Taiwan Diary

A visit to Taiwan and the Golden Horse Awards during two weeks in Oct-Nov 1980.

Day One (25 Oct)

Singapore’s equatorial heat hugs you day and night like a sweating whore. Feeling like an Eskimo in a Turkish Bath, I admire the island republic’s nocturnal profile of broad spotless streets and orderly traffic before collapsing in front of Mark Robson’s Valley of the Dolls (1967) on Channel 5. Since even the slightest movement sets the pores pumping, I chew my freshly-steamed dousha bao 豆沙包 with great care while Barbara Parkins dreams of Paul Burke in the snowy New England countryside. It is all a long way from Gerrard Street [in London’s Soho], and the heady days of the early 1970s when Li Xiaolong 李小龙 [Bruce Lee] revealed there was more to oriental cinema than Mifune Toshiro 三船敏郎. The kung-fu craze which swept the West expanded, if nothing else, the horizons of Far East cinema: the refined lays of Hu Jinquan 胡金铨 [King Hu] added a dimension of critical respectability to the thriving industries of Hong Kong and Taiwan, and the discovery of other names (Li Hanxiang 李翰祥, Li Xing 李行, Xu Guanwen 许冠文 [Michael Hui]) had followed in his wake. After eight years wandering the uncharted labyrinths of this cinema, I have finally reached the foyer of the Far East. Adventure starts here.

Day Two (26 Oct)

As the plane clears the archipelago and sweeps up the leg of Malaysia, I reflect on my hosts. Taiwan’s Golden Horse Awards 金马奖 has for the past 17 years celebrated the achievements of the Mandarin-speaking film industry; from a localised event it has blossomed over the years into a lavish ceremonial occasion, the only comprehensive event of its kind in the Far East. Taiwan and Hong Kong each produces over 100 films a year and in common with other thriving commercial industries (Turkey, India, Philippines) have established star-systems along Hollywood Golden Age lines. Since the mid-1970s, Hong Kong, though sharing Taiwan talent, has developed an even more distinct personality of its own and seen a resurgence of its domestic Cantonese industry. This has affected the market for Taiwan films (all of which are made in Mandarin, the lingua franca Chinese dialect) and raised problems yet to be resolved. This year’s Golden Horse Awards is to be the biggest yet and the first decisive step towards making it a fully-fledged international festival. [For the first time, a non-competitive showcase of films was attached to the awards; this gradually morphed over the years into the present-day Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival 台北金马奖影展.] Despite their differences, the Hong Kong and Taiwan industries are inextricably linked: the former requires the latter’s facilities (especially for location work), and the latter the former’s unrestricted, free-market conditions. Stars, directors, technicians and funds continuously ply between the two.

Kampuchea swims by in the mists below, the forests muffling the lament of once-proud Angkor Wat. Hong Kong rears up in a flurry of precipitous mountains and consumer excess. Then once again the plane rises above the bays, past Shaws’ studio perched on a promontory, and out into the China Sea. My Japanese neighbour has scarcely attacked his thousand-island dressing before Taiwan hoves into view, and in a trice the island’s glistening new international airport at Taoyuan has swallowed us up. The actor Shi Jun 石隽 [Shih Chun], Hu’s favourite scholar-hero and my valued companion for the next fortnight, is waiting to transport me to Taibei. Dusk falls as we reach the city and I check in at the Grand, poised atop its own mini-mountain like a figment of Samuel Bronston’s imagination. Almost immediately – for the Taiwanese dine early – Shi hosts a welcome dinner on Donghua North: over Sichuan delicacies friends old and new assemble. I already feel a million miles from everywhere.

