Shopping in Taiwan: Night Markets, Malls, Souvenirs and Tax Refund

The Xinyi district around Taipei 101 is Taiwan’s biggest shopping area, a grid of department stores linked by elevated walkways from Taipei City Hall MRT station. Shin Kong Mitsukoshi has four buildings (A4, A8, A9 and A11) with international and Japanese brands, cosmetics and big basement food halls. Breeze Xinyi, Breeze Nanshan, ATT 4 Fun and Bellavita fill the blocks between them, and Taipei 101 Mall at the foot of the tower carries the luxury labels. The Eslite store on Songgao Road is a multi-floor bookstore and design department store, good for Taiwanese brands and stationery.

Beyond Xinyi, the SOGO department stores on Zhongxiao East Road (Zhongxiao Fuxing station) anchor the older East District, with independent boutiques and cafes in the lanes behind them in Da’an. Breeze Taipei Station and the Q Square mall at Taipei Main Station are handy before a train, and the underground malls running from Taipei Main Station towards Zhongshan sell anime goods, games and cheap fashion. For outlet shopping, Mitsui Outlet Park Linkou and Gloria Outlets beside the Taoyuan high-speed rail station are both an easy hop from the airport.

Department stores open around 11am and close at 9.30pm on weekdays and 10pm at weekends. They run big anniversary sales in October and November, when crowds and discounts peak.

Every Taiwanese city has night markets, and they are as much about shopping as eating. In Taipei, Shilin (Jiantan station) has the most clothes, shoes and accessory stalls, Raohe Street (Songshan station) mixes food with souvenirs and phone cases, and Wufenpu, a warren of wholesale clothing shops behind Songshan station, sells women’s fashion cheaply by day. Ximending is the young-fashion district: sneaker shops, streetwear, cosmetics chains, tattoo parlours and Japanese drugstores along pedestrian lanes that stay busy until 11pm.

Dihua Street in Dadaocheng is Taipei’s old trading street, lined with 19th-century shophouses selling dried mushrooms, Chinese medicine, tea, nuts and dried fruit. It is busiest in the weeks before Lunar New Year, when the whole street becomes a market. Yongle Market at its southern end has a fabric floor where tailors make clothes to order. The Jianguo Holiday Jade and Flower Markets, under the Jianguo elevated expressway in Da’an, open on Saturdays and Sundays only.

Outside the capital, Jiufen’s lanes in the hills above Keelung are packed with tea houses, taro-ball stalls and souvenir shops, Fengjia in Taichung is Taiwan’s biggest night market, and Kaohsiung’s Liuhe and Ruifeng markets and the Shinkuchan shopping district handle the south.

Taiwan makes much of the world’s computer hardware, and Taipei is a good place to buy laptops, monitors, components, cameras and accessories. Guanghua Digital Plaza, a six-storey building by Zhongxiao Xinsheng station, has floors of small shops for laptops, phones, game consoles, parts and repairs, and the surrounding streets carry more. The Bade Road electronics street nearby has larger chain stores. Local brands ASUS, Acer, MSI and Gigabyte are sold at roughly local list prices, sometimes cheaper than abroad, and electronics chains such as Tsannkuen 3C have branches in every city.

Before buying, check that the keyboard layout (many local laptops carry Zhuyin and Chinese characters alongside English), plug type and warranty suit you: Taiwan uses 110V and US-style plugs, and many warranties are local only. Phones sold in Taiwan are generally unlocked. Electronics bought in TRS shops qualify for the VAT refund, but you may be asked to show the item at the airport, so keep it in your hand luggage.

Taipei has a strong design scene, and the best places to find it are the old industrial sites converted into creative parks. Huashan 1914 Creative Park, a former winery by Zhongxiao Xinsheng station, has design shops, exhibitions, weekend markets and the Legacy music venue. Songshan Cultural and Creative Park, a 1930s tobacco factory near Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall station, holds the Taiwan Design Museum and an Eslite store with Taiwanese-made goods. Chifeng Street in Zhongshan, once a street of machine workshops, now has small fashion and homeware shops between the old garages.

In Tainan, the Hayashi Department Store (Lin’s), opened in 1932 and restored in 2014, sells Tainan-made crafts, foods and textiles across five floors with a rooftop shrine. Taichung’s Shenji New Village, a former government housing estate near the Calligraphy Greenway, sells small-batch goods, and Pier-2 in Kaohsiung has a weekend market. Eslite, Taiwan’s large bookstore chain, has branches in every big city and is the place to buy Taiwanese stationery, notebooks and gifts.

