I still remember the first time when I went to New York, I was really amazed at the enormous and various street vendors which cover almost every corner of the city. There are hot dog vendors and ice-cream vendors near the public parks, Mexican-styled street food is sold from the fancy food trucks outside NYU library, fresh fruit and vegetable vendors cover a long street in China town, street artists pop up in subway stations with different musical instruments… In fact, the survey data shows that there are as many as 20,000 street vendors in New York City, they are all small businesspeople struggling to make ends meet.
I have to admit that my street food experience in New York even broke up my stereotypes of street vendors: I used to think that the more developed and cosmopolitan a city is, the fewer street vendors it will have. This “rule” was in fact summarized from Shanghai’s street vendor history. I remember that the sweetest taste of my childhood memory came from the baked sweet potato and the cotton candy, two kinds of traditional street food that used could be seen everywhere in Shanghai. Baked sweet potato usually came out in winter, when you finish a whole-day study, walking in the cold wind with a hungry stomach, you could not resist the temptation of having a warm and sweet baked potato. Cotton candy is not limited by seasons, it appears throughout the year. It is a typical “street food” with an easy production process and could be served on a stick for made-to-order service. It even has several flavors for you to choose from: strawberry, lemon, grape… I always choose the strawberry one, and wait to watch the whole “performance”. I love to see the part when the cotton-like product surrounding the spinning head of the machine after the vendor poured sugar into the machine. The cotton becomes pink when he pours pink sugar, and it gradually grows into a big, round, cloud-like candy. At that time, I would joyously take over the stick from the vendor, and enjoy my little snack. I always imagine myself biting a piece of soft, pinky cloud, until one day I suddenly being told that the pink color comes from the low-cost chemical pigment instead of real strawberries. But this didn’t influence my love for cotton candy. It always symbols the taste of my childhood.
Street food – the cotton candy
Street food – the baked sweet potato
Nostalgia also comes from the disappearance of street food in Shanghai. I rarely see any cotton candy vendors or baked potatoes vendors these days, they are all restricted by the food safety laws. Sharit K. Bhowmik stated that the governments in Asian countries have more or less refused to recognize street vending as a legal activity and view these vendors as irritants to the city’s development. The streets with food vendors are regarded as “disordered”, “undeveloped”, and required to be “regulated”. As a result, street vendors in most Asian countries “live a precarious existence as they face the constant threat of eviction and destruction of their property”. The governmental action in fact destroys “the liveliness of the city”. Liveliness is an idea proposed by Jane Jacobs, it is generated in the shared use of a public space by different groups of people. Jacobs insisted that “only when cities are created for everybody can they provide something for everybody”. But unfortunately, governments sacrifice “somebody” to achieve the tidy and regulated appearance for “everybody”. The dynamic street food vendors disappear, but the neat and consistent food streets have been building up, as long as the illusory of the liveliness of the city.
Leave a Reply