The year was 1991. American film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum was experiencing his first authentic night out in Taipei at a late night karaoke party hosted by renowned Taiwanese film director Hou Hsiao-Hsien (侯孝賢). Fueled by bottles of cognac and a generous supply of betel nuts, the duo belted out Beatles songs until 3am before stumbling home.
Having reviewed Dust in the Wind (戀戀風塵, 1986) and A City of Sadness (悲情城市, 1989) for the Chicago Reader, long-time film critic Rosenbaum was no stranger to Hou’s work. But being in Taipei for the Asia-Pacific Film Festival gave him a better appreciation of the local culture, history and setting.
“I was able to spend my 19 days there less as a tourist than as a part of everyday life in Taipei,” said Rosenbaum, who was in New York this past week for the retrospective “Also Like Life: The Films of Hou Hsiao-hsien” at the Museum of the Moving Image.
Photo Courtesy of Center for Moving Image Arts, Bard College
TAIWANESE NEW WAVE
The early 1990s was a crucial time for a film critic to be visiting Taiwan since the industry had recently undergone major changes. In contrast to kungfu and melodrama, the New Wave of the 1980s introduced an element of realism to Taiwanese cinema akin to Italian neorealism, and Hou was the central figure driving the movement.
Rather than presenting viewers with drawn-out fight scenes or heart-wrenching tragedies, films of this period dealt with the everyday realities of working class life in Taiwan. Concentrating on such banalities may not seem too exciting, but the movement was groundbreaking because up until then, the films being produced lacked an emphasis on Taiwanese history.
Photo Courtesy of Center for Moving Image Arts, Bard College
As Rosenbaum told the Taipei Times, “Taiwanese history is such a taboo subject that when it gets ‘discovered’ it’s very important.”
RETROSPECTIVE
Organized by Taiwan’s Ministry of Culture, the Taiwan Film Institute, Taipei Cultural Center in New York and the Center for Moving Image Arts at Bard College, the touring retrospective “Also Like Life” is currently in New York until Oct. 17 before making stops in other US cities.
Photo Courtesy of Center for Moving Image Arts, Bard College
Film critics and organizers of the retrospective are hoping that it will raise awareness of Taiwanese history amongst American audiences.
“Although Hou is very widely recognized among American cinephiles as a master, his mainstream reputation in the US remains unfortunately limited, because of the low distribution of his films and the confused and partial understanding in the US of Taiwanese history,” Rosenbaum said.
Richard Suchenski from Bard College also noted that the distribution of foreign art cinema in North America over the past decade in particular has been increasingly sparse. As the main organizer of the retrospective, he spent two years searching for and compiling Hou’s films on the best possible 35mm prints in preparation for the retrospective.
Suchenski told the Taipei Times that “this is a very rare opportunity to see these remarkable films projected and I am thrilled that so many people are taking advantage of it.”
He added that the screenings have been attracting “very diverse audiences that include many young cinephiles.”
‘THE SANDWICH MAN’ AND THE TAIWANESE IDENTITY (CRISIS)
The Oct. 5 screening of The Sandwich Man (兒子的大玩偶, 1983) drew a diverse mixture of film buffs. The majority of viewers were not Taiwanese. The choice of film was interesting because Hou’s segment of the three-part film is almost entirely in Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese). Furthermore, it presents viewers with a heads-on confrontation of the question of what it means to be Taiwanese.
A compilation of three vignettes from Hou and directors Tseng Chuang-hsiang (曾壯祥) and Wan Jen (萬仁), The Sandwich Man explores the humdrum experience of working class life in 1960s Taiwan with a simplicity that is beautiful and intriguing.
As Suchenski said, “salient features of Hou’s cinema include elegantly staged long takes and the precise delineation of quotidian life.”
In other words, each vignette is not so much about dramatizing the tragic dimensions of poverty, but rather exploring how the characters find ways to be happy despite their seemingly abject condition living in “exile.” In doing so, the subjects begin to form a new social identity — a Taiwanese identity.
“The Sandwich Man expresses the existential dilemma of being Taiwanese better than any other film — the problem that arises from pretending to be someone else temporarily and then finding that this temporary identity had become one’s main social identity,” Rosenbaum said.
Hou may not be as famous as Ang Lee (李安) is in the US, but his films, as the retrospective has shown, have played a pivotal role in the redefinition of Taiwanese identity.
As for the drunken karaoke scene which Rosenbaum recalled from his 1991 visit — it could easily have been set in present day Taipei, except the cognac would be replaced with something more local, perhaps Taiwan Beer.
The primaries for this year’s nine-in-one local elections in November began early in this election cycle, starting last autumn. The local press has been full of tales of intrigue, betrayal, infighting and drama going back to the summer of 2024. This is not widely covered in the English-language press, and the nine-in-one elections are not well understood. The nine-in-one elections refer to the nine levels of local governments that go to the ballot, from the neighborhood and village borough chief level on up to the city mayor and county commissioner level. The main focus is on the 22 special municipality
The People’s Republic of China (PRC) invaded Vietnam in 1979, following a year of increasingly tense relations between the two states. Beijing viewed Vietnam’s close relations with Soviet Russia as a threat. One of the pretexts it used was the alleged mistreatment of the ethnic Chinese in Vietnam. Tension between the ethnic Chinese and governments in Vietnam had been ongoing for decades. The French used to play off the Vietnamese against the Chinese as a divide-and-rule strategy. The Saigon government in 1956 compelled all Vietnam-born Chinese to adopt Vietnamese citizenship. It also banned them from 11 trades they had previously
In the 2010s, the Communist Party of China (CCP) began cracking down on Christian churches. Media reports said at the time that various versions of Protestant Christianity were likely the fastest growing religions in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The crackdown was part of a campaign that in turn was part of a larger movement to bring religion under party control. For the Protestant churches, “the government’s aim has been to force all churches into the state-controlled organization,” according to a 2023 article in Christianity Today. That piece was centered on Wang Yi (王怡), the fiery, charismatic pastor of the
Hsu Pu-liao (許不了) never lived to see the premiere of his most successful film, The Clown and the Swan (小丑與天鵝, 1985). The movie, which starred Hsu, the “Taiwanese Charlie Chaplin,” outgrossed Jackie Chan’s Heart of Dragon (龍的心), earning NT$9.2 million at the local box office. Forty years after its premiere, the film has become the Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute’s (TFAI) 100th restoration. “It is the only one of Hsu’s films whose original negative survived,” says director Kevin Chu (朱延平), one of Taiwan’s most commercially successful
RSS