

 The first few entries are going to focus on my favourite Night Market: The Zhongli Night Market (中壢觀光夜市) and then when I've exhausted all the types of stalls there, I'll move on to other popular night markets around the country.

If you're not sure what a night market is, its basically a street or an area set up during the night which sells various kinds of food and various other things. Night Markets are excellent places for cheap food and you can have a four course meal at a night market for only a few dollars. Night Markets are important in Taiwanese culture and are often the best night life you can experience in certain areas outside of Taipei as you'll find people of all walks of life enjoying the carnival like atmosphere. 

The Zhongli Night Market is over 700 meters long and has several rows of vendors. Browsing a night market is always a pretty cool experience for foreigners who come to Taiwan as its a great way to experience a bit of the liveliness of Taiwanese culture. 

---

1. Mahjong Boss (麻將老闆)

Gambling is a pretty popular activity in Taiwan - this game of Mahjong is all in good fun though as you only have to pay 100NT ($3.00US) to play six rounds of Mahjong with the possibility of winning a huge stuffed animal. Ironically living in Taiwan for as long as I have - I still haven't figured out how to play the game - so this stall isn't one that I frequent very often, but its normal to see young Taiwanese couples walking through the night market with the boyfriend carrying a huge stuffed animal for his extremely happy girlfriend. 

View fullsize

2. Fresh Cakes from the back of a Scooter (雞蛋糕老闆) 

This guy makes some mean cakes. I don't actually know how to translate these beauties into English, but they're basically just animal shaped pancakes that are cooked on an iron griddle. This guy has been in business for over 30 years and his product is always a nice way to end your night at the night market!  You can get a freshly cooked serving for around 20NT (less than a dollar) and they're always cooked fresh and crispy. 

View fullsize

3. The Lonely Fortune Teller (算命者)  

This guy has been at the night market for as long as I've been living here. He's there every night and he always dresses well - even on extremely hot summer nights. I don't pretend to understand the methods to a Taiwanese fortune tellers mayhem, but they are popular here and some people only make important life decisions based on the advice of one of these guys. I posted this shot a week or two ago on Facebook and one of my photographer friends cleverly commented that as a fortune teller, you would think he would be able to predict a slow business night. 

View fullsize

4. Shoe Salesman (鞋子老闆) 

Taiwan is a very country with its finger on the beating heart of fashion - People young and old dress in the latest styles from Japan, Korea and the West. When something is popular fashion-wise, you can be sure that you'll find the latest knock-offs available at the night market. I'm not sure how much business is done by the night market shoes salesmen, but if his falling asleep on the job is any indication - he's probably not that busy.

View fullsize

5. Shaomai King (燒賣王)

Shaomai (燒賣) is a type of steamed Cantonese dumplings usually eaten with Dim Sum. The dumplings are very colourful and come filled with pork, vegetables, shrimp and other types of seafood. Shaomai isn't typical Taiwanese night market fare, but these little dumplings are tasty and cheap. My favourite flavour is the wasabi pork dumplings, a typical Taiwanese fusion of Chinese and Japanese cuisine! 

---

People of the Night Part 2

A walk through Beipu (北埔老街)

View fullsize

Beipu (北埔鄉) is a small village in south-eastern Hsinchu county - The village is home to around ten thousand people which is small by Taiwanese standards and has a population consisting almost entirely of the Hakka ethnic minority. The village is known among locals as the Hakka Capital of Northern Taiwan and is a popular excursion for the people of Taiwan to enjoy a bit of history, culture and cuisine.   

The Hakka people have had an interesting history migrating all over China and Taiwan as well as spreading further into Malaysia and Singapore. The early years for the Hakka in Taiwan weren't easy as they had to work together to endure hostile periods of Japanese rule as well as issues with other ethnic Chinese and the Indigenous peoples. 

View fullsize

A child playing in front of Ci-Tian Temple (慈天宮)

With security in mind, the village of Beipu was constructed in a way that was thought would help to defend the people within the village from outside attack. Most of the original village is still around today and consists twisting narrow alleys that become somewhat of a maze to someone who is not familiar with the roads. 

