Global Futures in East Asia: Youth, Nation, and the New Economy in Uncertain Times (Contemporary Issues in Asia and Pacific) (12 page)

In the planning and construction of this new space, the layered narrative of New Kujiang’s success story was being reworked. Starting with Kaohsiung’s past history as a colonial port and then the Cold War trade of shipped goods from abroad in the old Kujiang, the spatial reorganization of New Kujiang would bring it and the city closer to other world-class cities. Built around the key words of
internationalization
,
modernization
, and
competitiveness
, the revitalization project would connect New Kujiang’s previous commercial success to future success and its past association with exotic commodities to participation in an international consumer market. The active role local business people took in refashioning the streets was celebrated as a triumph of entrepreneurialism and communal self-promotion that would ensure New Kujiang’s competitiveness in the global market of places. Colonial legacy, Cold War dependence, and postindustrial decline were all reoriented toward global connectivity and future prosperity. Past and future converged in the perpetual youthfulness and newness of New Kujiang through the
imagineering
(Rutheiser 1996) of a “modern” as well as “internationalized” space for consumption.

A Place for Shopping

A decade after the Development Plan was first introduced, New Kujiang has morphed into an eclectic hybrid between a Taiwanese night market and a trendy pedestrian mall. Pricey boutiques, trees (the kind that Mr. Liao dislikes), restaurants serving exotic food, and colorful banners line the brick-paved streets. But, on these same streets, in front of the boutiques and restaurants, are street vendors selling cheap accessories, low-priced clothing,
iced
drinks, and snacks. Although conventional shops usually open before noon, street vendors do not show up until hours later. At nightfall, shoppers begin to come in numbers. The streets come into life, and activities continue until midnight. The smell of food, the sounds, and the crowds conjure up an ambiance not unlike a “hot and noisy” (
renao
) night market. The revitalization project did not manage to rid the vendors who made New Kujiang a “chaotic” place. Instead, because they have been pedestrianized, the streets have become an even more ideal space to set up vending stalls. While “failing” to live up to the official vision of a tidy, legible, and user-friendly quality shopping district (Hsu and Yang 2001), New Kujiang was able to regain the lively and unruly energy that had made it famous and popular among youthful consumers. It continues to serve up an “internationalized” image. But this is a different image than the one that the planners had in mind. Instead, New Kujiang provides shoppers, merchants, and vendors with an internationalized space and narratives of market success through which different visions can be articulated.

The development plan looked to European, American, and Japanese downtowns and shopping streets for inspiration. But, to many Taiwanese, a night market is the kind of pedestrian shopping area they know best, and this became New Kujiang’s reference point. Fang, a store clerk, explains that, while she does not think that New Kujiang is a night market, “Its position (
diwei
) in Kaohsiung’s tourism is similar to Liuhe Night Market and Ruifeng Night Market.” Like these popular night markets, New Kujiang is “a place you go for shopping.” She asserts that there is a difference, but exactly how New Kujiang differs she is not certain. Tian makes an easier distinction. The façade at the entrance of New Kujiang and the fact that the area has been “planned” are what make New Kujiang different. Mei-li, a female shopper, on the other hand, cites that New Kujiang sells “new things” and “expensive stuff.” These upscale commodities and entertainment features make it stand out. New Kujiang not only offers food and clothing as most night markets do, but it also has a movie theater, chain record stores, specialty shops, local as well as international designer brands, and dance studios. All these, however, only make New Kujiang a “bigger and newer night market” in the eyes of Tian’s younger sister: “The only reason that New Kujiang is not a night market is because it’s not called a night market.”

Although the general consensus among shoppers and merchants is that New Kujiang is not a night market, however, the facts that these are all
“places
you go for shopping” and that comparisons are constantly made between New Kujiang and night markets point to the possibility that New Kujiang could always degenerate into a night market if a careful distinction is not maintained. To differentiate New Kujiang from these other places for shopping, its newness, youthfulness, and trendiness are often emphasized. Official promotional materials constantly refer back to New Kujiang’s cosmopolitan past and fashionable present to set it apart from more traditional night markets that are known to be loud, crowded, disorderly, and, most important, provincial. Comparisons to Taipei’s youth-oriented Hsimenting are often brought up to promote New Kujiang to outsiders as a shopping area for young people. To further differentiate New Kujiang from night markets, street vending is condemned or held in a negative light by the committee and planning agencies. Street vendors are accused of offering unfair competition, posing a hygiene problem, and disrupting the clear order of the development plan.
16
Although the final plan did try to incorporate street vendors as a way of soliciting their cooperation, in its execution vendors were left out. This neglect is partly a result of the planning agencies’ negative view toward street vending and partly a result of the government’s refusal to grant funding to designs that include street vendors and their illegitimate business operations.
17
Street vending is also overlooked in official promotional materials. Thus, while street vending is very visible on the ground, it oftentimes becomes invisible on paper.