Day Three (27 Oct)

The view from the Grand is a study in Ultra-Panavision. Poised atop its own hill, north of the city across the Danshui river, the Grand commands a staggering view of Taibei which blossoms into a symphony of colour at nightfall. By day the sprawling capital, which houses 2 million of the island’s 17 million inhabitants, is an exercise in contrasts: wide main boulevards circumscribing bustling areas of activity, gleaming new buildings suddenly giving way to a stranded Confucian temple, national flags in their thousands fluttering in the breeze and everywhere restaurants, restaurants, restaurants. Eating is a major industry: every year the Taiwanese consume the equivalent cost of four super-highways and a full-scale harbour, and over the next fortnight I reckon I ate my way through the odd paving-stone or two. Hu Jinquan is in town for jury screenings and over bowels of Mongolian barbecue and a bubbling huoguo he reminisces with two veteran actors, Li Yunzhong 李允中 [b. 1911, Tianjin] and Wang Hao 王豪 [b. 1917, Tianjin]: the air is heavy with shared experiences of a Mainland youth, of Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai and post-war Hong Kong. [Li unfortunately committed suicide the following spring.]

Semi-comatose from my second bowl of menggu kaorou 蒙古烤肉 I catch sections of The Flag of Iron 铁旗门 (1980), the latest Shaws production by director Zhang Che 张彻, at a local cinema. Zhang spearheaded the martial arts boom of the 1960s and early 1970s but has since taken little account of the visual stylisation added to the genre by Chu Yuan 楚原 and other directors. Zhang’s new team of actors also lacks the collective charisma of Fu Sheng 傅声, Di Long 狄龙, Jiang Dawei 姜大卫 [David/John Chiang] and Chen Guantai 陈观泰 of old. Back at the Grand I catch Zheng Peipei 郑佩佩 in [her first] TV swordplay serial Chivalrous Shadow, Fragrant Footprints 侠影香踪 (1980), her still lithe playing stirring memories of Zhang’s masterly Golden Swallow 金燕子 (1968).

Day Four (28 Oct)

In the panelled offices of Central Motion Picture Corporation 中央电影事业 (CMPC), poised above the New World cinema in Taibei’s most frenetic district [Ximending], vice-president Zhang Fahe 张法鹤 [George Chang] sketches in past history: how CMPC was formed in 1954 from the amalgamation of Taiwan Film Company 台湾电影事业 and Agricultural Education Film Company 农业教育电影 (then making documentaries for the farming population) during the post-war period of reconstruction after Taiwan was received from the Japanese. In the early 1950s the company made three to five films a year, a couple of which were features; by the mid-1950s, five to eight, of which three to five were documentaries. At that time CMPC’s studios were located in Taizhong in central Taiwan; however, after a serious fire in the early 1960s the company decided to move to a suburb of Taibei where a completely new studio was built. At that time CMPC was producing some eight to 10 films a year. In 1964 colour and scope were introduced; since then they have become the norm for virtually all Hong Kong/Taiwan productions. Of CMPC’s current 10-12 productions a year, two or three have top budgets of US$500,000-1 million; the remainder are either medium-budget (US$300,000-350,000) or normal budget (US$200,000). About 60-70% of costs can be recouped from the Taiwan market; other major territories are Singapore and Malaysia, with Hong Kong now a smaller market, although some productions are released there in Cantonese-dubbed version. CMPC also hires out its facilities to independent Hong Kong and Taiwan companies – over 100 productions a year. As a state-owned enterprise, CMPC naturally favours war or action films with a strong Nationalist message, and one of its greatest international successes so far has been Eight Hundred Heroes 八百壮士 (1976, retitled The Longest Bridge by its German distributor), a fine war film by Ding Shanxi 丁善玺 set in Japanese-occupied Shanghai.

CMPC’s biggest current production is The Coldest Winter in Peking 皇天后土 (1981), by Bai Jingrui 白景瑞, a study of Mainland life from the post-war period to the present, and A Man of Immortality 大湖英烈 (1981), about a disciple of Sun Zhongshan [Sun Yat-sen] sent to Japanese-occupied Taiwan about 70 years ago, directed by one of the country’s brightest young talents, Zhang Peicheng 张佩成.

