Bashi Market Route

What Bashi is

Bashi, formally the "Eighth Market" (Eighth Vegetable Market), is a fresh market in the heart of Xiamen's old town. Built along Kaihe and Yingping Roads, seafood, meat, vegetable and dry-goods stalls run densely together — the liveliest "street kitchen" on the island, sustaining local life. As a port town on the Taiwan Strait, what strikes you most is the wealth of seafood: in the morning, just-landed fish and shellfish, live crabs and prawns lie on ice. The market is a place to buy ingredients, but through its aisles and edges sit snack shops and delis that cook what they buy on the spot. So Bashi is at once where Xiamen people buy their materials and where they eat things freshly made — a corner not fully turned into a sight, thick with the smell of daily life.

Eating in the market

What makes Bashi interesting is that buying and cooking sit in one place. The oyster-omelette stand gets its oysters from a fish stall metres away and fries them, so it competes on freshness, the size and number plain on the plate. Broth and congee dishes — shacha noodles, mee sua paste, duck congee — took root as breakfast to warm the market's workers and shoppers, while fried and griddled things like wuxiang rolls and folded pancake are bought as a bite to fill a gap or a sweet to finish. The market is liveliest in the morning; seafood stalls and snack shops all stir early, but after noon some begin to close. So Bashi is best walked early. Down narrow aisles where people and handcarts pass, bathed in the smell of frying and of fish — that jumbled energy is itself part of the market's flavour.

How to walk this route

Start on the Minzu Road side. Before entering Bashi, take a bowl at Wutang's shacha noodles to lay a base; it is a famous shop with a queue, so the earlier after opening the better. Then enter the market on Kaihe Road, take an oyster omelette at Chef Chen's griddle, cut through to Yingping Road and settle the stomach with mee sua paste. Out at the market's edge on Xiahe Road is the all-day Datong duck congee, breakfast or late supper alike. Finish inside Bashi with a wuxiang roll at Ajie and a folded pancake cut fresh off the pan, ending on something sweet. It is about an hour and a half on foot; the market coils like a maze, so let the aromas of the aisles pull you off course. If you want seafood to take home, browse the fresh stalls last, at the end of the walk.