A street vendor in Taiwan might have a stew pot like this with a gas or coal fired stove. This vendor often serves noodles and soups. This photo was taken because my friend Mandy asked the elderly woman who cooks here if we could take her picture and she was very embarrassed, replying that I should be in the picture. I was very embarrased to pose at this woman's stove, which I could not possibly know how to use, but anyway, here it is.
This is a food cart that sells these sweet rolled cookies that they call eggrolls, but I am hesitant to call them that because they are nothing like an "eggroll" you order at Panda Express in the US. They are tasty.
Street vendors also sell prepared foods like this; you can choose what you want and they will cook it into a stew or deep fry it for you.
And, of course, street vendors sell everything young women want - cheap clothing, shoes, jewelry, etc. Here are a pair of short shorts with nonsense English painted across the bottom. A must have.
There are tons and tons of street vendors in Taipei. To be a street vendor - either to have a food cart, or to sell fake handbags from a blanket, or whatever, you are supposed to have a license from the government. However, this law is widely broken. It is broken for the same reason any laws are broken - because it is possible. There are so many vendors, it is not possible for the police to effectively patrol and ticket them all for violating the license law.
In one neighborhood of Taipei, Ximending, there are quite a few food carts and street performers. Both times I have spent an evening in Ximending, there has been an incident involving the license law.
The last time I visited Taipei, I watched a street performer stop mid-act and leap behind a garbage can to hide from the police. That was pretty amusing.
This summer, one evening Jesse and I were wandering around there and he was hungry. We found a guy who sells a sort of halal sandwich with meat, peppers, onions, tomoatoes, etc. on a piece of french bread. So Jesse is standing there holding out $NT 100, and I am trying to ascertain the various contents of the sandwich so I can help him order, when suddenly this guy just grabs his cart handles and takes off. I'm totally befuddled until I hear the screeching voice of another woman running toward us with her rattling stinky tofu cart yelling, "Kuai le! Kuai le!" or, "Hurry, hurry!" It is then I see the police officer giving one of the other street vendors a ticket. So, laughing bemusedly, Jesse and I begin to vaguely walk in the direction our halal sandwich vendor ran to see if we can find him again, but not really at all certain we will. Sure enough, about 5 minutes later, he emerges from the crowd holding a fully prepared and wrapped sandwich for Jesse. He had found us! Jesse gave him $NT 30 ($US 1.00) and laughing, we thank him. I do not see his cart, so I don't know where he went. I think they all have little hiding places where they go when the police show up. ? I have no idea.
I asked Jesse why the police give tickets to anyone if there is such flagrant violation of the law. All of the vendors were back out and working less than 30 minutes after the police left that particular area. We agreed the ticketing probably gets some vendors to buy the license and prevents too many from operating in the area.
To see that woman running full speed away from the police with all her stinky tofu equipment jangling was quite a sight to see. You would have to be in pretty decent shape, honestly, to run while pushing all that stuff.
On the corner near the university the last few nights there have been some guys selling handbags. This is clearly an operation they wanted to complete as fast as possible because they were yelling to everyone to come check it out and they had people carrying signs around showing where they were. They seemed to doing a brisk business. However, last night the police were standing over them as they packed up the many boxes of goodies they had for purchase.
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