CMPC’s Mission over the Eagle Castle 血溅冷鹰堡 (1980), [the first film] by new name Jin Aoxun 金鳌勋, has just opened in Taibei, and we go to a public screening. Starring regular hero Ke Junxiong 柯俊雄, the film impresses for its unusually tight direction and good effects: a Where Eagles Dare set on the Sino-Russian northeast border in 1946, and sporting some lively characterisations from the burly Lu Yilong 陆一龙 and veteran character actor Sun Yue 孙越. Returning to the Grand, I note a motley collection of western pictures currently on in Taibei: Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), Airplane! (1980), The Longest Day (1962), The Martian Chronicles (1980, from the TV miniseries), The Godfather (1972), The Guns of Navarone (1961), Sayonara (1957), The Lady Vanishes (1979). A magnificent Shanghai evening meal on Zhongxiao East, hosted by Xu Feng 徐枫 (first swordslady of Hu Jinquan’s films and now a proud mother-to-be), rounds off the day.

Day Five (29 Oct)

A Shanghai lunch at Hu Jinquan’s hotel makes short shrift of some splendid fish and debatable sea slug. Reeling from this combination, I tag along to a Chinese bath-house (non-porno version, Hu advises in the car) where a tiny Hokkien masseur pummels, stretches and kneads my body already subjected to sauna, baths and the expertly-wielded strigil. A brief sleep, then everyone reconvenes, looking 10 years younger. Hu goes off for more jury screenings, I to a screening at City Hall, where all nominated films are publicly shown. Story of a Repentant Juvenile 金榜浪子吴政辉 (1979), by Lai Huizhong 赖慧中, starts poorly but later improves from the scenes of prison reformation onwards. Despite a strong homilistic element, the film, based on the true story of a reformed juvenile, shows care in its visual composition if weakness in the script department.

Dinner at a Taiwan restaurant on Linsen North is a stimulating mixture of bubbling shitou huoguo 石头火锅 and animated conversation: the actress Zhang Aijia 张艾嘉 [Sylvia Chang] is a tireless host and, amid the mock toasting of Hu (for both Zhang and Xu Feng are in the running for Best Actress), we talk of The Secret 疯劫 (1979), by Hong Kong’s Xu Anhua 许鞍华 [Ann Hui], in which Zhang starred and also had a hand in producing. Xu’s film is up for several awards. Zhang herself is in the midst of directing her first film, a wenyi pian for Hong Kong’s Golden Harvest entitled Once upon a Time 旧梦不须记 (1981, released as 某年某月某一天 in Taiwan); she looks tired but obviously invigorated by the challenge. [The film had been a project of Taiwan director Tu Zhongxun 屠忠训, who had directed the hit romance Your Smiling Face 欢颜 (1979); when he died in a car accident in summer 1980, aged 43, Zhang stepped in for her late friend and took over direction of the film, then called 归程 (literally, “Return Journey”).] As soon as shooting finishes, she is to host the Awards ceremony; then, after post-production, she is to act in Hu’s new film, a contemporary light comedy entitled The Juvenizer 终身大事 (1982). (Shooting finally started in Taibei in Jan 1981.)

Later that evening I see The Pioneers 源 (1980), by Chen Yaoqi 陈耀圻 [Richard Chen], at City Hall: CMPC’s biggest production of the past year, directed by one of Taiwan’s most talented younger directors – a massive Roots-like story of a family’s quest for oil in the late 19th century, immaculately set and scripted and with excellent performances from Xu, Wang Dao 王道, Shi and [US actor] John Phillip Law. Unfortunately, what was originally planned as a three-hour epic was later edited into a 125-minute version, and the resulting hasty tempo and lacunae rob the film of much dignity. But still a remarkable work, even if the end result is not a true reflection of the director’s original vision.

