Night markets
Choose the correct heading for each paragraph from the list. There are more headings than paragraphs.
Find the main purpose of the paragraph. Do not get tricked by a small detail at the end.
A The first night markets were not tourist shows. In medieval towns they were how perishable food moved after the working day, when people who had been in the fields or the workshops finally had an hour to buy. Candles and, later, oil lamps made the street usable. The point was groceries, not entertainment. B Cities that still run a weekly night market almost always share one rule with those older markets: the stalls come down. A market that is packed away at midnight leaves the square free for the bus route in the morning. Permanent kiosks, however charming in photographs, change the legal problem. They become buildings, and buildings attract a different set of permits. C Researchers who counted footfall in three Asian cities found that a night market raises sales for restaurants on the same street, but only within about a hundred metres. Beyond that, the effect disappears. A café two blocks away may see no benefit at all, which complicates the claim that a market “revives the whole district”. D Noise is the complaint that reaches councillors, yet the measurements are awkward. A market can stay under a decibel limit and still feel intolerable to people trying to sleep with a window open. One study asked residents to keep a diary rather than relying on the meter. The diaries showed the problem peaking when live music replaced recorded playlists, even though the meter barely moved. E Organisers have started to publish the waste figures alongside the visitor figures. In one seasonal market, switching from disposable bowls to a deposit cup cut residual waste by half in a single summer. The change was dull to advertise. It also did more for the town’s waste target than a year of posters about litter.
- i Why some markets must disappear before morning
- ii A benefit that only reaches nearby businesses
- iii How medieval customers entertained themselves
- iv An origin in ordinary shopping
- v When the measuring device misses the complaint
- vi A small practical change with a large result
- vii The high cost of training stallholders
- viii Music as the main reason markets are popular