Tag: Ying Ying

Strawman (稻草人, Wang Tung, 1987)

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The literal “strawman” at the centre of Wang Tung’s colonial era satire is a scarecrow who occasionally narrates the events of this small village where, he laments, almost all the young men have been sent off to die in small corners of South East Asia in the name of the Japanese emperor. All of this sounds quite absurd to A Fa (Chang Po-Chou) and Big Mouth (Cho Sheng-Li), two brothers who’ve evaded the draft because their mother cleverly smears cow dung in their eyes while they sleep so they won’t get taken by the Japanese like everything else in the village.

The brothers are caught in a clash of imperial powers and changing times yet are busy just trying to live their ordinary lives. They each have several children, so many the scarecrow quips that they can’t remember all their names, which might be why the most recognisable two are nicknamed “doo-doo” and “stinky head,” and struggle to support themselves by farming sweet potatoes on the land that turns out to be owned by their pro-Japanese brother-in-law. Not really wanting to admit that the war is all but lost, the brother-in-law is planning to sell the farm and move his family to Japan, meaning the brothers will be displaced from their land and lose their livelihood with few other prospects for making a living. 

Though things carry on as normal in the village, it’s clear that the Japanese are essentially looting and exploiting them. Not only do they take the young to die for the emperor, but later come for the brothers’ cows too, insisting that they need them for “taxes” because men are starving at the front. This clash of cultures is obvious in the opening scenes as a Japanese soldier returns the ashes of men who fell in battle to their families while reading out a formal speech in his own language that the villagers do not really understand. While their brass band plays the ironically Westernised sounds of militarism, the villagers drown them out with their traditional instruments as they start their own set of death rituals. These two communities are essentially incompatible and effectively living separately. The soldiers turn around and walk in one direction, while the villagers walk in the other releasing the tension born of this oppositional meeting.

Indeed, the villagers all speak Taiwanese (though Wang was ironically, and anachronistically forced to use Mandarin at the time of release) and exist in a slightly different world to the Japanese-speaking soldiers. A Fa is annoyed with Doo-doo for asking if he should take a Japanese name but subsequently asks if he can have one too on learning that he’ll get better sugar rations. The brother-in-law mixes Japanese and Taiwanese in the same sentence while his wife mainly answers in Taiwanese when her children exclusively speak Japanese. The sight of the children’s traditional Japanese geta wooden sandals scandalises and confuses the brothers’ children, while the cousins mock them in Japanese knowing they won’t understand. Only the slightly bumbling local Japanese official straddles the two worlds by conversing mostly in Taiwanese with the villagers and Japanese with his bosses.

As good citizens of the empire, the children are asked to participate in metals collection and are given rewards for their finds. Doo-doo gets extra again when he picks up shrapnel from an American bomb which sets up a more complex relationship with American imperialism that will arrive after the war when the island is essentially recolonised by the arrival of the KMT and a large influx of mainlanders fleeing the communist take over. When a bomb lands on the brothers’ land but doesn’t go off, they think it’s manna from heaven and determine to take it to the main police station in the town in the hope of a large reward, while the official is convinced he’s going to get a big promotion for this tremendous find. 

Everyone is so fixated on the economic potential that they’ve forgotten this is a bomb and even if it seems like a dud, there’s still a chance it could go off any second and this could all quite literally blow up in their faces. In this, the film seems to be satirising an over dependence on America who were the main backers of the KMT regime. The film was released shortly after the end of martial law during which there had been an attempt to rewrite the history of the island, preventing open discussion of the fact that Taiwanese men had died fighting for Japan and that the island had been bombed by the Americans. So impressed with themselves are they that the brothers and the official have their photo taken with bomb in-between and Mount Fuji backdrop behind as if signalling this complex network of relationships.