Day Six (30 Oct)

A splendid Japanese lunch, highlighted by some succulent crab, starts the day well. Shi Jun arranges a screening of his latest film, Devil Design 夜之祭 (1980), a period ghost story set in the late Song dynasty in which he plays a Buddhist monk who exorcises the ghost of a Mongolian general. It is the first film of Pan Rongmin 潘榕民 (b. 1949, Shanghai), a graduate of Taibei’s Academy of National Arts and formerly an assistant of directors like Ding Shanxi and Li Xing. After a spell in Hong Kong, he returned to Taiwan in 1975 and wrote scripts for both wenyi pian and wuxia pian before directing Devil Design. He has recently finished another script, set in mythical times 民间传说. Devil Design has an unusual breadth, especially in its central section, which testifies to Pan’s sincere interest in creating something which is both generically Chinese and above the level of mere exploitation. Strongly cast (Shi, Bai Ying 白鹰, and a sensitive performance from Long Jun’er 龙君儿 as a mute girl), the film establishes Pan as one of Taiwan’s promising directors for the future. A Story of Chivalry 侠骨英雄传 (aka The Heroes, 1980, dir. Wu Ma 午马), shown at City Hall that evening, sports a good central performance from Di Long as the Qing double agent pretending to side with the Manchus, and at the end has a genuine heroic resonance reminiscent of Zhang Che’s best work, but the film is let down by Wu’s lack of any thoroughgoing style.

Day Seven (31 Oct)

A tasty two-table lunch hosted by director Song Cunshou 宋存寿 and his wife prepares the way for an afternoon spent in Taibei’s thronging cinema district [Ximending] around the West Gate. Moon Night Cutter 月夜斩 (aka Moonlight Murderer, 1980, dir. Xu Yulong 徐玉龙) is a typical example of post-Chu Yuan Gu Long 古龙. Scripted by [Taiwan author] Gu from his own story, a customary labyrinthine web of intrigue, double-dealing and mythic greed, the film is highlighted by two fine central performances by Ling Yun 凌云 and Wang Guanxiong 王冠雄, plus a perky cameo from Mao Ying 茅瑛 [Angela Mao]. Special effects and editing – particularly at moments of the Moon Night Cutter’s sallies forth – are swift and cutthroat. Round the corner, at Great World theatre, Rendezvous with Death 请帖 (1980, dir. Sun Zhong 孙仲) is playing to slightly less packed but still healthy audiences. I battle my way to my seat in time for the national anthem and trailers.

Sun’s immensely stylish direction marks this as perhaps his best work to date, with refreshing use of Shaws regulars (the younger Wang Yu 汪禹, Luo Lie 罗烈, Chen Guantai) and with the atmosphere of chivalrous mystery maintained by plot and character rather than by a mock-literary script or chiaroscuro lighting. Sun’s sense of style was evident in many of his tough crime dramas of the mid-1970s; here he brings an uncommon subtlety to a typical swordplay script by [Hong Kong author] Ni Kuang 倪匡 (Wang hired to transport a valuable package across country). The final duel by the studio waterwheel blends humour and resolution in confident measure. It is a good omen for the evening ahead.

Less than an hour later I am seated behind mounds of finest Sichuan food on Zhongxiao East, the guest of Li Xing, one of Taiwan’s most respected directors, and assembled friends, each of whom I toast in gently-warmed Shaoxing wine. Prawns the size of lamb chops float by; the table bulges as more guests arrive. Afterwards Hu Jinquan and I join a Hong Kong contingent just arrived for the coming Awards. The rest of the evening is lost in a blur of multilingual discussion, frantic taxi-rides and late-night Japanese food and sake.

Day Eight (1 Nov)

Guests at the festival are now starting to arrive every hour in Taibei, spread throughout the capital in various hotels. The foreign critics from Singapore, America, Thailand, Indonesia and Australia are to arrive today, so I move downtown to the ultra-modern but impersonal Hyatt Regency, bidding the serene grandeur of the Grand farewell. The hourglass is now half-empty: I have already been here a week and not tasted the International Festival screenings; they are nothing to set the Danshui river alight but a considerable first step towards establishing a regular non-competitive international festival (on a par with Hong Kong’s), parallel with the domestic Golden Horse Awards. Federico Fellini’s Orchestra Rehearsal Prova d’orchestra (1978), John Cassavetes’ Gloria (1980), Alan Parker’s Fame (1980), Harold Becker’s The Onion Field (1979), Carroll Ballard’s The Black Stallion (1979) and (most importantly, as Japanese films have been banned from Taiwan since 1970) a quartet of Japanese films have all done record business at the New World [cinema] – a heartening sign, even for a film-mad city.

