Night market's streets fenced off

Zhabei district authorities fenced off several streets that hosted a popular but illegal night market Wednesday after eight city bus lines changed their routes to avoid the crowded area, local media reported.

The district put up the fences between the sidewalks and the streets to prevent vendors from setting up shop on the roadside, the Shanghai Evening Post reported.

The Pengpu night market first appeared around 10 years ago in the area around Linfen and Wenxi roads in Zhabei. On many nights, food and clothing vendors cram themselves into rows along both sides of the road, as crowds of visitors spill out onto the street.

Last Friday, the Shanghai No.5 Bus Company changed the routes for eight of its bus lines, including the No.46, No.850, and No.745 lines, so they no longer had to traverse the crowded streets after 8:30 pm, the time the market usually begins, the Shanghai Morning Post reported. It had begun to take the buses up to 45 minutes to travel 500 meters through the market.

The company has also submitted a request to permanently change the bus routes so they no longer have to drive through the market.

"We used to send employees to the market to try to get the people and vendors out of the way when the buses passed through, but it stopped working after a while. The roads are almost completely blocked and it's no longer safe for buses to drive through there," an employee from the bus company's business office told the Global Times.

Despite a campaign to clear out the illegal vendors in 2011, the market has continued to grow with media exposure and an influx of vendors from outside the city, the Oriental Morning Post reported.

About 400 vendors set up shop on Linfen Road on the typical night, despite repeated raids from authorities, the news portal eastday.com reported.

Since Monday, Zhabei district authorities have sent more police officers and urban management officers, or chengguan, to patrol the two streets. They confiscated some of the vendors' tables, chairs and equipment on Monday, and cleaned the oily streets.

There have been few vendors on the streets over the last few days because the officers usually patrol until midnight, said the owner of a restaurant on Wenxi Road.

The owner, surnamed Wei, told the Global Times Wednesday that his business was down about 25 percent since the patrols began. He hadn't heard about the sidewalk fences, but was certain that they would hurt his business even more.

The Shanghai No.5 Bus Company plans to hold off before returning its bus lines to their original routes, the employee said.

"We will wait two to three days to see how well the fences work," he told the Global Times.

The employee was concerned that the vendors will remove the fences if the officers don't keep up their patrols. He believed that the government should maintain a regime of daily patrols to keep the streets clear.

Although the night market is popular and has created a lot of jobs, it is still against the law, according to Dai Xingyi, an expert in environmental science from Fudan University.

A street vendor can get up to 10 days in detention and a 500-yuan ($82) fine for impeding public transportation.

Dai said that the authorities should designate a specific location for the night market so it doesn't just spring up on the street.

The city's street vendors need to be regulated so they can register with authorities and pay taxes on their earnings, Dai added.