Still, even after the prize turns out not to be great riches after all but a hefty supply of fish, the Doo-doo and his grandmother cheer on the bombings hoping for more of the same in the future. The kids even put buckets out in the field waiting for the next raid hoping they can catch some of the shrapnel while forgetting that bombings are actually dangerous, rather than just lucrative, until being caught in one. Small moments of terror and sadness such as the brothers’ finding a frightened deserter hiding in their shed who doesn’t want to go to war because his wife’s pregnant and his family’s economically dependent on him, interrupt what is otherwise a warm and humorous depiction of rural life. A Fa and Big Mouth might be strawmen too, living their lives knowing little of the geopolitical situation but just trying to keep the crows off the grass long enough to get a little to eat before that too is taken away from them.

Strawman screened as part of the BFI’s Myriad Voices: Reframing Taiwan New Cinema.

Trailer (Traditional Chinese / English subtitles)

Vengeance of the Phoenix Sisters (三鳳震武林, Chen Hung-Min, 1968)

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“We’re big, strong men. Why should we worry about three little girls?” a trio of bandits reflects on having allowed the children of their enemy to escape their massacre thereby leaving themselves open to future reprisals. As the title of Chen Hung-Min ’s Taiwanese-language wuxia Vengeance of the Phoenix Sisters (三鳳震武林) implies, however, they are quite wrong to be so dismissive of “three little girls” who will later grow up to fulfil their filial duty by avenging the deaths of their parents even though they are daughters rather than sons. 

During the exciting nighttime prologue, three bandits attack the house of Yang formerly a sheriff. The three men are taking “revenge” for his attempt to arrest them 15 years previously which they seemingly managed to evade and have been on the run ever since. Taken by surprise, Yang sends his three daughters away to safety with his servants, but is ultimately unable to do more than hold the bandits off before both he and his wife are killed. In the final moments before dying however, he is able to impart a few last words to second daughter Xiufeng instructing her to avenge their deaths while advising the nanny to take her to one of his sworn brothers way up in the mountains. 

This is where we meet Xiufeng (Yang Li-Hua) again 15 years later now dressing as a man and having apparently spent the remainder of her childhood perfecting her martial arts but now determined to set out alone to pursue vengeance as is her filial duty. The sisters have become scattered with the youngest, Zhifeng (Chin Mei), apparently unaware of her parentage having been brought up by the servant who helped her escape in a nearby town which is itself a victim of warlord Cao one of the bandits who killed her father who has now it seems become wealthy and powerful on the back of his life of crime. Cao is in fact so wealthy and powerful that he’s been exacting his droit du seigneur over the local population, Xiufeng rescuing a young woman in the middle of being carted off by Cao’s goons seconds after arriving in town only for Cao to ironically settle on Zhifeng as his next target despite being warned that she’s reputed to be highly skilled in martial arts. 

The the fact that each of the three bandits has become successful in the intervening 15 years is another wrong that sisters must right in their quest not only for vengeance but for justice and as the bandits seemingly have no children or family members the cycle of revenge will end only with them. Their actions will restore a kind of order not only in drawing a line under the deaths of their parents so that they can move on, but removing the bandits’ corruption so that the local population is no longer forced to live in fear of their cruel tyranny. This sense of anxious devastation is rammed home as, in a scene inspired either by contemporary samurai dramas or the western, Xiufeng slowly makes her way towards a low set camera to enter the town while in the foreground a lone figure collects debris from the otherwise empty streets. 

Xiufeng is, in genre tradition, dressing as man in order to pursue her revenge going under the name Lin Keding and exerting absolute authority unafraid of anything or anyone. Chen had worked as an editor on King Hu’s Dragon Inn and in true wuxia fashion includes a classic fight in a teahouse that also finds Xiufeng following her adoptive father’s advice to use her wits to win as she quickly realises that Lord Cao has set her up in revenge for robbing him of the girl by getting the innkeeper to poison her dinner. Meanwhile, in a repeated motif, the innkeeper’s wife keeps flirting with her adding to gender ambiguity. Older sister Qingfeng (Liu Ching) meanwhile whose protector apparently fell off a cliff and died some time ago sees no need for a similar pretence though she and Zhifeng later almost have a falling out after being distracted from their mission on encountering the “handsome hero” Lin Keding which is about as awkward a situation as one could imagine until they figure out that they’re after the same guy and Xiufeng’s true identity is confirmed simply by letting down her hair. 

