Free Global Futures in East Asia: Youth, Nation, and the New Economy in Uncertain Times (Contemporary Issues in Asia and Pacific) by Unknown

conform to the official vision of an “internationalized” pedestrian mall. Mr. Hong, a food vendor in his sixties, insisted that New Kujiang’s development as a shopping area began well before the establishment of NKSM. According to him, street vendors began to show up in front of the movie theater in the early 1980s. It was a time when people who had come to the city for jobs found that street vending might give them more economic opportunity. “We were people of poor fortune (
pháinn-miā-lāng
in Hoklo),” he explained. “We didn’t have enough education to get good jobs. Street vending was our way of moving up.” Landlords in the area took pity on them and allowed them to vend at street corners and in the arcades outside their buildings. It was only after vendors had drawn shoppers to the area that developers started moving in to build the shopping centers. Lian, another food vendor, had a slightly different story. After his factory folded in the early 1990s due to competition from cheap products produced in Southeast Asia, Lian decided to take up street vending. New Kujiang was already a well-known shopping area by then, and he felt that it was an ideal location to start a business. Although he does not care about who initiated New Kujiang’s development, he, too, thinks that street vending is the last resort for many who lack opportunity in formal employment and that the vendors should be protected by the government and respected by the development project. To him, as well as to Mr. Hong, street vending is what gives New Kujiang a distinct flavor and makes it a fun place to be. A “place you go for shopping” is constituted of elements more than (or other than) the trees, bricks, and boutiques. It has to be “hot and noisy” (
renao
) to attract people.
    Both Mr. Hong and Lian frame their stories within the framework of another popular narrative in Taiwan that argues that vending helps to absorb the impact of economic transformation by offering opportunity to unemployed workers in the absence of a welfare system (Tai 1994; Yu 1999). 18 Mr. Hong’s lack of formal education made it difficult for him to find a job that paid enough to support his family. Lian, once the owner of a small-sized enterprise, was driven out of the market by rising production costs and foreign imports. Taking up street vending was a conscious decision by both to improve their economic standing. 19 Through narrating their experiences, they reiterate the same story of self-initiative and market success against the background of Kaohsiung’s development but with a different twist. Unlike the story celebrated in New Kujiang’s promotional materials and the official narrative of the city, in Mr. Hong and Lian’s stories, the city’s development has marginalized them. Yet, like New Kujiang’s success story, their accounts stress entrepreneurial initiative and the ability to react quickly to a changing economic context. They cast themselves as entrepreneurs and justify street vending as a legitimate route to upward mobility. Vending, along with conventional business, should be allowed or even encouraged. Moreover, by arguing that vending has always been there in New Kujiang, they insist on the vendors’ right to stay where they are and reject the notion that street vending is a source of disorder threatening New Kujiang’s success.
    The coexistence of conventional shops and street vending is not unique to New Kujiang. In many shopping streets in Taiwan, property owners rent out the arcades and adjoining sidewalks to vendors. A vender who has paid rent feels that he or she is entitled to set up there. Therefore, vendors in New Kujiang feel that they are unfairly harassed by the police who give out citations. Shops and property owners also do not want to lose the right to rent out space in front of their shops for extra income. While some merchants feel that vendors bring unfair competition, others welcome the crowds that they