Sixth part: Ningxia Night Market
The tour concluded with us being dropped off back to the same wing at the Taipei Main Station. It was around 6pm, the sun was close to down and night was closing in. After waving goodbye to our sweet tour guide Carol (I managed to apologize earlier in Shifen, and at the end I thanked her for the guidance), I walked back inside the station to decide where I should go next. I sat on one of the empty benches inside, reorganized the souvenirs I bought inside my bag (I dumped the empty plastic bags), and rested for a bit.
I still haven’t decided what to do, at that time. I had three options: mall, night market, or go back to the Roaders Hotel. And Taipei Main Station was perfect location – I can go to all three of them from that point. I did try planning this part out weeks before I came to Taiwan, but I decided this is more fun as something that I should decide on the day itself. Because I was lazy to plan for it back then.
In short, I got fucked by my own laziness.
To un-fuck myself, I decided to cut one decision out. And that is, I do want to see something more so, I cut out the “go back to the Roaders Hotel” decision out. I can have dinner at the mall nearby the station (even the one inside the station), or in one of Taipei’s known night markets. I kind of felt adventurous that moment, so I decided to cut out the “mall”. I might see a mall in the next few days. Not now, too short a time, methought.
But while I had the “night market” decision made, I had to decide as to “where”. I had to exclude the infamous Shilin Night Market from my choices, as it was the dropoff point for the next day’s tour. So I opened Google Maps, and there were two nearby options I found most recommended – Ningxia Night Market, and Huaxi Street Night Market. Ningxia can be done with either a bus trip or a walk, but Huaxi was definitely a bus trip as it was a bit to the left of Ximending.
I was still undecided, so I pulled out a 10 NTD coin, and flipped it – heads would be Huaxi, tails would be Ningxia. Flip turned out tails, so Ningxia it was.
I decided to leisurely “walk” the entire 1.1km distance from Taipei Main Station to the Ningxia Night Market, because 1) the bus routes recommended by Maps was wack and I couldn’t locate the Zhengzhou bus stop, and 2) I was very interested to see what the streets of Taipei really looks like at night, at least the less glittery ones. I’ve seen Ximending’s streets and they look like their own thing, so I wanted to see what other places that are not Ximending and how the general metro life there was like. Besides, I can walk that distance, no problem.
So with the Maps as a handy walking guide, off I went to Ningxia Road.
The roads were pretty much… kind of like Tokyo’s, I’d say. It was still clean, was generally OK. Some businesses closing for the night, and some still open for the night. But if you diverge from main roads and go through some other pathways – which I did, as I went through a lane from Chengde to Taiyuan on a whim – you’d be likely to get a whiff of some real funky stuff. And mind you, my olfactory senses are less adept than most of my siblings, who can pick up smells faster than me.
And I compared it to Tokyo, because it was almost the same experience as me. Like, I was raised on these government-manufactured Japan videos during childhood, watched them on those old CRT TVs, and I long conjured images in my head that Tokyo must be some modern 21st-century city that’s exceedingly cleaner than Manila. And then in 2017, I got to visit Tokyo for a couple of days, and well… yeah, still cleaner than Manila, less funky than Manila, but the “clean” image I had disappeared faster than thin ice on hot water. It also has dirty spots, shady places and seedy streets – only it’s not seen on TV or tourist ads. Same with Seoul. And generally, same with Taipei. Main streets are clean, but once you go off the main roads and into lanes and alleys, you’d see things aren’t so pristine as you thought. Which in itself isn’t bad. Cities’ character and all that. But for me, after Tokyo and Seoul, I’m not surprised at all with what Taipei had. Tokyo gave me that reality check long ago anyway.
So, I reached Ningxia within 15 minutes. Brisk walking. I actually got into a very interesting entrance where I was smack dab in the middle of the two sections of the night market.
Most shops have already set up shop (it opens by around 5pm, sometimes others do earlier), with only very few left that were doing prep work. And the night market itself was divided into two distinct sections. The first section facing Nanjing was more into general goods, mobile accessories, clothes, pinball machines, and games. I did look for things to buy such as t-shirts and jeans, but some of them were flimsy or had designs that I found not to my liking. So I just walked leisurely through to see what’s what before returning up to the second section.