Two screenings that afternoon at City Hall reveal something of substance: City of Vengeance 赌国仇城 (1980, dir. Chen Junliang 陈俊良) is more remarkable for another fine, tight-lipped performance from Wang Guanxiong than its period gambling drama screenplay; however, Those Days in the Heaven 地狱天堂 (1980), by Wang Jujin 王菊金 [Jo Jo Wang], shows an obviously individual talent, having established a niche for himself with his first film, The Legend of the Six Dynasty 六朝怪谈 (1979), on which he did virtually everything except develop the film. Those Days in the Heaven is in a similarly fantastic vein, a period ghost story in which a down-and-out central figure is menaced by images both violent and sexual. Behind the often extemporised feel, there lurks a diffident humour and an almost early Polanski-an sense of disorientation.

Day Nine (2 Nov)

The city is fractionally quieter on a Sunday morning but its kamikaze traffic is as adventurous as ever. A private screening of Home Sweet Home 家在台北 (1970, dir. Bai Jingrui) fills in another part of the 1960s perspective. A wenyi pian of strongly constructivist leanings, catching Taiwan on the brink of its big economic leap forward during the early 1970s, it interweaves three stories of native society. A warm, technically extrovert work, like most of Bai’s films, it features elaborate use of multiscreen (the one and only Taiwan film to do so); a warm, muted performance by the actress Gui Yalei 归亚蕾 illumines the final and most interesting of the stories, set amidst a poor family in the backstreets of Taibei. Following that, the latest film by Li Xing, China, My Native Land 原乡人 (1980), retreads the area of literary biography he already charted in He Never Gives Up 汪洋中的一条船 (1978) – whose Chinese title literally means “A Boat in the Midst of the Boundless Sea”. My Native Land tells the story of the writer Zhong Lihe 钟理和, who died in 1960 at the age of 44 on the verge of his first published success; it is very much a film made after the experience of The Story of a Small Town 小城故事 (1979) – roots re-sought, family pressures exerting their effect on an artist, and the measured, layered tempo of Confucian lifestyle. Lin Fengjiao 林凤娇 [Joan Lin] is excellent as Zhong’s supportive wife; Qin Han 秦汉 adequate as the febrile writer.

A visit to the gigantic Chiang Kai-shek Memorial, a massive marble-covered edifice with roofs modelled on the Temple of Heaven in Beijing, suitably prepares us critics for our personal audience with Taiwan’s prime minister, Sun Yunxuan, at the Taipei Guest House, a capacious manor house crammed with tea-party festival guests. Shao Yifu 邵逸夫 [Run Run Shaw], Zou Wenhuai 邹文怀 [Raymond Chow], Mifune Toshiro and stars, starlets, directors and personalities jostle for the canapes on the terrace.

Day Ten (3 Nov)

The Awards ceremony is this evening, but first we are taken for a tour of CMPC’s studios nestling amidst the leafy hills of a Taibei suburb. Standing sets, ready to be dressed as any dynasty, rekindle memories of a thousand films; an impressive waxworks museum and Hall of Costumes fill in history and background for the more curious. I miss the trip to the famed National Palace Museum but am compensated with a first-rate seafood meal instead: crab, lobster, and delicacies of the China Sea. Back at the Regency, Li Xing arrives with some colleagues and, over iced tea, what starts as a formal interview rapidly disintegrates into an animated discussion on the nature and future of Chinese cinema. Li (b. 1930, Shanghai) originally studied drama before coming to Taiwan in 1948 and switching to education. After national service and a year as a teacher, he worked as a reporter before entering the film industry as an assistant director on Hokkien documentaries. At that time the nascent Taiwan industry was heavily influenced by Japanese cinema, he admits; now everyone is trying to avoid comparisons. He started directing features in the late 1950s and has since become one of Taiwan’s most experienced and respected figures. Justifiably proud of the period drama Execution in Autumn 秋决 (1972), he also singles out Arch of Chastity 贞节牌坊 (1966) and The Road 路 (1967) as other favourites, with Posterity and Perplexity 碧云天 (1976) and Painted Waves of Love 浪花 (1976) from among his 1970s adaptations of [popular Taiwan authoress] Qiong Yao 琼瑶.

