Tenderly sadomasochistic and defiant toward politically correct views on gender politics, Chinese director Liu Fendou’s (劉奮鬥) second feature Ocean Flame (一半海水，一半火燄) takes the bad-guy-corrupting-innocent-girl story to the extreme with this tale of a tortured love affair between a ruthless criminal and an innocent waitress.
The film plays out in flashbacks as
ex-con Wang Yao (Liao Fan, 廖凡) barges in on a family after being released from prison. A small-time criminal who ran a prostitution ring with friends before his incarceration, Wang made a comfortable living by blackmailing male customers in hotel-room sex scams.
To the unscrupulous Wang, it is love at first sight with attractive young waitress Li Chuan (Monica Mok, 莫小奇). The two are soon consumed with sex and passion, captivatingly shown in a sex scene on a glittering, empty beach.
Yet as Wang introduces Li to his sordid world and lists her as one of his working girls, the pair’s desperate addiction to love inevitably paves the way for self-destruction.
The third big-screen adaptation of renowned Chinese writer Wang Shuo’s (王朔) novel of the same title (previous versions include the 2001 US film Love the Hard Way starring Adrien Brody), Liu’s violent and erotically charged film creates an enclosed world in which the characters, twisted and bursting with overwrought emotions, swing between unsettling sadomasochism and brutal romanticism, the contrasting feelings suggested by the film’s title.
Chinese actor Liao possesses enough dangerous charisma to help him get away with the sometimes overwritten dialogue and come off as an almost enchanting abuser. Newcomer Mok has been nominated for best leading actress at the upcoming Golden Horse Awards (金馬獎) for her daring and intense performance. The cameos by Hong Kong veteran actors, however, feel superfluous to the narrative.
Exactingly arranged and masterfully crafted in terms of filmmaking, Ocean Flame derives its charm, or shortcoming to some, from a pronounced feel of theatricality and staged emotions that will attract art-house moviegoers with dark characters whose pride and despair lead to self-destruction.
The recent decline in average room rates is undoubtedly bad news for Taiwan’s hoteliers and homestay operators, but this downturn shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. According to statistics published by the Tourism Administration (TA) on March 3, the average cost of a one-night stay in a hotel last year was NT$2,960, down 1.17 percent compared to 2023. (At more than three quarters of Taiwan’s hotels, the average room rate is even lower, because high-end properties charging NT$10,000-plus skew the data.) Homestay guests paid an average of NT$2,405, a 4.15-percent drop year on year. The countrywide hotel occupancy rate fell from
March 24 to March 30 When Yang Bing-yi (楊秉彝) needed a name for his new cooking oil shop in 1958, he first thought of honoring his previous employer, Heng Tai Fung (恆泰豐). The owner, Wang Yi-fu (王伊夫), had taken care of him over the previous 10 years, shortly after the native of Shanxi Province arrived in Taiwan in 1948 as a penniless 21 year old. His oil supplier was called Din Mei (鼎美), so he simply combined the names. Over the next decade, Yang and his wife Lai Pen-mei (賴盆妹) built up a booming business delivering oil to shops and
In late December 1959, Taiwan dispatched a technical mission to the Republic of Vietnam. Comprising agriculturalists and fisheries experts, the team represented Taiwan’s foray into official development assistance (ODA), marking its transition from recipient to donor nation. For more than a decade prior — and indeed, far longer during Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) rule on the “mainland” — the Republic of China (ROC) had received ODA from the US, through agencies such as the International Cooperation Administration, a predecessor to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). More than a third of domestic investment came via such sources between 1951
For the past century, Changhua has existed in Taichung’s shadow. These days, Changhua City has a population of 223,000, compared to well over two million for the urban core of Taichung. For most of the 1684-1895 period, when Taiwan belonged to the Qing Empire, the position was reversed. Changhua County covered much of what’s now Taichung and even part of modern-day Miaoli County. This prominence is why the county seat has one of Taiwan’s most impressive Confucius temples (founded in 1726) and appeals strongly to history enthusiasts. This article looks at a trio of shrines in Changhua City that few sightseers visit.
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