From Taiwan, II

 
All the pretty boxes!

 
Steaming hot and yummy.

Every day of the week, there's a night market to stroll around after dinner and have your second supper or late night snack and sift through the piles of cheap, trendy clothing and accessories. Eating and shopping are the two activities that dominate life in Taiwan, and my personal favorite was when we shop for what we were going to eat. The above photos are from Shilin Night Market, one of the most popular and extensive ones around, especially for the teeny-boppers in Taipei. It doesn't show up well here, but there's a gigantic inner market that's completely covered, where all the outdoor vendors pull their goods when it rains. We got lost in there looking for some jade vendors, and walked by amusement park games, punk outfitters and more clothing. A Mister Donut franchise decided to locate near Shilin because of the high foot traffic. Don't laugh - nearly every hour that Mister Donut is open, there's a line of teenagers out the door and around the block, waiting for the freshly fried treats. (And anyway, it's a Japanese chain.) Both Mister Donut and Shilin Market are accessible via subway transit, of course.

 
The lux-side

And on the other side of the shopping spectrum, there's the new City Hall district called Xinyi, where the tallest skyscraper, Taipei 101, is located (designed after the bamboo), and where there's a cluster of several luxury department stores (all part of a chain from Hong Kong, I believe, except for the Warner Village department store, of course.) The photo above is from a new department store-scale bookstore from the popular Eslite chain, where I oohed at clothing in the surprising D-Squared boutique, paged through loads of Japanese design books on Paris, ogled the jetblack chandeliers in the grand lobby, above (Starck knock-offs?), and picked up an always classy Josephine Tey mystery for my flight back to the States.