• Pineapple cake (feng li su): Taiwan’s signature gift. SunnyHills in Minsheng Community, Taipei, uses pure pineapple filling and gives you a free cake and tea when you visit; Chia Te on Nanjing East Road is the famous queue. A box of 10 costs about NT$300-500.
• Oolong and black tea: high-mountain oolong from Alishan and Lishan, Dongding from Nantou and Sun Moon Lake’s Ruby black tea. Good tea starts around NT$400 for 150 g; Dihua Street merchants let you taste first.
• Kavalan whisky: award-winning single malts from Yilan, from about NT$1,000 for the entry bottle to many thousands for cask-strength releases. Kinmen kaoliang, a strong sorghum liquor, is the other classic bottle.
• Sun cakes (tai yang bing): flaky pastries filled with maltose, a Taichung speciality sold on Ziyou Road.
• Nougat and snacks: milk nougat, peanut candy, dried mango from Tainan, and the vast snack aisles of Carrefour and PX Mart.
• Hsinchu rice noodles: thin dried rice vermicelli (mifen) from Hsinchu, sold in bags around the City God Temple market and in supermarkets nationwide.
• Mullet roe (wuyuzi): salted, dried roe sold in gift boxes, best bought before Lunar New Year.
• Ceramics: Yingge, a short train ride from Taipei in New Taipei, has a ceramics old street and museum; teapots and cups from a few hundred NT$.
• Crafts: oil-paper umbrellas from Meinong near Kaohsiung, wood carving from Sanyi in Miaoli, Hualien marble, and indigenous textiles and beadwork bought direct from makers on the east coast.
• Cosmetics and drugstore goods: Taiwanese sheet masks (My Beauty Diary and others), Watsons and Cosmed stores everywhere, Japanese drugstore brands.
• Fashion: cheap at Wufenpu and night markets; Taiwanese labels in Da’an and Zhongshan boutiques.

Taiwan’s prices include a 5% VAT, and foreign visitors who stay no more than 183 days can reclaim part of it under the Tax Refund Shopping (TRS) scheme run by the Ministry of Finance. The rules as of 2026, from the official Foreign Visitor e-Tax Refund site:

• Threshold: spend NT$2,000 or more (tax included) in a single TRS-labelled shop on the same day, and ask for the refund form on the day, showing your passport.
• What qualifies: goods you take out of Taiwan within 90 days of purchase. Hotels, restaurant bills and duty-free goods do not qualify, nor do items that cannot be flown or have been opened or used.
• How much you get back: the VAT is 5/105 of the price, and a 20% administration charge is deducted, so you receive about 3.8% of the price.
• On-site small-amount refund: if you spend less than NT$48,000 in one store on one day, many TRS shops pay the refund in cash on the spot. This stops once your on-site refunds pass NT$120,000 in one visit or NT$240,000 across visits in a calendar year, after which you claim at the airport.
• At the airport or port: use the e-refund kiosk or the tax refund counter before you check in your bags, with your passport, invoices and refund form, and allow three hours before departure. Customs may ask to see the goods.
• Early refund in town: a few designated counters refund you up to 20 days before departure against a credit-card deposit of 7% of the purchase.

Rules and thresholds change, so check the official site before a big purchase.

• Bargaining: prices are fixed in shops, department stores, chains and most market stalls selling food. At night-market clothes stalls, old-street souvenir shops and electronics counters you can ask for a small discount, usually 5 to 10% or a free extra when buying several items. Hard haggling is not part of the culture.
• Opening hours: department stores 11am to 9.30 or 10pm; independent shops about noon to 9pm, often later in Ximending; night markets 5pm to midnight; traditional morning markets 6am to noon. Many shops on Dihua Street and in old towns close earlier in the evening.
• Paying: Visa, Mastercard and JCB work in malls, chains and most shops; American Express less often. Night-market stalls and small shops are largely cash only. The EasyCard and iPASS transit cards pay at convenience stores and many chains, and Apple Pay, Google Pay and LINE Pay are widely accepted.
• Receipts: every purchase comes with a uniform invoice (receipt) carrying a lottery number. Keep the ones from TRS shops for the tax refund.
• Sizes: clothes and shoes run small compared with Western sizing, so try before you buy.
• Plastic bags: shops charge NT$1-2 for a bag; carry your own.

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