Off The Rails: Hsimending Shopping, Voyeurism, and Indelible Ink

Taiwan was spared from going through the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, which in a very simplistic sense, was a generation clash gone extremely bad. But if such a youth uprising were to happen in 2002’s Taiwan, marching under the banner of frenzied consumerism instead of Mao Zhedong thought, it might look a lot like a typical evening in Hsimending, the ultra-consumerist heart of Taipei’s mainstream youth culture.

Hsimending is one of the oldest shopping districts in Taipei, but it hasn’t always been so hip. Back in the days when the nearest Tower Records was in Hong Kong, the Hsimending McDonalds was crowded with retirees from the mainland who would spend their days on the yellow plastic benches taking advantage of Mickey D’s generous refill policy. No longer, however: the McDonalds has been replaced by the trendier, standing room only “McTreat,” and the retirees have moved to districts with more friendly demographic trends, leaving Hsimending as the exclusive playground of the digital generation.

Hsimending is also known as a prime spot for people watching. The plaza directly outside of the MRT station is filled with beautiful people of all persuasions. On any given weekday you can merge with the crowd of folks busy seeing and being seen. On the weekends, the place is packed, and things can sometimes get a bit more intimate. In any event, there are plenty of love hotels offering “take a rest” rates of around 500 NT for three hours in the neighborhood, indicating that watching isn’t the only thing going on. Or maybe there’s even more watching going on then we’d care to admit – Hidden mini cam, anyone?

There are restaurants for all tastes in Hsimending, from coffee shops and steak houses, sushi bars cheap and expensive. There’s a 24 hour dim-sum restaurant where you can get stewed chicken feet and other Cantonese delicacies at any hour (the Light-star on Hanzhong street). If the idea of dropping big bucks for a plate of nachos doesn’t faze you, TGIF has a branch in the neighborhood where you can watch satellite feed sporting events while getting expensively pissed. Of course, if you’re eating Al Fresco (which is European for “like a cheapskate,”) Hanzhong street is packed with vendors selling fruit, fried items, and the usual mystery stick foods on any given weekend evening, though they clear pretty quickly when the cops walk through.

Not surprisingly, Hsimending’s main cash trade is in the field of corporeal beautification, boasting at least one outlet of every trendy clothing place found in Taiwan, as well as hundreds of smaller stores. But the area in which Hsimending really outshines any other neighborhood in Taipei is that of ornamentation of a more enduring kind. While you might not find them along the main drag, the smaller alleys of HMD boast no fewer than six storefront Tattoo parlors, and on any given evening you can walk down Hanzhong’s lane 50 and watch people getting inked. If you’re in the mood (and have the cash,) you can even get some work done yourself. While hygiene might seem a bit lax by Western standards (there are few open air Tattoo stalls left in America these days, and even less tattoo artists who chew betel nut as they work,) most of the artists on Lane 50 seem competent, and keep impressive catalogs of past works for your perusal.

Hsimending is a 24-hour consumer’s paradise for the young, young-at-heart, or merely immature. If you’re looking for a place to see and be seen on a Saturday night, or just want to watch live sporting matches, get blind drunk, and wake up with the name of the winning team permanently etched somewhere on your body, Hsimending is the place to go.

Written by Joshua Samuel Brown, Off The Rails is run weekly in the China Post, Copyright 2002