Selling underground magc

One of the hottest commercial scenes going on in Taipei happens every night at the underground transit mall running between Taipei’s train and bus, and MRT Metro stations, right under Zhongxiao Road. Known in English as the Station Front Metro Mall, some of the best action here seems to occur between the Z4 and Z6 exits between 5 and 7 pm, where a large fortune telling station services 4 people simultaneously, with waiting chairs available for the next bunch in line. Or how about magic? Right across from the fortune tellers, a magician does his tricks and hawks the apparatus to perform them. That’s stuff for adults, but how you gonna take money away from kids? Through “claw” booths, where kids ask the vendor to put a wanted prize on the platform inside a locked glass box, then pay for a few chances to pick up the item with a three-clawed device that was optimized to look like it could pick up anything, but in reality picks up nothing, other than picking the pockets of its customers.

Where fortunes are made

Station Front Mall, incidentally, is just one of three interconnected underground malls that all more or less come together under the train station. The other two are City Mall (under Civic Blvd) and Zhongshan Metro Mall (beneath the Danshui line). There are hundreds of tiny shops in those three malls, selling everything from food to shoes.

Part of the charm in any Asian country are all the elements, consisting of hard and soft goods mixed with great spiels, that separate the consumer from his or her money, in the name of luck.  “Step right up!” is a term in the West, associated with hokum, carnival sideshows, and snake oil. What’s going on in Taipei under the streets, between Z4 and Z6, would be seemingly quite convincing evidence that the Chinese are far more adept at separating money from the gullible than westerners are, and have been doing it for a hell of a lot longer, too.