In any case, the Pheonix Sisters are perhaps unusual even within the context of contemporary wuxia in that they pursue their revenge entirely independently with no male assistance or romantic involvement save the awkward flirtatious banter between the other two sisters prior to realising that Lin Keding is really Xiufeng. Nevertheless, on having completed their quest they throw away their swords, implying at least that they now intend to return to a more conventional femininity remaining strictly within the confines of patriarchal filiality rather than choosing to free themselves from it. Even so, the treatment they receive is perhaps harsher than that a male avenger may have faced, Cao sneering that he loves tough women who can fight while the other two bandits Ke and Lu eventually decide to burn Qingfeng and Zhifeng alive only for Xiufeng to arrive and dramatically save them just in the nick of time. 

Chen’s take on wuxia is indeed surprisingly violent, the cruelty in the bandits’ swords fully evidenced as they cut down not only Yang the former sheriff but his wife too. Meanwhile he makes good use of thematic symmetries typical of the genre, the trio of amoral bandits opposed by the trio of chivalrous sisters, pursuing them for a crime they committed 15 years previously to take revenge for a slight 15 years before that while the sense of circularity is further emphasised through repeated imagery in Chen’s elegantly framed widescreen composition. Despite the comparatively low budget typical of Taiwanese-language cinema which apparently saw Chen having to resort to car headlights in order to light the film during night shoots, he manages to craft fantastically entertaining period adventure filled with well choreographed action sequences and a playful sense of unease as the sisters strive to reunite their family through their quest for justice and vengeance. 

Encounter at the Station (難忘的車站, Hsin Chi, 1965)

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Destructive and outdated conservative patriarchal social codes drive a young man to madness, cause a young woman to lose her sight, and push another towards nervous breakdown in Hsin Chi’s subversive Taiwanese-language romantic melodrama Encounter at the Station (難忘的車站) which rather than reinforcing the status quo eventually argues that it’s time to leave the old ways behind. Adapting the popular novel Cold and Warm World/Human Fickleness by Chin Hsing-chih, Hsin swaps the wartime setting for a purely contemporary tale in which the major victim of a patriarchal society turns out to be a rich boy in love with a poor girl while the arch villain is in fact his status-obsessed mother.

As the title perhaps implies, Tshui-Giok (Chin Mei) and Kok-Liong (Shih Chun) share a brief encounter at a train station when she drops her ID on the way to school and he picks up and returns it to her. For each of them it is love at first sight, student Kok-Liong idly dreaming of Tshui-Giok at home envisioning her in differing settings and eventually wearing a wedding dress. They continue to meet “accidentally” at the station and develop an innocent romance but while Tshui-Giok has problems at home, her adoptive mother suffering a serious illness while her step father has a serious gambling problem, Kok-Liong is attempting to put off an arranged marriage set up by his mother to a girl of a similar background, Hun-Kiau (Ho Yu-Hua). 

To begin with, the barriers between them would seem to be those of money and class though it is a sense of shame leading to minor deception which finally keeps them apart. After her mother dies, Tshui-Giok’s step father indentures her to a hostess bar after which she stops going to the station and meeting Kok-Liong. When he runs into by her accident, she tells him that she’s dropped out to look after her sickly father and is taking night classes but continues to go on innocent dates with him on her days off. When he discovers the truth, Kok-Liong borrows money from his father to buy her contract at the bar and proposes marriage again lying to his mother that Tshui-Giok is the orphaned daughter of his former teacher. Interestingly enough, it is Kok-Liong’s father who fully sympathises with his son and convinces his wife to allow him to exercise his romantic freedom, his mother reluctantly agreeing that the pair can marry when Kok-Liong returns from studying abroad in America secretly hoping he’ll go off the idea while he’s away. 