The village doesn't really have to worry about being attacked anymore, but if the buildings in the village that remain well-preserved are any indication of the success in their defensive strategy, the original planners should be commended as the village serves as a living testament to a much different time in Taiwanese history.

These days the village has become a popular tourist spot as people from all over the country come to visit the famous “Beipu Old Street” (北埔老街) to have a stroll through a historic village and sample Hakka culture at its best. 

Hakka culture has had a resurgence in recent years and a lot of effort has been made to preserve the language and educate people about one of Taiwan's largest ethnic minorities. There are many 'Hakka Villages' all over Taiwan, but Beipu is known as one of the most important and most successful in preserving the heritage of the Hakka people. 

View fullsize

A vendor showing off her dried persimmons (柿餅), a specialty in the area.

I've visited Beipu quite a few times. I'm a big fan of its old street and the restaurants in the village. It's not a very long drive from where I live, so I tend to visit when I have no real plans for the day and want to have something good to eat and drink. 

The thing about Beipu that keeps me coming back is that it has retained its old charm without selling out to attract foreign tourists – especially those from China. Since the easing of relations between the two countries over the past five or more years, the influx of flag-following tourists has become an issue for a lot of these “old streets” which have had to adapt and expand to accommodate the numbers of people they bring. 

As someone who has lived in Taiwan long enough to remember what it was like before a lot of these places started to change, it is easy to see how some places have lost their original charm and have lost a bit of authenticity while changing for the worse to make a quick buck.

View fullsize

An old open-air mansion converted into a popular tea-house.

Beipu fortunately has retained its old charm, so you are still able to visit any day of the week and have a great time and not have to wait in long lines to have something to eat or drink some tea. The food in Beipu is great and almost every restaurant you step in serves up some pretty amazing Hakka dishes that you may not be able to find in other parts of Taiwan. 

View fullsize

Narrow alleys between houses on the old-street.

The village is always at its busiest on the weekends, so I wondered what it would be like to go over on a weekday. I wanted to explore a lot of the streets in behind the “old street” and behind the main temple without having crowds of people in my shots in order to see the village in a more natural light than what I'm used to. 

As expected, the village was more or less void of tourists that day and as I was walking around during the “siesta” time of the afternoon, it was relatively quiet. I was able to see a few residents outside of their houses doing some cleaning and going about their daily lives, a singing motorcycle-mailman happily making his rounds and a gang of stray cats enjoying the peace and quiet among all the historic buildings and alleys that are within the village and surrounding the temple.

View fullsize

An old mansion near the old street.

Ci-Tian Temple (慈天宮) dedicated to the Buddhist goddess Guanyin is more or less the central point of town. The temple which was built in 1846 (a level three cultural relic in Taiwan) is always quite busy and even during the quiet times of the day, you can still see a few tourists and the residents of the village visiting.   

View fullsize

A Taiwanese woman praying at a shrine in the temple.

Interestingly I walked past a house near the temple that had lots of vegetables for sale. There was however no one in sight and the doors were closed. The owner put up a sign with a price-list of the vegetables and left a bucket full of change. The basic idea was that you take what you want and if you didn’t have exact change you could reach into the bucket and make change on your own – this kind of honour system is something you are still able to find in small villages around Taiwan and to me is a reason why I love places like Beipu. 

View fullsize

Home made Hakka Peanut Candy (花生糖)

If you plan on visiting the village, you have a few options, weekends are the busiest and every restaurant is open. You'll experience a much more lively village than you would if you visited during the week – however if you are into exploring leisurely or are into street photography a visit to the village on a weekday is highly recommended – no matter what you chose, a visit to Beipu is always a good time and comes highly recommended from me.

View fullsize

Young and old having a discussion.

---

Getting There

 

If you are relying on public transportation to Beipu, you can easily take a bus from the Hsinchu High Speed Rail Station, Zhubei Train Station or Zhudong train station by taking the Lion's Head Mountain tourist shuttle bus. 

台灣好行觀光巴士-獅山線
在「新竹高鐵站」或「竹北火車站」或「竹東火車站」搭乘觀光局的「台灣好行獅山線」觀光巴士到「北埔老街」站下→步行5分鐘即到達。

---

Gallery / Flickr (High Res versions)