Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je: Hopes Taipei's Markets Can Reach the Same Standards as Japan's

Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je attended the beam-raising ceremony for the Huannan Market reconstruction project yesterday (the 21st). He believes a market is a microcosm of a city and a representative of a city, so if you have only 30 minutes to understand a city, you should go see its market.

Mayor Ko Wen-je also mentioned that Taipei's market buildings are old and the environment is poor, and the next generation is not very willing to take over, making it difficult to bring in new thinking. Therefore, how to improve the environmental hygiene of the markets and even help the younger generation take over smoothly are all very important tasks for the Taipei City Government's Market Administration Office; that is to say, not only the hardware but also the improvement of the software, such as modernization, is very important.

Mayor Ko Wen-je said that Huannan Market has been in use since February of the 67th year of the Republic of China and has now been in use for more than 40 years, and the matter of reconstruction has been discussed for a long time; he specially thanked the joint meeting of the heads of the Public Works Department and the Department of Economic Development, which held many meetings in order to report progress to the mayor's office every two months; Mayor Ko Wen-je stated that because of everyone's efforts, the Huannan Market broke ground on November 6 of the 105th year of the Republic of China, and he also praised that when he visited at the beginning of this year, the building had not yet risen above ground, and because the engineering unit worked day and night for 5 months, the beam-raising ceremony could already be held.

Finally, Mayor Ko Wen-je mentioned that Huannan Market is an important food ingredient distribution center in Taipei, so he hopes that through this reconstruction project, the transportation routes, environmental hygiene, and parking space will be improved, and most importantly, that new operating concepts will be brought in. For this reason, Mayor Ko Wen-je hopes that the Department of Economic Development can organize young vendors so that the brand-new building will also have brand-new business concepts, such as separating wet and dry areas, keeping garbage off the ground, and e-commerce. He also hopes that Taipei's markets can reach the same standards as Japan's.