Wang is perhaps best known for five TV series released between 2000 and 2013 that tackle a range of issues such as adolescent behavior, environmental problems and policing. In a brief synopsis of her works written by film critic Ryan Cheng for the NCAF, these productions are summarized as attempts to “urge Taiwanese audiences to expand their knowledge of local history and society… and to discern the gaps between their ideals and reality” in terms of the education system, family life, gender equality and workplace culture. In short, Cheng noted, Wang has attempted to “write a history of 21st-century Taiwan.”
This year, the acclaimed producer completed one of her most ambitious undertakings to date, a short film series that strives to reconnect people with Taiwan’s literary traditions. Sponsored by the Ministry of Culture and produced by Rice Film International, the company Wang founded in 1992, this project involved adapting ten celebrated books by Taiwanese authors.
Wang hopes that the series, called Reading Taiwan Literature, will boost interest in classic Taiwanese novels among young people. “We felt younger generations would be more interested in seeing visual presentations of these stories than reading the books,” says the filmmaker, who directed two of the shorts and supervised the production of the others. “Hopefully, once they see these works, they’ll want to explore the original texts.”
Each of the ten films consists of a 20-minute adaptation as well as a five-minute documentary featuring academics, authors and critics discussing the source novel. The results were premiered in March this year during a film festival in Taipei of government-funded works. In the following months, the shorts were aired by several local broadcasters, including the Taiwan branch of National Geographic, Public Television Service, and Taiwan Television Enterprise.
The works in the series cover a range of themes concerning different ethnic and social groups from a variety of periods in Taiwan’s history. The earliest adapted book was first published in Japanese by a local newspaper in the 1930s, during the period of Japanese colonial rule (1895–1945). The novel, The Newspaper Boy, earned its author Yang Kuei (1905–1985) a Japanese literary prize in 1934, making him the first Taiwanese writer to garner major recognition in the country.
Based on Yang’s experiences as a university student in Japan during the mid-1920s, The Newspaper Boy concerns a young Taiwanese man, Mr. Yang, living in Tokyo, who finds a job delivering newspapers. After toiling away for 20 days, he discovers that he is being exploited by his employer. This causes him to reflect on a past painful experience in Taiwan when officials forced his family to sell their farmland to a local sugar production company. At the end of the novel, the young man joins with his co-workers in launching a successful strike against their employer. The book concludes with the hero returning to Taiwan, and as he gazes out at his homeland from the deck of a ship, he notes that the island is replete with “stinking blood and pus” under its “beautiful, gorgeous appearance.”
Cheng Wen-tang, the screenwriter and director of The Newspaper Boy, was greatly inspired in his college years by Yang’s novels, which largely feature the struggles of disadvantaged people in an oppressive society, as well as the author’s other writings, such as the letters he sent to his family in the 1950s during his imprisonment in the White Terror era, a period of political repression in Taiwan.
The suppression of dissidents, which peaked in the 1950s and 1960s and lingered until the end of martial-law rule in 1987, forms the background of another Reading Taiwan Literature adaptation, Walking Tree, which was directed by Wang. In the book, first published in 2006, the author Li Rui-yue, who writes under the penname Jiji, tells the true story of her troubled relationship with her late ex-husband who, jailed for a total of ten years, was another of the many tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of victims of the White Terror.
Near the end of Walking Tree, the angry ex-husband holds a knife to his ex-wife’s neck after she moves house without informing him. “I was fearful but did not despair because I knew he could not do it,” Li recalls of this experience in the five-minute documentary that accompanies the film. “Those ten years in prison had a big impact on his personality and moral judgment, and so I’ve forgiven him.”