Despite her conservatism, Kok-Liong’s mother does not lack compassion, in fact Tshui-Giok later describes her as “kind” while trying to reason with her once her past as a bargirl is discovered. Nevertheless, she cannot let go of her old-fashioned ideas of properness, persuading Tshui-Giok that her love for Kok-Liong is toxic. She agrees that Tshui-Giok is a good woman who has performed the role of the perfect daughter-in-law while living in the house waiting for Kok-Liong’s return and seems at least partly conflicted but insists that Tshui-Giok’s background disqualifies her as a suitable wife for the son of a prominent family. Again she forces her to lie, leaving a goodbye note stating that she’s tired of waiting and has chosen to marry a wealthy man she met by chance. Her exit paves the way for Hun-Kiau’s return, Kok-Liong agreeing to a rebound marriage believing his mother’s claims that Tshui-Giok ran off with another man while his father cautions his wife with irritation that all of this is likely to blow up in her face.

Unlike his wife, Kok-Liong’s father continues to sympathise with the young couple indifferent to Tshui-Giok’s past while worried that his wife’s decision to throw her out (taken in his absence) may leave her with no choice but to become a bargirl again. This is in fact what ends up happening, a minor comment on the economic situation revealing that Tshui-Giok cannot support herself with a job in a factory because the pay is so low and the hours are irregular. She finds herself ironically having to return to the fringes of the sex trade in order to earn back the money Kok-Liong used to free her from it. Kok-Liong’s mother may be keen to maintain the little power she has in a patriarchal social system in enforcing her choice for her son’s bride, but her obsession with reputation and social standing eventually ruins all three lives. The marriage between Hun-Kiau and Kok-Liong is understandably unhappy leaving Kok-Liong a resentful drunk which is how he ends up re-encountering Tshui-Gok in a Taichung bar at first angrily berating her, becoming violent and threatening rape until realising she is still wearing the necklace he gave her as a symbol of their love. 

In some ways, Kok-Liong is just as much of a prisoner of this system as either of the women manipulated into an arranged marriage by his overbearing mother. Having become economically prosperous, he now has the resources to support two households setting up a home with Tshui-Gok in Taichung while keeping his marriage a secret from her leading her to believe they are simply waiting for his parents to come around. The effects of this patriarchal mindset are further felt in the fact that Hun-Kiau’s baby is female, hinting at the wrongness of their union, while Tshui-Gok’s is male. A doting father to his son, Kok-Liong all but ignores his daughter and rarely returns to his “family” home in Fengyuan forcing Hun-Kiau’s hand as she, like his mother, forces the good and proper Tshui-Giok to accept that her existence is ruinous to Kok-Liong’s future. Hun-Kiau unfairly accuses her of “stealing” Kok-Liong’s affections, making her own daughter tearfully demand that Tshui-Giok return her husband to her. 

Whatever she thought she could accomplish with this gambit, it’s unlikely that it would spontaneously reignite Kok-Liong’s buried love for her but she could hardly have expected that it would finally push him into mental breakdown unable to accept the total lack of power he has in his family life while manipulated firstly by his mother and then by his wife. Caught in an impossible situation, the young women are unable to hate each other caring most for their children rather than tussling over a man but each in their own way constrained, Hun-Kiau guilty of the same mindset as her mother-in-law if to a lesser extent while Tshui-Giok, shamed by her past and conscious of the class difference, is also wedded to outdated ideals which force her to believe that she is not good enough and only ruins Kok-Liong’s life. Fearing her son will be disadvantaged by his illegitimacy, she entrusts him to Hun-Kiau and goes to look for her birth relatives while returning to seamstressing and general emotional strain eventually lead to her losing her sight. 

