When foreign tourists come to Taiwan, where do they want to go? It may surprise you to learn that night markets have surpassed the National Palace Museum and Taipei 101 as the island's hottest tourist attractions.

According to a 2009 survey on national tourism trends conducted by the ROC's Tourism Bureau, night markets are the most popular spots to visit for foreign tourists (with 73 visits per 100 people). They are followed by Taipei 101 (58 visits), the National Palace Museum (52), Sun Moon Lake (29) and Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall (26). In fact, night markets have held the top spot for three years running.

In order to market Taiwan's night markets, the Tourism Bureau held a competition in August to select a few extraordinary ones. It first invited county and city governments to recommend night markets. From those, judges selected 10, choosing individual markets for "most charming," "best food," "best strolling," (e.g., thanks to ample space for easy walking) "most friendly," and "most environmentally friendly." The final results were based on Internet voting (weighted at 60%) and incognito visits by judges. (See map.)

Raohe Street in Taipei. The special charms of Taiwan's night markets are understood aeven by foreign tourists.

The competition attracted 500,000 people to cast ballots. Keelung's Miaokou and Taichung's Fengjia won for "offering the best food," Taipei's Shilin and Kaohsiung's Liuhe for "most charming," Keelung's Miaokou and Yilan's Luodong for "most friendly," and Taipei's Snake Alley for "best strolling." Unfortunately, no market was deemed worthy of "most environmentally friendly."

In all honesty, there is a method to this night-market madness. The Tourism Bureau has an overarching strategic goal: to raise the quality of night markets in Taiwan.

"The first stage of promoting tourism involves selling Taiwan's scenery, and the second involves providing tourists with a first-hand experience of life here," explains Wayne Liu, deputy director-general of the Tourism Bureau. "And night markets are true representations of regular people's culture in Taiwan." With about 73% of international tourists to Taiwan visiting night markets last year, the hope is that the night market competition will push local governments to pay more attention to night markets and make improvements.

Liu says frankly that getting control over night markets is no easy feat. Their stalls, once regarded as an urban plague, have often been unlicensed. Apart from occasional police crackdowns, local governments used to look the other way, hoping that the markets would gradually die out on their own. But because many night markets are an integral part of the traditional local cultural fabric and visits to them are important leisure activities for the public, attempts at controlling them pose major dilemmas, and local governments are now tending toward semi-legalization.

"When you see how city and county executives jumped out front to drum up votes for their local night markets, you realize that night markets are widely understood as important tourism assets for Taiwan," says Liu. The idea behind the competition was to get consumers and tourists to tell city and county governments what they wanted and what night markets lacked. As long as local governments and night market management associations are vigilant about good governance, there's an opportunity for improvement.

Stewed pig's knuckle

Night markets have at least 200 years of history in Taiwan-dating back to the days when peddlers bearing goods on shoulder poles would gather to create markets. In the Qing dynasty, when Han Chinese crossed the Taiwan Strait from Fujian and Guangdong provinces to cultivate Taiwan's wilds, their work was physically taxing, so peddlers bearing prepared food on shoulder poles would take to the streets, calling out the names of the cold and hot snacks they had to offer, and delivering them to the edge of field and forest.

During that era, when Taiwan's virgin lands were increasingly being cultivated for agriculture, cities and temples would sponsor folk festivals devoted to Taoist deities to pray for peace and security. When people gathered, snacks would appear along with them. The Snake Alley night market in Taipei, for instance, formed as a result of the nearby Longshan Temple. And Miaokou (which means "temple entrance") Night Market in Keelung formed due to the proximity of the Dianji Temple. Tainan, the oldest Han Chinese settlement in Taiwan, boasts an even greater concentration of night markets, with more than 100 scattered throughout Tainan County and City. There's Shijingjiu Night Market next to Chikan Tower, and also many food stalls set up around the Grand Mazu and God of War temples. Eating snacks beside old temples is a way for Tainaners to share their joy with the deities.

