Hence the campaigning to keep the West Gate Market special. At Rainbow is Coming, a gently hip boutique selling clothes, art books, beans, bags and the like, we find campaign central.

Erik Kao, the owner, is the mentor and driving force behind the West Gate Market community. He moved here from Taipei over a decade ago when, in Keira’s words, ‘the area was dying’. Before long, he’d organised a gang of young entrepreneurs bent on revitalising the market and Zhengxing Street. They launched fairs, street magazines and a band. With their t-shirts, concerts and campaign posters, theirs is a gently humorous uprising.

‘I think it’s a great example for foreign visitors, showing how Tainan is today, and how it can be transformed,’ says Keira. ‘Rainbow is Coming is not only a shop; it is more like a base for a social movement, a lab for new ideas and a community centre that unites the neighbourhood. How can you not love a shop like this?’

In short, Keira, you can’t.

After two days gradually succumbing to its quiet charm, I began thinking more and more of Kyoto. Kyoto, too, lost its capital city status. Instead it became a centre of art, history and heritage, a refuge for less commercial and aggressive souls. Tainan is the same: Hongkongers as well as Taipei people are drawn here by its lower rents, lighter, cleaner cuisine and slower pace.

Kyoto’s Nishiki Market is one of my favourite places in the world, a place where you can spend hours and still emerge feeling spiritually revitalised, not in some kind of mall-induced retail stupor. Tainan’s West Gate Market could be that. Sign me up to the campaign. I’ll buy the t-shirt.

The writer stayed at Shangri-La’s Far Eastern Plaza hotel, Tainan.

Hero illustration: Cecil Tang.

This story was originally published in January 2017 and updated in September 2020