9/05/10 Low Rent Night Market

After a traditional Taiwanese dinner of kung pao chicken, sponge vegetable, clam soup and what I can only describe as a Taiwanese frittata (seriously, it was exactly the same, my mother could have been the one in the kitchen) we drove to the Nan Bin Night Market.  This night market was different in that it focused on games rather than food or shopping.  It only took a few steps to realize that carnies were not just a North American phenomenon.  The games looked like they had been there forever, a fact confirmed by Iris who said that not much had changed from her childhood visits there.

Space became excited upon seeing the candy covered cherry tomatoes: “Two please”.  Think candy apples, but only with tomatoes… 6 to a stick.  Space loved them, and although I thought that the sensation of the crunchy candy coating followed by soft tomato was great, the coating itself left much to be desired.

We shot some air pistols and I won the big prize…a pen on a retractable cord!  Less success was had with mah jong bingo, but the sly smile of the lady running the game gave me the feeling it was rigged.  We closed out our brief time there by buying some bottle rockets and a roman candle from one of the many vendors selling fireworks.  A short walk to the beach and we joined up with others that had done the same.

Take away the air hoses and we look badass!

Children were setting off fireworks while holding them with bare hands at arms length.  They took pleasure in throwing bottle rockets at each other.  No parental supervision, no bucket of sand, no fire extinguisher.  This was a throwback to the good times that were available in Canada before the safety police came along and sucked all the fun and excitement out of life.

I was reminded of a time back home during my youth.  Pre-teen years probably but I can’t exactly remember.  It was either Victoria Day or Canada Day (both commonly referred to as “firecracker day” by the mentally deficient) at Binder Twine Park in Kleinburg.  Everyone was waiting for the fireworks to start, but impatient lot that we were, we decided to start the show early and set off the roman candles that we had brought with us.  So with an outstretched hand, my brother David lit the stick in my hand and I pointed it skyward.  One or two fireballs had shot out of the candle and then a concerned woman “saved” me by knocking it out of my hand.  She yelled something along the lines of “You’ll shoot yer eye out!”  The trouble with her strategy was that by knocking the roman candle out of my hands, it hit the ground pointing straight at my friend Bryan who was standing a short distance away.  The rest of the fireballs shot directly at him and he was caught in a real life game of Donkey Kong, except he was jumping fireballs and not barrels.

The moral of the story is that the safety police should go fuck themselves.  Although the bright lights of Nam Bin promised it would be a sack of awesomeness, really it proved to be more like a quarter-sack.  Shitty games, weird food and Taiwanese carnies galore; I may have missed the Ex back in Toronto, but I had my own version right here in Hualien.