Sakariba, which used to be Tainan's most famous night market, was up and running at least as far back as 1930. Its name is a Japanese word that means "place where people gather." Back then the intersection of Zhongzheng Road and Hai'an Road was a remote area, surrounded by fish farms. Typically, peddlers would gather there under a big round tent. As time passed, fish ponds were filled in, buildings erected, and roads paved. As the stalls grew in number, Sakariba became a famous night market. Apart from stands selling herbal salves, agricultural produce and handicrafts, some of the most famous snacks on offer there included "coffin board," eel noodles and dingbiansuo soup.

Because the market buildings were largely traditional wooden structures, Sakariba suffered several major fires. In 1990 fire raged from Hai'an Road to You'ai Street. Many old establishments were destroyed, and others moved away in droves. In 1993, work on the planned construction of an underground shopping mall beneath Hai'an Road brought the market down, and an elementary school took over what remained of the site. Shijingjiu, another old Tainan market, was forced to move in 1984, when the Guang'an Temple took back the rights to use the space in front of it after a road-widening project, and the stands moved northward to a suburban area. But business has continued to flourish, and more than 200 stands are still operating.

Spicy stinky tofu with duck's blood

Night markets provide an economic boost to their locales and help to preserve traditional snack culture, but they also undeniably take up road space, block traffic, create mess, and negatively affect the appearance of cities. Consequently, they have also been called an urban cancer.

Since the late 1990s department stores and large supermarkets have often tried to copy the strengths of night markets, with snack stalls brought into basement-level food courts. These air-conditioned spaces are modern and comfortable, but interestingly department-store food courts have had no impact on alfresco markets. Famous night markets are still doing a brisk business.

Ultimately, what are the special characteristics of the consumer culture of night markets? Why have food courts not replaced them?

"When people stroll night markets, their motivations aren't just to eat snacks and shop. They also want to indulge in the special consumer pleasures and feelings that arise from being amid the noisy hubbub and chaos of crowds," says Yu Shuenn-der, associate research fellow at the Academia Sinica's Institute of Ethnology, who has studied night markets. The state of being amid bustle has a morale-boosting power in our society, Yu says. People feed off the crowd's energy.

For instance, when the Shilin Night Market in the north of Taipei City is particularly crowded, it may take half an hour to walk just 200 meters along Dadong Road. And in order to eat famous "small wrap in a big wrap" or Haoda fried chicken breast, customers have to line up and wait in that cramped environment. Not only do people not regard those conditions as torture, they even take a sense of accomplishment from seeing others' envious gazes when they have the treat in hand.

Secondly, says Yu, the arrangement of night-market stalls is interestingly quite different from the orderly arrangement of department-store food courts. It seems, in fact, as if they lack any sense to their arrangement at all: Noodles are next to clothes, toys next to medicines, fruits next to stinky tofu, and so forth. It's all a disorderly mess. But that's part of the charm of night markets: They are a mixed-up jumble with surprises everywhere. The vast majority of people strolling night markets have no goal in mind. Arriving at the market before they decide what they want to eat and buy, "They allow themselves to be captivated by the energy of the crowds and abundant goods, and to be carried away by the sense of excitement."

People go to night markets to eat old specialties and buy the newest goods: tank tops for NT$100, bags for NT$399. The materials and patterns aren't that different from a department store's, but the prices are only about one-fourth as much. And there are a lot of novelty items, such as cell-phone dangles in the shape of a doll's head, sunglasses, imitation leather purses, and sparkly hair ornaments, bracelets and necklaces. Spending very little, you get a sense of the joy of finding "buried treasures."

Tainan's Grand Mazu Temple was the first dedicated to that deity in all of Taiwan. Since reconstruction in 1830, a cluster of snack stalls out front has been a constant feature. Eating beside an old temple adds a peaceful flavor. The photo shows the temple during the early 20th century.

The culture of night markets is deeply rooted in the common people's culture, wherein eating is even more important than buying cheap stuff. Many night markets are famous for certain kinds of xiaochi, a word that is typically, but imperfectly, translated as "snacks" in English.