Yet where traditional melodramas often reinforce the current social order, Encounter at the Station eventually allows the two lovers to reunite insisting that the mother-in-law is in the wrong, the old ideas belong to an old society and should be abandoned to facilitate a greater happiness the couple eventually leaving the family home for new one of their own. The ending is however a little too happy given the solemnity of the previous scenes. Hun-Kiau becomes the greatest casualty having allied herself to the mother-in-law’s philosophy which cannot progress into the modern society, succumbing to a mental breakdown before finally giving her blessing to Tshui-Giok. The patriarchal society disables them all, the men weak and shallow while the women are resilient but equally unable to pursue their desires finally only able either to protect their children or unethically misuse the little power they have over them. Familial bonds are eroded by notions of social propriety that force everybody to lie, or at least to conceal the truth, in order to present the facade of respectability. Featuring a number of musical sequences recounting the lovers’ sorry tale of romantic woe, Hsin hints at tragedy but eventually offers them a happier future if only in actively stepping away from the constraints of the past. 

Trailer (English subtitles)

Foolish Bride, Naive Bridegroom (三八新娘憨子婿, Hsin Chi, 1967)

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Even in the Taiwan of 1967 things were changing but not perhaps as quickly as elsewhere. Hsin Chi’s delightful “taiyupian” Taiwanese-language screwball rom-com Foolish Bride, Naive Bridegroom (三八新娘憨子婿) is a fairly late take on the arranged marriage vs love match debate which, perhaps surprisingly given the increasing conservatism of the era, comes down firmly on the side of the youngsters’ right to choose even while subtly poking fun at them for being naive and irresponsible, unable to forge independent lives for themselves and expecting the older generation to fix their mistakes while the parents eventually soften and in a sense free themselves from the oppressive values which defined their youths. 

As the film opens, grumpy father A-Kau (Chin Tu) is complaining that his pot is already boiling but his son Bun-ti (Shih Chun) has not yet returned with the rice he sent him out to get. That’s because Bun-ti has taken the opportunity of the errand to meet up with his girlfriend, Kui-ki (Chin Mei), who is also out on an errand having been sent grocery shopping by her mother (Yang Yue-fan). The pair can only meet on occasions such as these because their overly possessive parents refuse to let them leave the house without good reason and firmly disapprove of romantic relationships. 

In an amusing reversal of accepted gender norms, it’s A-Kau who plays the wounded widower, afraid that some young woman is coming to steal away his son and then there’ll be no one to look after him. Nevertheless, he’s simultaneously proud of his son’s popularity with the opposite sex despite describing him as having a “ladies curse” which he attributes to a constant need for female affection caused by the early death of his mother when he was only a few months old. In a running gag, the house is frequently beset by the young women of the neighbourhood pushing notes through the window and demanding to see the handsome young man. A-kau’s solution is to literally shut his son away by having the windows boarded over despite the carpenter’s cautioning that most people are looking for more ventilation, not less. 

Kui-ki’s mother, by contrast, is a much feistier figure directly telling her daughter that she’s no wish to meet her boyfriend because marriage is a matter for the parents. A-Kau later says something similar, concerned that “love heats up fast but often cools”, believing perhaps that an arranged marriage can provide greater longterm stability and is no more likely to fail than a love match. As we later discover, however, the parents’ animosity is rooted in youthful tragedy. In a staggering coincidence, it turns out that they were once young lovers like Bun-ti and Kui-ki who wanted to marry but fell foul of parental disapproval. Each accuses the other “abandonment”, but the cause is found to lie with A-Kau who, like Bun-ti, failed to be “resolute in love”, refusing to fight for Kui-ki’s mother and simply backing off when her father told him he wasn’t good enough. His own father then apparently forced him into the arranged marriage which produced Bun-ti while Kui-ki’s mother held out for a few years and was then forced into an arranged marriage herself. The pair of them fail to see the parallels with their children’s romance and have over invested in the idea of properness in traditional values in an attempt to ease the pain and disappointment of being denied the right to marry the person they loved. 

