Forget about peanuts, popcorn and Cracker Jack. Forget about pretzels and potato chips. Here in Taiwan, from the toothy reddish grins to scarlet splashes of spit on the ground, Taiwanese chewing gum (“binlang”) is the national craze. Betel nuts are the island’s second largest cash-crop after rice, worth about four billion dollars a year. Betel nut users absorb a heavy dose of arecoline, a stimulant in the binlang that causes a buzz and is equal to about six cups of coffee. It alleviates boredom and keeps drivers alert without blowing smoke in anyone’s face. Users look like Asian vampires, with sanguine saliva dripping from blood red teeth and dripping down their chins.

Of course, the attraction of buying betelnuts is not just in the quality and taste and sheer addictive nature of the nuts themselves. Much of the attraction is the prospect of buying your nuts from one of Taiwan’s many beautiful “Betel Nut Girls”. These girls, some as young as fifteen years old, sit in small glass booths at a raised counter in full view of the traffic, always available to run out to a vehicle and provide “roadside service” for betel nuts and drinks. They provide a highly desired product for truck drivers, car chauffeurs, taxi businessmen, blue collar workers, and scooter pilots alike.

Interestingly, as the number of betel nuts stands increases, the greater the competition for driver attention, and therefore the sexy salesladies wear fewer and more revealing clothes. However, though they dress like Harlem hookers, they are not selling sex. There is no “adult entertainment” in Taiwan — no strip bars, no red-light districts. These scantily-clad sexy girls may be sitting in their bra and panty and garterbelt underwear in the window across from a MacDonald’s restaurant, in full view of children’s playlands, but the Taiwanese don’t care – it’s part of the local landscape.