Even with the constant effort to promote a carefully composed image of New Kujiang, other stories exist to justify customary practices that do not 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 attract. Conventional shops persist in renting out the space to vendors because their presence is considered beneficial to the market as a whole. Moreover, shops located in the upper levels of the shopping centers may send their salesclerks downstairs to display merchandise on the streets, and shops on the ground level may also display their merchandise on the arcades and sidewalks, blurring the line between street vending and conventional shops.

The marketing of places on the global stage requires the production of differences. The development plan attempted to engineer New Kujiang into a different place through adopting elements of pedestrian malls in “advanced” countries. Street vendors in New Kujiang, however, propose that, to stand out in the global market of places, New Kujiang needs to stress its local features. Well educated and politically savvy, Mr. Hong’s daughter Yuki has emerged as a proponent for vendors’ right in New Kujiang. Working with local politicians, cultural workers, and local scholars, she hopes to organize vendors to bargain for business licenses and legal status. In her view, international tourism provides the best opportunity for New Kujiang, and the only way to attract foreign tourists is through emphasizing New Kujiang’s local Taiwanese character. She envisions New Kujiang as a place that offers up homey food and exotic items to tourists: “We can’t compete unless we find our own distinctive feature (
tese
).” She argues, “What can be more Taiwanese than street vending?” Although Yuki considers street vending as distinctively Taiwanese, her argument in fact resonates with the global trend of using street vending in the transformation of urban space into pleasure zones for consumption (Donovan 2008; Shepherd 2008). Street vending is promoted as a way to enliven dull streets and give cities a nostalgic as well as a generic aura of urbanism. Because New Kujiang is an important location in the city’s tourism promotion and street vendors contribute to the “hot and noisy” ambience of a place for shopping, their existence is quietly accepted but never encouraged by the government authorities. As street vending has come to epitomize an authentic Taiwanese culture that can distinguish it in the global tourism market (S-D. Yu 2004), Yuki and the vendors have also learned to adopt this narrative, willing to subsume themselves under
more
regulations but also insisting on continuing customary practices incommensurable with official visions of modernization. Competition in the global market of places is a reason offered both by the planning agencies to eliminate street vending and by the vendors to argue for their continuing presence. In stressing competitiveness and profit seeking, the official narrative inadvertently provides a ready vocabulary for local venders to persist in evading, bending, breaking, or neglecting regulations.

The islandwide place-making projects have reconfigured local marketplaces and urban streets for capital in the form of investment and consumption. In these increasingly standardized places striving to present both modern qualities and local distinctiveness, the signs of “Taiwanese-ness” are being repackaged into a desired commodity (Wu and Kuo 2001). It is within this same framework that New Kujiang’s streets have been reordered to signify national progress and global connectivity and that Yuki has strategically manipulated the idioms of competitiveness and global market to advance her agenda. Images of urban space constructed by designers and political elites are “rarely consistent with the daily spatial experience of urban residents and workers” (Low and Lawrence-Zuniga 2006: 20). “Through people’s social exchanges, memories, images, and daily use of the material settings,” space is transformed into “scenes and actions that convey symbolic meaning” (Low 1996: 862). Designed to be a space that resembles the cosmopolitan shopping streets in “advanced” countries, New Kujiang has been inscribed with new meanings through reinterpretations of official narratives and transformed through the actions of those who work and shop there. Contradicting views of what a “place you go for shopping” should be like remain contested on a daily basis.

Flows and Connections

In Taiwan’s official place-making projects, internationalization is represented by a modern streetscape characterized by tidiness and legibility. To the planning agencies, internationalization means the (re)writing of a cosmopolitan history and the engineering of a space modeled after other places in “advanced” countries. To Yuki, internationalization means constructing local difference to compete in the global market. For many merchants and shoppers, New Kujiang is internationalized not in the sense that it physically
resembles
Euro-American shopping streets but in the sense that these distant locales are evoked through imagination as well as material objects to build a different kind of place. Lian displays a multilingual menu on his pushcart and is proud of having a few Canadian expatriates as his regular customers. Shops put up English or Japanese business signs, and there are shops named “Tokyo” (
Dongjing
), “L.A.,” “Queen’s Boulevard” (
Huanghou Dadao
of Hong Kong), and “London” (
Lundun
). A poster outside of a curio shop in NKSM showed a portrait of John Wayne with the word
Texas
printed on it. Next to the poster were small postcards with signs from Route 66. A few corridors away, a shop specialized in merchandise associated with Japanese popular music displayed pictures of Japanese boy bands on its windows and hung posters from its ceilings. Posted on the door were ads for the latest paraphernalia from concert tours around Japan. In this cacophony and juxtaposition of “other” places, New Kujiang emerges as a place where imaginaries of local Taiwan and the global market are constructed and where different actors envision Taiwan’s place in the global map of fashionable places and commodities.