On recognising A-Kau, Kui-ki’s mother chases him out of the house with a broom and vetos the marriage, causing the young couple to elope to Taipei in an attempt to escape their parents’ authority. Each of them is sorry, but still wedded to their position as parental authorities, too proud to cede ground and simply give their blessing to the union to get their kids to come home. In an echo of an earlier scene in which he went on the prowl looking for Bun-ti, A-Kau roams the local park and spots young couples everywhere some of them engaging in public displays of affection which one might have assumed would have annoyed the censors. He’s approached first by a disabled beggar who explains that he, like Bun-ti, did not listen to his parents and eloped to Taipei with a woman they wouldn’t let him marry. But he couldn’t find work, went broke, and became ill. Finally she left him, and he’s too ashamed of his filial failure to go home which is why he’s begging in this park. A-Kau seems to find vindication rather than a warning in the story, glad to hear the young man admit that his parents were right rather than fearful that the same will happen to Bun-ti if he does not eventually accept his decision to marry. Later, a young couple approach him looking distressed, offering to sell the woman’s coat for money to elope. Feeling sorry A-kau gives them twice as much as they asked for and drops the coat behind him as he leaves, but then gives a long and painful lecture reflecting on his plight and encouraging the young couple to go home, “your filial duty is to avoid worrying your parents” he goes on. The young couple eventually make a sneaky escape while he’s turned around mid-monologue, rejecting his melancholy defence of feudal patriarchy. 

Meanwhile, in the city, Bun-ti and Kui-ki have got what looks to be a rather nice apartment together and are living it large but we later discover that they’re months behind on their rent (not to mention the rice bill) and the reality of their situation is beginning to place a strain on their relationship. He accuses of her of being a spendthrift, wanting to go out for dinner and a movie on a Sunday when they owe so much money already, while she blames him for failing to provide. In a strange and uncomfortable defence of domestic violence, Bunt-ti and Kui-ki chance on an apparently happily married couple making a spectacle of themselves during their weekly bout of fighting after which they both emerge bloody and bruised but seemingly cheerful after having worked out all their frustrations. Bun-ti and Kui-ki decide to try it for themselves and find that it works, later getting into a blazing row caused by Bun-ti’s staying out late drinking without phoning home. 

This last argument which signals the failure of their attempt to live as independent adults in the modern city leads to an intervention from the district chief/landlord and rice merchant, each of them instructing the creditors to call their parents to settle the debts. Ah-kau and Kui-ki’s mother dutifully arrive, launching a mini trial to discover who’s at fault including a full reconstruction of the events of the previous night which results in another violent fight after which the couple threaten to break up and marry other people only to reconcile while A-Kau and Kui-ki’s mother are then forced to deal with their “grudge” and end up getting engaged.

“Parents don’t understand the way young people do things” Kui-ki had explained, but they are eventually compelled to shift ground as they take back what was taken from them in finally being allowed to marry. Hsin doesn’t let anyone off the hook, neither the naive and feckless lovers nor their embittered parents whose hurt eventually turns into an unexpected opera duet as they rehash the failure of their youthful romance. He does however leave room for an unambiguously happy ending in which, ironically, the traditional family is repaired but only in its subversion as the young lovers are validated in their desire for love and freedom while A-Kau abandons the patriarchal order by assuming the role of the bride, carried in a palanquin to Kui-ki’s mother’s house wearing a veil, as he removes himself from his son’s family and surrenders his authority to his new wife in affirmation of a new social order struggling to be born in the increasingly repressive martial law era. 

Remaster trailer (English/Traditional Chinese subtitles)

Kuei-Mei, a Woman (我這樣過了一生, Chang Yi, 1985)

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“Why are women always being tolerant?” a middle-aged, unmarried daughter asks her mother uncertain why she stoically put up with everything she did as if she had any other choice. As the title implies, Chang Yi’s Kuei-Mei, a Woman (我這樣過了一生, Wǒ Zhèyàng Guò le Yīshēng) , based on a book by his then wife Hsiao Sa, is the story of one ordinary woman though one who perhaps stands in for that of her nation undergoing a period of rapid change from post-war penury to comfortable prosperity in a little more than 30 years which is in essence a generation. 

