The dwindling of juan cun (眷村), or military dependents’ villages, has recently become an inspiration for many artistic endeavors.
Television producer Wang Wei-chung’s (王偉忠) successful television drama The Story of Time (光陰的故事) and sold-out theatrical production The Village (寶島一村) are two examples that immediately come to mind.
Now the disappearing culture of veterans’ communities has been translated onto the silver screen by local filmmakers eyeing both the past and present. Seasoned director Lee You-ning’s (李祐寧) Four Hands (麵引子), which hit local cinemas earlier this month, is an historical melodrama that deals with a Chinese Nationalist army veteran who goes back to China to visit what’s left of his family. Mostly set in the atmospheric Treasure Hill Artist Village (寶藏巖國際藝術村), the film is nevertheless a lachrymose disappointment starring Wu Hsing-kuo (吳興國), who delivers an embarrassingly exaggerated performance.
Photo Courtesy of Applause Entertainment
On a completely different note, War Game 229 (燃燒吧！歐吉桑), the feature debut by photographer and documentary filmmaker Huang Chien-liang (黃建亮), is a fast-paced movie whose action centers on airsoft games.
The main players in the film are five veterans who fled from China to Taiwan with Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) troops in the late 1940s. After decades in a military residential compound, the aged veterans are the last holdouts and find themselves facing eviction. Meanwhile, members of a champion airsoft team find out about the place and make what they think is an abandoned village into a practice field.
Piqued by the intrusion, the five experienced soldiers decide to fight back and defend their home turf.
Photo Courtesy of Applause Entertainment
Attired in genre trappings, the film revolves around the motif of home. To the veterans who retreated to Taiwan and now face a second relocation, home is never something taken for granted. The 20-somethings play combat games, but the former soldiers know too well that to lose a battle can mean losing your home.
Greatly supported by a fine cast of veteran actors who rarely make appearances in today’s television programs and movies, War Game 229 shows promise as an excellent work of entertainment. It gives the memory of the past a creative, new reading, showing that the heavy subject of history can also be approached with humor, action and excitement. Unfortunately, mediocre production values prevent the work from rising beyond the quality of television drama. War Game 229 has plenty of bright ideas, but its director chose to rush the story rather than allow space for the ideas to evolve.
A final blow comes in the form of feeble performances by young pop idols, including models-turned-actors Tender Huang (黃騰浩) and Jenna Wang (王思平).
Photo Courtesy of Applause Entertainment
Photo Courtesy of Applause Entertainment
Photo Courtesy of Applause Entertainment
June 2 to June 8 Taiwan’s woodcutters believe that if they see even one speck of red in their cooked rice, no matter how small, an accident is going to happen. Peng Chin-tian (彭錦田) swears that this has proven to be true at every stop during his decades-long career in the logging industry. Along with mining, timber harvesting was once considered the most dangerous profession in Taiwan. Not only were mishaps common during all stages of processing, it was difficult to transport the injured to get medical treatment. Many died during the arduous journey. Peng recounts some of his accidents in
“Why does Taiwan identity decline?”a group of researchers lead by University of Nevada political scientist Austin Wang (王宏恩) asked in a recent paper. After all, it is not difficult to explain the rise in Taiwanese identity after the early 1990s. But no model predicted its decline during the 2016-2018 period, they say. After testing various alternative explanations, Wang et al argue that the fall-off in Taiwanese identity during that period is related to voter hedging based on the performance of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Since the DPP is perceived as the guardian of Taiwan identity, when it performs well,
The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) on May 18 held a rally in Taichung to mark the anniversary of President William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20. The title of the rally could be loosely translated to “May 18 recall fraudulent goods” (518退貨ㄌㄨㄚˋ！). Unlike in English, where the terms are the same, “recall” (退貨) in this context refers to product recalls due to damaged, defective or fraudulent merchandise, not the political recalls (罷免) currently dominating the headlines. I attended the rally to determine if the impression was correct that the TPP under party Chairman Huang Kuo-Chang (黃國昌) had little of a
At Computex 2025, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) urged the government to subsidize AI. “All schools in Taiwan must integrate AI into their curricula,” he declared. A few months earlier, he said, “If I were a student today, I’d immediately start using tools like ChatGPT, Gemini Pro and Grok to learn, write and accelerate my thinking.” Huang sees the AI-bullet train leaving the station. And as one of its drivers, he’s worried about youth not getting on board — bad for their careers, and bad for his workforce. As a semiconductor supply-chain powerhouse and AI hub wannabe, Taiwan is seeing
RSS