The second section above it is where the business really was. All food stalls, some with their own sit-down sections. And PACKED with people. You really couldn’t window-shop for long. Everything in the middle lane is moving up or down, so you have to keep an eye (and nose) on what you might want to eat, and one eye on the crowd. You will not want to drop a wallet or a phone in this moving crowd, especially if they do not really speak English that well. So I wisely put my phone in my jeans pocket, and just moved along to the flow, going north.
But all the stalls had at least some English on their menus and signboards, which was nice.
At Shifen, I held back on eating anything more than that excellent peanut ice cream roll. It’s for this instance. If I decided on a night market, I had to make sure I could eat with less guilt that I did not grandly fuck up my daily caloric plans. So I left Shifen with at least some space left in me for dinner. Thankfully, all that tour walking did me a solid by earning me a very big caloric deficit that I could fill with a meal or two and still go to bed with a good calorie gap.
I started to walk northward to look for shit to eat. There was a lot of stalls selling easy-eat foods – on sticks, on small bowls, on takeaway paper containers. Lots of fried stuff, but some are either steamed or pre-prepped ahead of time. And as most of the stalls rely on their wares attracting customers with sights and smells, they used bright lights and fan out the smell of their food into the main area in front of them, so some of the smells mixed in the air. Very peculiar smells if you somehow get a whiff of something you know get mixed with something else. Like, you smell roasted sweet potato… then something that smells like sausage or fried tofu gets in your nose mixed with the first one.
After walking north for a good while picking and choosing what I can eat for dinner, I just said to myself “fuck it” and settle for a nearby stall selling soup and noodles. I had a small sausage stick near the section start anyway, and I’m hungry already. Time for main dish 1.
I saw this roadside stall selling one main soup – thick squid slices in a thick starchy peppered soup that packed a great umami punch. It might be a variant of either squid thick soup or maybe youyu geng, which I don’t mind. It was paired with thin noodles topped with bean sprouts, pork bits with lard, and a dash of white pepper. I was interested as most of the customers I observed had the same order. Must be good enough. Decent serving too. So I sat down and ordered one as well for myself. I also put a dash of Chinese vinegar on the soup to add a small kick. The dish was warm, and good. Noodles were OK, and the soup had these thick squid cuts that were cooked just right – soft but not mushy. Still had a good snap to each bite. I wished there was tableside chili flakes to help whet the appetite, but oh well. Can’t have everything.
After polishing off the meal, I rested for a bit, thanked the auntie, and went to look for one more meal. I can still squeeze one in. Walking downward, I was looking at the dessert stalls and the fried food stalls longingly if I should try them. I mean, the chicken cutlet stall had a long-ass line. The fried sweet potato balls had a throng of foreigners snapping pics for the ‘gram, so nope. But as I neared the point where I started, I saw a menu with something that interested me: pork blood cake. So, I guessed huh, maybe I should try it.
I ordered one serving of pork blood cake soup with noodles as a side dish. Again, it seems this was a staple – thin noodles with bean sprouts, pork bits and lard – but this stall’s noodles has mixed in vermicelli and some garlic chives. I later added in a tablespoon of chili paste to the side to whet my appetite, as the noodles I had earlier was too rich. I settled in one of the free seats behind the stall – it’s a stall with set up tables behind it – and waited for my order.
The pork blood soup was… shall we say, an acquired taste. I liked it, it tasted exotic and the blood cake was clean, but I am sure most foreigners might decline the taste. There’s a strong taste there. Very iron-y. I’m a Filipino and I’m used to the taste of pork blood, because of dinuguan. But this one is more blood-forward in terms of being an isolatable taste. The herbs used are strong and are contributing to the variety of the soup itself. I could taste mustard greens, onions, chives and a hint of ginger. I did add garlic chili oil later to see if I could punch up the spicy side more away from the savory side, but the blood-y taste kind of prevented that. But also, the soup’s piping hot. Unlike the earlier squid soup, of which the squid chunks cooled down once out of the soup, these blocks of blood did not. I had to put one block on top of my noodles, cut it in four, and ate it piece by piece. Because I tried eating one block whole, and I burned my tongue because the middle of the block did not cool down. Also, eat it while it’s decently hot. I felt this dish’s taste would deteriorate if I let it go cool.
After eating my second soup, I was done. The soups helped me feel full, and from my research these dishes did not break humongous calorie counts (well, maybe the noodles pumped up the numbers, dang the lard oil).
Time to head back for the night.
Briathrail // Albert 2MNG 
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