Kuei-Mei (Loretta Yang Hui-shan) leaves Mainland China during the chaos of the civil war and escapes to Taiwan with her cousin. Living in limbo, neither of them intended to stay very long and assumed they’d one day be going home. Nevertheless, there are things which must be done, which is why Kuei-Mei finds herself gravitating towards an arranged marriage with a widowed father of three, Hou (Lee Li-chun), another Mainland refugee with a steady job as a waiter in a restaurant run by a foreigner. For lack of other options, Kuei-Mei decides to become Hou’s wife, but unbeknownst to her, he has a serious gambling problem that continually endangers their family and eventually loses him his job. Shackled to an irresponsible man, it’s Kuei-Mei who has to shoulder the responsibility of trying to keep the family together but in the end she can save it only by breaking it apart, accepting a job as a housekeeper to a wealthy couple who are moving to Japan taking with her only two of her five children, one of the twins she bore herself and Hou’s oldest boy who struggles in the Taiwanese educational system. 

As a middle-aged, modern woman, Cheng-fang, Hou’s oldest daughter, asks her step-mother why she chose to forgive her father, returning after having left him on discovering that he had fathered a child with another woman. Kuei-Mei doesn’t have much of an answer for her, we can infer she returned because the children needed her and she couldn’t support them alone, but wonders if her unhappy marriage is the reason Cheng-fang has remained single. Contemporary women have other options, they need not stoically resign themselves to passive suffering as the women of Kuei-Mei’s generation were expected to do. None of the marriages we see are particularly happy, from that of Kuei-Mei’s cousin and her husband whose constant arguing pushes her towards a marriage of her own to escape the awkwardness of being a guest in their home, to the wealthy Weis in Japan who again argue constantly because, the servants gossip, of a patriarchal power imbalance. Mr. Wei is dependent on his wife’s family for influence and advancement, but humiliates her through his infidelity while she feels trapped, fearing the humiliation of middle-aged divorce may be even worse. Again it’s a desire to escape the awkwardness of the Weis, along with the “humiliation” of living as mistreated servant, that motivates Kuei-Mei to leave their employ to work illegally in a restaurant in the hope of earning higher wages in order to return home and open a restaurant of her own. 

Kuei-Mei’s determination is in a sense to be her own boss, though the level of autonomous independence she can achieve is perhaps limited by the patriarchal society in which she lives. Nevertheless, she works hard to achieve it despite being tied to the dead weight that is Hou who can only drift along behind her, waiting tables in the restaurant she eventually sets up which is named after a street in the Shanghai she left as little more than a teenager. As an old woman she receives a letter from the man she was engaged to in her village, a sudden reminder of the life she could have had, all her youthful dreams of romance sacrificed on the altar of pragmatism in her marriage to Hou. But despite all the difficulty she remains surrounded by the family she secured through her maternity, even if the grown-up children all dream of lives abroad, scattered by the glittering prizes of a newly prosperous era. 

Late in life walking with Cheng-fang, Kuei-Mei passes the place where her twins were born, an elegant tower block replacing the tenement where she first lived with her cousin after arriving in Taipei. Her rise mirrors that of her country, patiently working hard to make something of herself in turbulent times, unrecognised by the world around her, but emerging with quiet dignity in her ability to bear her sorrow with grace as she determined to build a better future for her children. Her life has, however, been hard and its costs are visited directly upon her at its end, the ills of the modern society ironically symbolised in a cancer of the womb in a woman whose triumph lies in her maternity. A social realist epic filmed with a studied detachment, Chang’s hugely empathetic biopic of the everywoman has only a profound respect for stoic suffering while quietly resentful of the society which demanded it.

Kuei-Mei, a Woman streams in the UK 18th to 27th September as part of the Taiwan Film Festival Edinburgh.

Trailer (English subtitles)