Li is a sturdy professional who believes strongly in the ethic of continual work rather than sitting by and waiting for the masterpieces to materialise; he makes the point that, once left, the industry is difficult to re-enter. The young, western-influenced breed of Hong Kong directors stirs him to comment. “I spent two hours with them last night. I told them two things. First, they are well-educated in film, have learnt all the techniques in school abroad, but they have forgotten what it is to be Chinese, what Chinese culture is. Second, cinema isn’t talking about films, it’s making them 电影不是说得，电影是做得. Cinema is making people believe your film, striking a response. Even if you say it’s good and people don’t accept it, then it’s no use. Who’s going to invest money in you? Those young people want everything very fast; they don’t want to acquire experience gradually. Success isn’t made in a day. The more time and effort you put in, the more you’ll benefit in the future. It was god to get together with them last night and discuss matters, because older directors like myself must always strive to stop being overtaken: as we say, in the Yangtze the waves behind drive on those in front…” [Li’s generation was, in fact, overtaken only a couple of years later by the so-called Taiwan New Wave.] His words ringing in my ears, I dash to a special screening of Good Morning, Taipei 早安台北 (1979), Li’s entry in this year’s Awards, before rejoining him in a heartstopping taxi ride back to the Regency, where the other critics assemble to attend the evening’s awards ceremony.

The 17th Golden Horse Awards is held in the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall, a magnificent temple-like construction blending ancient and modern in eastern Taibei. Bulbs flash and cameras whirr as celebrities ascend the steps. The huge auditorium is abuzz with commotion only seconds before the 7.30pm start. Then, amid kaleidoscopic lighting and the strains of a live symphony orchestra, the three-hour show is underway: everyone in the industry seems to be there, veterans and youngsters; singers punctuate the award-giving, itself garnished with relaxed repartee between the beauteous Zhang Aijia and the veteran actor Jiang Guangchao 蒋光超. Mifune Toshiro, Shao Yifu and Zou Wenhuai receive honorary awards; James Roberts of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences accepts his and invited Taiwan to enter a film in next year’s Oscars; Xu Feng gets Best Actress for The Pioneers, which also wins Best Art Direction; Wang Guanxiong gets Best Actor for Free or Die 茉莉花 (1980, dir. Chen Junliang); Wang Jujin is Best Director for The Legend of the Six Dynasty; The Secret gets Best Photography (Zhong Zhiwen 钟志文) and Best Editing (Yu Canfeng 余灿峰); Li’s Good Morning, Taipei cops Best Film. It is like a huge family gathering played out on a grand scale. I attempt fragmentary translation of some of the in-jokes for my American neighbour but he remains mostly baffled throughout. Back at the Regency afterwards, the show is still running on TV in delayed transmission and a friend rings to ask who won the final prizes.

Day Eleven (4 Nov)

The rest of the stay should by rights be an anti-climax but such is not the case. Tuesday is packed with incident: a morning visit to a pastoral Taibei suburb for the Fuxing School of Dramatic Arts, where children are rigorously trained in traditional opera and wushu skills; then a lunch at the Hilton, hosted by Song Chuyu 宋楚瑜 [James Sung], youthful and progressive head of the Government Information Office (GIO), my official host and the sponsor of the Golden Horse Awards. Song is especially keen to widen the outlook of the Awards and give Taiwan a film festival which can satisfy both domestic and international requirements. He sees its evolution as a gradual but progressive process. That afternoon I visit the Film Library on Qingdao East, a fledgling archive opened by the Motion Picture Development Foundation of the Republic of China (Taiwan) in Jan 1979. The crowded premises already house a library and reading room, a screening theatre and print vault, and is run with much enthusiasm by its staff of half a dozen or so young people, one of whom generously finds time to explain its workings. Retrospectives are regularly held and associated books published. I meet again the film director Liu Yi 刘艺 in the corridors; he is also head of the Chinese Film Critics Association which produces an occasional paperback series on international cinema entitled Film Commentary 电影评论. My real reason for coming, however, is to see Bai Jingrui’s famed Goodbye, Darling 再见阿郎 (1970), a remarkable work which, in its vérité treatment of the central drama, clearly shows influences of Bai’s spell at Rome’s Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia from 1960-62. Shot entirely on location in Tainan and Gaoxiong in southern Taiwan, the work benefits from a fine, unaffected performance by Zhang Meiyao 张美瑶 as the band majorette who becomes pregnant by the local blade “Alain” (Alang in Chinese), played with much swagger by matinee idol Ke Junxiong, Zhang’s [then] real-life husband. Bai’s handling of colour and scope within the confined shanty dwellings is immensely stylish and assured, and the love scenes have an unexpected sweaty realism, though still remaining visually discreet.