The 1970s saw the gradual liberalization of Taiwanese society and with it the emergence of a literature movement that challenged the decades-long focus on mainland Chinese literary traditions by presenting stories of local life. Notably, the republication of the Mandarin-language version of The Newspaper Boy in 1974 sparked a revived interest in Taiwan’s literary heritage among local artists and intellectuals. “I was heavily influenced by Yang Kuei, so when I entered the nation’s film circles, I worked like Mr. Yang [the main character in The Newspaper Boy] to make many like-minded friends and promote the ideals of social justice,” Cheng Wen-tang noted in a statement on the Reading Taiwan Literature series website concerning his work on The Newspaper Boy.
The filmmaker also adapted author Chang Hwei-ching’s work The Moth for the project. This book, like another novel featured in the short film series, Ko Yu-fen’s The Refrigerator, tackles gender relationships in modern Taiwanese society. The Moth is about a mysterious link between two women, while The Refrigerator concerns the emotional distress experienced by a boyfriend and girlfriend as a result of the man’s frequent affairs.
In his review of The Refrigerator, movie critic Lan Zu-wei commented that the film’s director, Wang Ming-tai, who also played the role of the husband in Walking Tree, made the boldest creative decision in the Reading Taiwan Literature series by changing the gender of the main character. In the book, the story is told by the regretful boyfriend, but Wang’s adaptation shows the tale from the perspective of the female character. “The director has not simply adapted this book, but developed a new interpretation with a unique artistic value,” the critic opined.
Lan also praised the adaptation of other works featured in the series, including Old Men of the Ocean, which he noted features contemporary cultural references. Like Cheng Wen-tang, the director of Old Men of the Ocean, Cheng Yu-chieh, has been heavily influenced by the novelist whose work he adapted, in his case Syman Rapongan of the Tao tribe, an indigenous people native to Orchid Island off Taiwan’s southeastern coast. Old Men of the Ocean, which tells the story of the unrequited love of a man from Orchid Island for a girl from his tribe, explores the clash between Tao and Han Chinese cultures as well as between traditional values and modern society.
In an audience discussion following the premiere of the short films in March, Cheng Yu-chieh reiterated his appreciation for the Tao writer and the nation’s literary traditions. “I think literature is the soul of a country,” he said. “Without this spirit of cultural exploration, many filmmakers like us might not have been motivated to begin our careers.”
The works in the short film series excellently capture Taiwan’s ethnic and cultural diversity. Breeze, Drizzle, for instance, follows the story of an old man, one of the millions of people who moved to Taiwan during the late 1940s with the Nationalist government, who returns to his hometown in mainland China after spending nearly four decades away. The films were also shot in a variety of languages, including Japanese, Mandarin, Tao and Holo. The latter tongue, commonly called Taiwanese and the language of Taiwan’s largest ethnic group, is the dominant language of Later, a family drama about a daughter and her aging mother.
Some of the films in the series address distinctly modern aspects of Taiwanese culture. Spring Beauty explores young love and the growing fascination with video games, while Fin-de-siècle Splendor examines the demands and excesses of contemporary society through the tale of a young woman working in the fashion industry. Meanwhile The Elephant Apartment, directed by Wang Shau-di, concerns a young man dealing with the loss of a parent and features fantasy elements and animated sequences. “Our goal in creating these works was to add dramatic intensity and diversity to the television landscape in Taiwan,” says the filmmaker. “We also wanted to pay tribute to and reconnect with our rich literary traditions.”
The Newspaper Boy concerns a young Taiwanese man, Mr. Yang, living in Tokyo and supporting himself by delivering newspapers. After discovering that he is being exploited by his employer, he joins with his co-workers in launching a successful strike against their employer.
Old Men of the Ocean explores the clash between Tao and Han Chinese cultures, as well as between traditional values and modern society.
Walking Tree tells the true story of the author’s troubled relationship with her late ex-husband who, jailed for a total of ten years, was another victim of the White Terror. The photo shows director Wang Shau-di (seated, far left) working on the set of the film.
Walking Tree tells the true story of the author’s troubled relationship with her late ex-husband who, jailed for a total of ten years, was another victim of the White Terror.
Spring Beauty explores young love and the fascination with video games.
