S omewhere I Have Never Travelled (帶我去遠方), a film about the trials of growing up on the coast of southern Taiwan, is the debut feature of director Fu Tien-yu (傅天余), a protege of the prolific playwright and director Wu Nien-chen (吳念真). The movie possesses many of the strengths and weaknesses of Wu’s own work — a strong script combined with an excessively overt “Taiwanese” consciousness — but makes a solid effort to explore the experience of coming of age in small-town Taiwan, where the rest of the world seems hopelessly distant.
The film’s unspecified coastal town, which might be in the Kaohsiung area (where some of the location shooting took place), appears to be a desperately bleak place in which to spend one’s formative years. The ocean’s unforgiving horizon offers nothing but emptiness and oblivion to Ah-Hsien, a young man discovering his homosexuality, and Ah-Gui, a girl who suffers from color blindness, an affliction that is not recognized or understood by those around her. The duo’s travails constitute the bulk of the film’s story line, though Somewhere I Have Never Travelled manages to be a good deal more interesting than this bald synopsis suggests.
The specter of “social issues” floats just beneath the surface of the film, but is fortunately kept in check by the director’s overriding concern for her young non-professional actors as individual characters, not as vehicles through which to advance a social agenda. Ah-Hsien’s homosexuality and Ah-Gui’s color blindness seem just a trifle contrived and are ultimately superfluous, irrelevancies compared to the relentless isolation of their world.
Thankfully, Fu handles these issues in such a manner that they are not unduly intrusive, choosing to focus on the strong bond between the two siblings. The movie contains many genuinely charming character interactions, as well as numerous expressions of unfiltered intimacy, when the two young people take solace in their shared sense of being different from those around them.
These moments are the highlight of the movie, and the duo’s isolation is masterfully encapsulated by Fu’s use of the bleakly beautiful coastal scenery, which speaks volumes about the circumscribed world the two protagonists inhabit. Their struggle is juxtaposed with the experiences of the cast of adult characters, who have grown accustomed to this limited existence. The siblings’ father, an alcoholic street cleaner, still longs for the wife who left him years ago, and finds comfort in his collection of discarded shop store mannequins. Ah-Gui’s burning desire to escape seems almost sweet when compared to her father’s resigned acceptance of his fate. While Ah-Gui’s dreams are entirely unrealistic, she continues to dream. For the adults, however, dreams have long since died, buried in a graveyard of shattered hopes and aspirations.
This “serious” tone, handled largely by the non-professional cast, is balanced by the impressive cameos of professional entertainers such as Mei Fang (梅芳) and Lin Mei-shiu (林美秀), who provide the film with a welcome dose of humor, as well as some linguistic color. The movie’s more comedic sections are fun and, even if slightly contrived, work well in juxtaposition with the adolescent sullenness that characterizes much of the dialogue of the two leads.
While the film certainly does not lack charm, it is, at its core, a deeply sad film, though this poignancy is tarnished by Fu’s tendency to melodramatically fawn over her talented young cast. Luckily, Fu had the sense to make Somewhere I Have Never Travelled an ensemble piece: as such, the deficiencies of the young actors are never too glaring and their more experienced peers are always available for backup.
What was the population of Taiwan when the first Negritos arrived? In 500BC? The 1st century? The 18th? These questions are important, because they can contextualize the number of babies born last month, 6,523, to all the people on Taiwan, indigenous and colonial alike. That figure represents a year on year drop of 3,884 babies, prefiguring total births under 90,000 for the year. It also represents the 26th straight month of deaths exceeding births. Why isn’t this a bigger crisis? Because we don’t experience it. Instead, what we experience is a growing and more diverse population. POPULATION What is Taiwan’s actual population?
After Jurassic Park premiered in 1993, people began to ask if scientists could really bring long-lost species back from extinction, just like in the hit movie. The idea has triggered “de-extinction” debates in several countries, including Taiwan, where the focus has been on the Formosan clouded leopard (designated after 1917 as Neofelis nebulosa brachyura). National Taiwan Museum’s (NTM) Web site describes the Formosan clouded leopard as “a subspecies endemic to Taiwan…it reaches a body length of 0.6m to 1.2m and tail length of 0.7m to 0.9m and weighs between 15kg and 30kg. It is entirely covered with beautiful cloud-like spots
For the past five years, Sammy Jou (周祥敏) has climbed Kinmen’s highest peak, Taiwu Mountain (太武山) at 6am before heading to work. In the winter, it’s dark when he sets out but even at this hour, other climbers are already coming down the mountain. All of this is a big change from Jou’s childhood during the Martial Law period, when the military requisitioned the mountain for strategic purposes and most of it was off-limits. Back then, only two mountain trails were open, and they were open only during special occasions, such as for prayers to one’s ancestors during Lunar New Year.
March 23 to March 29 Kao Chang (高長) set strict rules for his descendants: women were to learn music or cooking, and the men medicine or theology. No matter what life path they chose, they were to use their skills in service of the Presbyterian Church and society. As a result, musical ability — particularly in Western instruments — was almost expected among the Kao women, and even those who married into the family often had musical training. Although the men did not typically play instruments, they played a supporting role, helping to organize music programs such as children’s orchestras, writes
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