Bai (b. 1931, Yingkou, Liaoning province) has much the same career background as Li Xing (arts student; newspaper reporter; longtime business associate and co-director of some films during the 1960s) but in temperament and upbringing they are different beings. Bai’s works are more extrovert and spontaneous, reflecting a personality forged from a less secure family background; Li’s are more controlled and structured. When we talked, Bai was cutting The Coldest Winter in Peking, the massive CMPC project on which he had laboured for the past year; he hoped it would be released as a three-hour picture, and was clearly excited at the political implications of directing Taiwan’s first film to portray Mainland history with some objectivity. [In the event, like The Pioneers it was released in Taiwan the following February in a two-hour version; it was also banned in Hong Kong for political reasons.] A generous, well-liked and immensely likeable man, Bai royally entertained us deep into the night with the combined resources of his own personality and Taibei’s culinary and other attractions.

Day Twelve (5 Nov)

A 45-minute flight across the island’s cloud-wreathed mountains and we land in Hualian on the east coast. Limousines transport us into the hills, along the twists and turns of the East-West Trans-Island Highway, blasted – at the cost of many lives – from the sides of ravines through which rivers course. At Tianxiang I spot the monastery to which Xu Feng retreated midway in A Touch of Zen 侠女 (1970-73; dir. Hu Jinquan); this is also the same territory where Qiao Hong 乔宏 displayed his powers amid the rocks and boulders. Taiwan aboriginals dance for our enjoyment after lunch before we catch a return flight to Taibei. I feel tired but strangely invigorated.

Day Thirteen (6 Nov)

The hours rush by. The director Song Cunshou has a day off shooting his latest film 翘家的女孩 (1982, [literally “Runaway Girls”]), a story of female delinquents, and kindly arranges a screening of The Dawn 破晓时分 (1968), a film which more Taiwan friends had urged me to see than any other. It totally lives up to its reputation: Song’s characteristically composed, thoughtful and gentle direction allows both script and players to breathe and ripen. Compressed into the few hours before the break of dawn, the story portrays a Qing dynasty court in all its impotent and corrupt process, as seen through the eyes of a gradually disillusioned young imperial bailiff. It is still, to date, Song’s personal favourite, the one with which he is totally happy, without compromise. Like Li Xing, he also nurtures another pet historical project in his mind – if only finance can be raised.

Meanwhile, with The Dawn, Ghost of the Mirror 古镜幽魂 (1974), Outside the Window 窗外 (1973) and other above-average wenyi pian, Song has established himself as the third member of the Taiwan industry’s most respected triumvirate, alongside Li and Bai Jingrui. Song (b. 1930, Jiangsu province) first entered the industry in Hong Kong, with [fellow Mainlanders] Hu Jinquan and Li Hanxiang, after originally working as a graphic artist. A quiet, easygoing, much-liked man – happier talking about others’ films than his own – he seemed somehow resigned to the commercial pressures preventing directors like himself from regularly realising their potential. The problem is one of educating not only producers but audiences also, and the Taiwan industry has enough will and energy to do both. It was a thought which was of immense comfort as, two days later, I watched the island become lost to view through the aircraft window.

(Originally published in UK monthly films, Apr 1981. Modern annotations in square brackets.)