OLD ASIAN COMMERCIAL CENTERS: Taipei's Ximending & Manila's Quiapo

Quiapo is the old commercial/ transportation center of the old Spanish/American Manila. When Manila was destroyed after the Second World War (Quiapo was burned), the elite developed empty "haciendas" outside the old city ring road into American-style real estate developments that became so successful that they forgot Quiapo, and the old city itself. Well, Quiapo is still a busy commercial/transportation center, mostly of the not well-off masses, but unlike its counterparts in Taipei (Ximending) or Tokyo (Ginza, Shibuya, Shinjuku), it stagnated and became seedy. Is it really poverty? Or lack of imagination? Manila developed modern commercial centers in its newer urban zones which could compete with those of Tokyo or Taipei but why was its old Quiapo got left behind?

No, it's not poverty. Let's compare Quiapo with the evolution of the other old commercial centers of Asia: first, Ximending in Taipei and then, Shibuya in Tokyo and Mjeungdong in Seoul, etc.

It's hard to believe that Manila was considered more developed than Taipei at one time but when Manila was the "Queen City of the Pacific"(as the Americans called their Asian capital), Taipei was a dingy provincial town. With the development of Taiwan, has Ximending so outpaced Quiapo that the latter will forever be green with envy? Remarkably, portions of Taipei (Wanhua) & Manila (Quiapo/Sta. Cruz) almost look the same that if only the two Manila districts were cleaner, they would fit in Taipei even with their present buildings.

Look at Ximending below, it could be Plaza Miranda in Quiapo BUT (1) it is cleaner, (2) no vagrants, (3) no vendors -which are okay, btw, as long as they keep their premises clean, like the yatai in Fukuoka, (4) look at how they use advertisements and Chinese character signs as part of the design. It is cruder in Taipei but as we'll see in our post on Tokyo's Shibuya, the Japanese has perfected the art of using LED, and the Japanese signs became iconic parts of the architectural details themselves.

This is Zhonghua Road, in front of Ximending shopping area, the equivalent of Quezon Boulevard in Quiapo, Manila.

Ximending is found in the corner of Zhonghua & Chengdu Road. Note the buildings in Chengdu Road, you could be in Raon St., Quiapo.

We enter Ximending shopping district which was converted into a pedestrian mall.

Note the buildings, same as in Evangelista, Quiapo, but the ambiance was brightened up by the orange posts which attract more your attention. Again, the signs were part of the decor, plus there's the ubiquitous LCD screen, even in Manila now, as accent.

This is the spine of the pedestrian shopping area, Hanzhong Street, which unites three parallel side streets. Same orange street posts, same sign decors, but as you can see the buildings are not much different from those found in Quiapo or Sta. Cruz.

Look at these parts.

The classier parts.

This is one of the exits at Xining North Road. It could be in a cleaner Recto.

This is the second entrance at Zhonghua Road. It could be in Bilibid Viejo.

Ximending comes alive at night.

Conclusion:

 As you have seen, the only difference between Ximending, a cool tourist attraction of Taipei, & Quiapo/Sta. Cruz, blights of Manila, is the packaging. The overhead costs seem not much:(1) they made the place cleaner, (2) they improved the pavement in spots, (3) they invested in cooler signs (4) they put decorations like the orange posts but it was enough to create a cooler ambiance. IUn short, they created a brand.

As I've said above, our slob Quiapo is a result not of poverty but of poor imagination & plain indifference. The Ximending experience, which prides itself as the equivalent of Tokyo's Harajuku in Shibuya, could be recreated in Manila. Of course, with another look and concept. The heavy presence of Muslims in Quiapo could be incorporated into the ambiance to remove the touch of merely copying. The pedestrian plazas in Tokyo, as we'll see in a future post, do not feature orange posts, but they polished more of the facades of the stores themselves, a more expensive proposition.

Btw, Harajuku is the teenage lifestyle center of Shibuya in Japan, it is the model of Ximending, & it could be adapted in a part (just one of the side streets perhaps) of Quiapo considering that it's near the University Belt, just to attract the young crowd to the area (we'll have separate features on the "university belts" of other Asian cities). This is a good option for Quiapo considering that after the opening of Bonifacio High Street, open shopping has become vogue in Manila again as confirmed by the construction of Blue Walk in the reclamation area. In fact, the Ximending transformation can be created up to Binondo, creating a kilometer long shopping corridor like the Istiklal pedestrian shopping corridor of Istanbul, which transforms into it's nightlife central after dark (I'll feature this later: Turkey, despite the European pretensions of its elite, is still mostly Asian in flavor anyway).