Yu Shuenn-der has traced the first references to night markets in China all the way back to two Song-Dynasty travelogues-The Dream of Hua in the Eastern Capital and Menglianglu-which described desserts for sale such as mint cakes, fried chestnuts, and almond cakes; soups such as sheep's-blood soup, clear snail soup, and spicy vegetable broth; and appetizers such as jellyfish, fried liver, wild duck, and shredded chicken. There is in fact quite a bit of continuity between those Song-Dynasty delicacies and what you can find at a night market in Taiwan today.

Yu believes that snacks hold a special place within Chinese culinary culture-but a place that is nevertheless not precisely delineated.

"So long as it falls between 'fan' [rice] and 'cai' [dish], it could broadly be described as a xiaochi [literally "little eat"]," says Yu. For instance, buns, dumplings, noodles, broths, congees, pastries and so forth can all be termed xiaochi. They can take the leading role, filling one up like rice. Or they can take a supporting role, like a meat or vegetable dish, or a dessert or midnight snack. And various "supporting players" can be combined, such as when noodles are matched with marinades or soups.

Moreover, xiaochi are often invested with special cultural meaning. For instance, gebao sandwiches are eaten at end-of-year employee feasts. At Chinese New Year's one eats New Year's cake and dumplings, during the Lantern Festival wontons, and on Tomb-Sweeping Day runbing spring rolls. Most families only prepare these foods for those special occasions, but if you want to eat them at other times of the year, you can always go to night markets, which are repositories of xiaochi culture.

Cuttlefish soup

In Chinese culinary culture xiaochi take a back seat because they aren't nearly as complicated and labor-intensive to prepare as the dishes of high cuisine. But there are also people who believe that most xiaochi have their roots in Southern Fujianese cooking, one of the eight great styles of Chinese cooking and also largely the basis of Taiwanese cuisine.

"Southern Fujianese cooking puts an emphasis on soups," says Cao Mingzong, a cultural historian who lives in Keelung. Taiwanese xiaochi put a lot of emphasis on thick seafood soups-such as those made with Spanish mackerel, swordfish or eel. There are also soups made from squid, cuttlefish, shrimp and crab.

These are connected to the abundance of seafood in Taiwan and to the fact that most of Taiwan's early Han Chinese immigrants came from the coastal provinces of Fujian and Guangdong. The island's colonization by seafaring nations such as Spain and Japan also contributed to the abundance of seafood snacks here.

Mullet was caught in large quantities back in those days. Lian Heng described its appeal in The General History of Taiwan: "Mullet roe comes in a two-sectioned clump, a foot in length and some 400 grams in weight. It is salted and sun-dried and pressed with rocks until firm. It can be kept for a long time. Before eating, sprinkle with alcohol and roast over low heat. Its skin is thin and brittle. Take care not to burn it. Cut into thin slices. It is sweet and fragrant and regarded as a delicacy in Tainan."

Because Keelung, Tainan and Kaohsiung are close to the sea, numerous types of fish are available there, and fish pastes play a key role in local xiaochi culture. Before cooking, the fish is ground, starch added, and the paste rolled into what are aptly called "fish noodles." Traditional fish noodles in Tainan are made from inexpensive lizardfish. Thrown into boiling water, lizardfish cooks immediately. Then sprinkle on some meat stock and toasted sesame oil to bring out the flavor. Arrange on parboiled greens and serve with sliced nori seaweed.

Deep-frying battered fish is a Japanese style of cooking known as tempura. In Taiwan it's called "tian bu la"-which means "sweet and not too spicy." The tempura technique of preparation was introduced in the 16th century by the Portuguese to the Japanese, who later brought it to Taiwan.

Stand No. 16 in Keelung's Miaokou Night Market was the first place in Taiwan to sell tempura. It uses mainly the small sharks and eels that are abundant in the sea off Keelung. The cook adds cornstarch, sugar, and miso to create a fish paste. The finished paste is stored at low temperatures in ice coolers, to keep it pliant and firm. When customers order it, the cook works it into sheets and drops them into a boiling pot of oil. When they turn golden, he pulls them out of the pot and cuts them into long strips. When eating this tempura, you dip it into sweet and hot sauce. It tastes even better with pickled cucumbers.

his Japanese woman loves to stroll night markets, savoring their "liberating" joys.

