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Canadian Urbanism Uncovered

Closing time at the street market

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HONG KONG — Montreal has a handful of fine public markets, but what it lacks are some good street markets. We have approximate, ephemeral versions of these every summer when many streets—Ste. Catherine and the Main, the Plaza St. Hubert and Wellington, Ontario in Hochelaga—close for lively street fairs. But we don’t have any permanent markets of the type that are so common in most European and Asian cities.

In Hong Kong, nearly every neighbourhood has at least one market street where people shop for cheap clothes and accessories and, more importantly, fresh meat, fish, fruit and vegetables. Each street has its own subtle character. The steep street markets of Central, sandwiched between the trendy apartments and bars of Soho and the big office towers and shopping malls near the harbour, are filled with unexpectedly anachronistic shops and stalls, like the papersmith who will soon be priced out by rising rents, or the umbrella repairman who won a Guiness World Record for making the world’s most expensive umbrella. In Yau Ma Tei, the Temple Street night market opens in the early evening and doesn’t close until after midnight, its tacky souvenirs and tourist rip-offs counterbalanced by some of the best cheap food in Hong Kong.

While the Fa Yuen Street market in the north end of Mongkok is more of a destination for cheap clothes, shoes and accessories than it is for food, it still has a good number of stalls selling fruits and vegetables. (It’s also a good place to buy a sweet young coconut to drink.) By ten in the evening, most of the market hawkers have left, and the last shops are beginning to close, but the fruit and vegetable vendors press on, trying to get rid of the last of their produce.

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