The earliest night markets in Tainan originated around Min-Chu Road Chi-Kan Loh and Shih-Jing-Joh area, until the opening of the Far Eastern Department Store, which then extends towards the east to Chung-Shan road.
This is the peak of Min-Chu road night market.
In 1983, City Mayor Su Nan-Cheng decided to clean up the city and forced out all night market stalls on September 1st, but the business locations offered afterwards are either too expensive to rent or operating upstairs in buildings, making it impossible to continue operation and forced operators to make complaints everywhere they can.
Luckily at the time, the ex-provincial representative Tsai Jeh-Hsiung offered the assistance needed by locating the more than 8,000 ping primary school land reserve “Wen Xiao 53” at Xiao-Bei.
This piece of land was an abandoned fish pond jointly owned by more than 30 people, and the ex-provincial representative Mr. Tsai personally visited all the title holders to obtain their agreement in leasing the land, as well as visiting the provincial office several times until the ex-chairperson of Taiwan province Mr. Lee Teng-Huei issued a special directive to the city government authorizing Tainan City to establish a mobile stall center. After landfill, earthwork, steel structure building and establishing public facilities, 396 stalls officially commenced business on March 1st 1984. The first term of the committee members including the president, two vice presidents and twelve representatives were immediately elected to run the operation, while ex-provincial representative Mr. Tsai was retained as the honorary president of the center by the committee. After the opening of the Tuntex department store, the area gradually became the prosperous Xiao-Bei commercial zone.
Sadly, ex-provincial representative Mr. Tsai passed away on July 10th 1997, and the Xiao-Bei tourist night market suddenly lost a strong leader, and all stall operators were in deep sorrow, but with the support of ex-Tainan city mayor Chang Tsan-Hong, Xiao-Bei once again returned to prosperity even stronger than before. With unanimous support of the committee, Ex-mayor Chang was retained as the 2nd honorary president to work towards the mission left by ex-provincial representative Tsai.
Prefecture city stall center, Xiao-Bei tourist night market (or known as “Xiao-Bei night market” is located on section 4 Xi-Men road in Tainan). Because it was well planned initially, and the self-governing body is well-organized, the night market is famous throughout the nation since it opened 16 years ago, and it is the only private operating tourist night market in Tainan of such big scale.
Stall operators of the Xiao-Bei night market insist on serving the public to provide a good place with delicious food, good shopping and recreational atmosphere for consumers.