In 2007 the Ministry of Economic Affairs held a competition to select what foreigners regarded as the best Taiwanese xiaochi. It turned out that Taiwanese oyster omelet was most loved by foreign visitors to the island.

Some say that it comes from the fried oysters found in Southern Fujianese and Chaozhou cooking. But residents of Tainan have their own legend about the origins of the dish.

In Slow Food Capital: A Compendium of Tainan's Xiaochi, Wang Haoyi, a writer on cultural and historical topics, points out that in 1661, when the Ming loyalist Zheng Chenggong (Koxinga) established a foothold in Tainan and battled the Dutch, his forces, due to a shortage of grains, had to find food locally. On the fifth day of the fifth lunar month (the day of the Dragon-Boat Festival), they had to present an offering to the god of the sea. But with no rice to make traditional zongzi, they instead made a cake from yam paste, bean sprouts, shrimp and other seafood. These substituted for zongzi in their offerings and were the forerunners of traditional Taiwanese oyster omelets.

The dish in this telling of the story was then brought back by Zheng's forces to the coastal regions of Fujian, including Xiamen, Quanzhou and Zhangzhou.

Taiwanese oyster omelets are made by frying oysters in a big pan, and then adding in eggs and bok choy (in winter edible chrysanthemum is substituted). After stir frying, the cook then adds yam paste as a thickener. Finally, a little soy sauce is sprinkled on before serving. Nowadays, you can find oyster omelets all over Taiwan, from Keelung in the north to Kending in the south. And no one is really sure about their origins.

Interestingly, quite a few traditional snacks took on new attributes after being brought outside of their original locales, so that there are now different northern and southern versions.

Take meat dumplings. Their outer skins are made from yam paste and filled with shredded meat, mushrooms, bamboo shoots and other ingredients. Changhua meat dumplings are first steamed, then deep fried, and finally sprinkled with a sweet-and-sour sauce. Pingtung meat dumplings are steamed but not deep fried. No one can say for sure which came first.

Known as "Snake Alley," the night market on Huaxi Street in Taipei no longer features reptilian slaughter. But snake soup, renowned in traditional Chinese medicine for quelling the body's "fire," is still very popular there.

The cuisine of Taiwan has absorbed a multitude of foreign influences, but it has also innovated many of its own xiaochi. Take, for instance, the macabre-sounding "coffin board." It's made by taking thick slices of bread and putting them in a deep fryer until crisp. You then cut off the top and carve out the middle, so that it forms a container. Inside, you place a filling-say a bisque made of chicken liver, peas, potato, shrimp, cuttlefish and so forth. Finally, you put the top back on. It's akin to a modern soup placed in a loaf of French bread.

More than 50 years ago, Xu Liuyi, a snack stall proprietor in Tainan, created this innovative dessert. Because it is shaped like a coffin, it became known as "coffin board."

In 2009 a British travel website included pig's-blood cake as one of the world's "10 weirdest dishes." In September of this year, news spread in Taiwan that the US Department of Agriculture, due to concerns about sanitation, was planning to ban imports of pig's-blood cake from Taiwan. Aficionados of local snacks cried "cultural imperialism." But it turned out just to be a false rumor.

Nevertheless, it is true that many foreigners in Taiwan are disgusted by snacks at night markets made from animal organs and blood, and refuse even to try them. For instance, Aoki Yuka, a Japanese national who made secret visits to night markets as a judge in the recent competition, frequently brings Japanese friends to night markets here, who delight in their maze-like layout and their food and fun. Yet most Japanese, she says, won't dare try chitterlings, chicken's feet or chicken livers.

Pig's-blood cake or rice-and-blood cake are made from glutinous rice and animal blood (pig's, duck's or chicken's). In Chinese medicine, duck meat is regarded as "nourishing yin" and "relieving deficiency syndrome," and in olden times, after slaughtering ducks, people wouldn't want to let the blood go to waste, so they'd collect it in a pan, add rice and steam it. Afterwards, they'd dip it in sauce and eat it. As the method spread, the dish became a common people's snack.

But because it's time-consuming to raise ducks and duck meat is thus expensive, the supply of duck blood couldn't meet demand. Moreover, because chicken's blood doesn't congeal well, gradually pig's blood began to replace duck's blood. That was how pig's-blood cake was born. Now pig's-blood cake is properly steamed before a sweet-and-sour sauce is applied. It's then covered with peanut powder and a sprinkling of cilantro. It's a much-loved night-market snack.

The Compendium of Materia Medica, written in the Ming dynasty, describes pig's blood as "salty, normal tasting, non-toxic," and used for "stimulating the production of blood, and treating stroke and bloating, as well as miasma."

In Taiwan Flavor, food writer Jiao Tong writes that he once researched the history of another night-market favorite, pig's-blood soup. Interestingly, he discovered that Sun Yat-sen, himself a doctor of Western medicine, nevertheless praised pig's-blood soup: "It is especially rich in iron, so that it serves as an excellent nutritional supplement. After illness or pregnancy, people used to take iron, as did people with thin blood. Now they use pig's blood. Not only is it not barbaric for Chinese people to eat pig's blood; it's very scientific and sanitary."

Stewed pork on rice

Someone has said that memories about food don't fade over time, because foods are both a way of holding on to traditions and a way of expressing kindness. Take, for instance, how Taiwan's "snack guru" Shu Kuo-chih described a proprietor of a night-market stall: "In the middle of the night, he's still tending a steaming-hot pot of rice-noodle soup and thereby showing his concern for others."

Amid the long river of Chinese cuisine, Taiwan snacks have been created from a panoply of ingredients gathered from near and far. The wisdom of the common people has then been added to give them even richer flavor. While you don't need to go to a night market to eat these snacks, the cultural significance of night markets makes eating xiaochi there especially meaningful. And however chaotic those places may seem, they are in fact embodiments of rational bustle. Take a stroll and experience the freedoms and liberations of the night. Consume some delicious food while you're at it. These are the reasons the crowds keep coming back to night markets.

A stall owner at Kao-hsiung's Liuhe Night Market invites passersby to try some crisp and sweet rose apples.

Duck's-blood cake

(left to right:) A ballon shooting gallery at Shilin Night Market; and at Raohe Street, aquarium fish and face threading. A pretty girl wanders carefree, snack in hand. The culture of night markets is a varied mix of old and new. The later the hour, the more beautiful they become.

Zongzi

(left to right:) A ballon shooting gallery at Shilin Night Market; and at Raohe Street, aquarium fish and face threading. A pretty girl wanders carefree, snack in hand. The culture of night markets is a varied mix of old and new. The later the hour, the more beautiful they become.

(left to right:) A ballon shooting gallery at Shilin Night Market; and at Raohe Street, aquarium fish and face threading. A pretty girl wanders carefree, snack in hand. The culture of night markets is a varied mix of old and new. The later the hour, the more beautiful they become.

Night Market Competition Results

Early on, the police instituted a licensing system for stall owners. The licenses had to be examined every year.

(left to right:) A ballon shooting gallery at Shilin Night Market; and at Raohe Street, aquarium fish and face threading. A pretty girl wanders carefree, snack in hand. The culture of night markets is a varied mix of old and new. The later the hour, the more beautiful they become.

The main ceremony on a visit to a night market involves the eating of snacks. A large but inexpensive bowl of herbal stewed ribs-what's not to like?

A steady stream of daytime automobile traffic is replaced at night by commercial bustle. Embodiments of common culture, night markets are new bright spots for Taiwan's tourism. The photo on the facing page shows Kaohsiung's Liuhe Night Market.

Coffin board

Keelung's Miaokou-or "temple entrance"-Night Market originally included both the stalls on the temple plaza and those on neighboring streets. Later, the street stalls moved, so that only the ones on the plaza remain. The photo, from 1977, shows a collection of stalls on Kee-lung's Ai 4th Road.

A steady stream of daytime automobile traffic is replaced at night by commercial bustle. Embodiments of common culture, night markets are new bright spots for Taiwan's tourism. The photo on the facing page shows Kaohsiung's Liuhe Night Market.