At the end of May, Wang, who had just won her fight with breast cancer, appeared with vim and vigor and shortly grown hair at a film festival entitled "Wang Shau-di and Their First Time." Held at the Continuing Education Center of Chinese Culture University, Wang's alma mater, the festival featured works by Wang and her proteges. Apart from her own Fei Tien and Grandma and Her Ghosts, it also included Tsai Ming-liang's What Time Is It There?, Chen Yu-Hsun's Tropical Fish, and Wu Yii-feng's Moon Children.

Afterwards, the singer Pai Ping-ping, who knows Wang well from working with her on Yours and Mine, recalled how, seven years ago when her career was at its peak and everything was going smoothly, Wang asked her to play a lonely woman who undergoes a mastectomy. Later Pai Ping-ping's daughter was kidnapped and murdered, and these experiences led Pai to better understand the meaning of loneliness. She says that she would certainly do a better job with the role today. "Although I am an observant person, when I was acting I would often forget that Wang was a woman and had breasts too," says Pai. "Life is ever-changing, and I played the part and forgot about it. It never occurred to me that Wang would later suffer from breast cancer herself. But never mind that she is missing a breast, what's important is that passionate heart of hers, which is deserving of constant applause."

Working and keeping healthy

Last year Wang shot a television series called Big Hospital, Small Doctors, and in the process she gained a lot of medical knowledge. In October, she discovered the tumor in her breast, went immediately for treatment, had surgery and chemotherapy, and recovered.

Because there is no history of breast cancer in her family, after the illness she took a good look at herself, and felt that the problem must be rooted in her bad daily habits. When filming, she would eat four boxed lunches-typically fried chicken or pork chops-every day. These, she realized, probably weren't doing her any good. Nor, she figured, were the long hours she works while in production. She's a perfectionist, and keeps at scenes until she gets them right. During the seven months that she filmed Big Hospital, Little Doctors, she almost never returned home before the wee hours of the morning, and then she would get up just a few hours later at 5:00 or 6:00 a.m. Neither getting enough rest nor eating enough fruits and vegetables, she was burning out, and she ended up with a potentially fatal disease.

Today she respects her doctor's orders. She goes to bed and rises early, hikes to keep herself fit, and practices relaxation techniques and deep meditation. She has also hired a cook to prepare food at her company. Looking death in the face, she has come to some deep understanding about life: "A hospital is like a train station with connections to everywhere. The first floor of the building is a factory dealing with life-and-death issues, and the damaged goods that can't get fixed get sent to the basement." She holds that in Taiwan there is too little discussion of death: "Old age involves so many struggles. When I am old, I want to avoid inconveniencing others as much as possible."

After her bout with cancer, she came to two conclusions: The first was that she wanted film crews to have healthy and nutritious meals. The second was that she hoped that the film industry in Taiwan would show as much solidarity as the film industries of Hong Kong and South Korea.

Bringing on the idols

Over the past two years, Wang has had a heavy load of work, shooting both once-a-week and five-days-a-week series. Adapted from a book by doctor-author Hou Wen-yung, Big Hospital, Little Doctors made television audiences sit up and notice the talents of this senior filmmaker. "I've always liked relaxed and funny material," says Wang. "This is material that everybody can understand. It's a very simple story that describes the trials and tribulations of a bunch of interns. It's well-suited for the 8:00 p.m. slot."

"It's a production with many actors and a lot of scenery and props, and we shoot and re-shoot," says Dr. Hou Wen-yung, its screenwriter. "We often shoot a scene more than ten times to get the exact result we want." From something as large as filming an operation to something as small as the motions used to put on gloves, they go to great lengths to be as accurate as possible. Once, when Hou was teaching the actors how to throw the operating gloves far away, they ended up working from ten one morning to two the next, all for one minute of screen time. It seemed extraordinary to go to such lengths, but they ended up with something that he could be confident about.

"Shau-di is extremely charming," says Hou. "She's modest and polite, and hardly ever loses her temper. But she's famous for polishing and tinkering, and she has innumerable phrases to accomplish her ends." For instance, Hou explains that Wang might say, "That's good; hold it," or "Hold that expression a little longer" or "Good, but let's do it one more time." Or she might just look for a long time without saying anything, and then everyone will know that they have to shoot the scene again.

Big Hospital, Little Doctors gave its viewers different things to enjoy. Apart from numerous location shots, it had exquisite composition, camera work and editing. It was also notable for introducing some beautiful new faces.

Wang Shau-di discovered young new idols such as Lan Cheng-lung, Tou Chih-kung, Ma Chih-hsiang, Ma Kuo-pi, Chiang Tsu-ping and Chou Yu-ting. At a time when television had been growing increasingly stale, these young actors were like a gust of fresh air. As a result, the media began describing the show as an "incubator for idols." After this, every station launched their own "new idol shows," packed with young and comely unknowns. At the height of the craze, more than 20 of these were in production at the same time.

Making a new generation of stars

When asked if there are too many of these shows, Wang says that you only have swarming like this during periods of transition. She suggests that perhaps as it fosters combinations of better lighting, screen composition and locations, all of the hard work and trial and error will help to hone the technical skills of Taiwan's television production workers.

"Stars and production technique are the two pillars of the television industry," says Wang, who bemoans the industry's vitiated creativity. "We've got to cultivate some actors with youth and vitality," says Wang. If you are a young "idol" and all that you've got going for you are your big beautiful eyes, then you're not going to have a very long career. The beauty of these idols on the outside must be extended inwards to their characters.

Looking at how the television production environment in Taiwan has changed over the past 20 years, Wang says that back in the era when the three over-the-air stations were making big money, she once asked them: "Apart from cultivating some producers who have grown fat off of commercials, what have you done? Has anyone like Chow Yun-fat, Andy Lau or Tony Chiu-wai Leung ever come out of Taiwanese television? They all came out of Hong Kong television."

She notes that the three stations were protected from competition for more than two decades, up until very recently. But since cable channels have proliferated, the big three's offerings have grown only more tired and less competitive. Although the managers of the stations can foresee future entertainment trends, they aren't willing make the needed investment. Instead, they focus on cutting back on production expenses. They'd rather spend NT$80,000 to buy a Japanese or Korean show, than fork out NT$800,000 to produce their own.

Although disappointed by the television environment at large, Wang rejoices in the existence of public television. "PTS is looking for quality, and it's quite open about how to achieve it," she says. "What creative development needs first and foremost is space, because creating something isn't like trying to find the answer to a math problem. Rather it's a search for a means to express feelings about the nature of human existence."

A career in both TV and film

Not one to wait for everything to fall into place before testing the waters, Wang has always been willing to do the hard work as a pioneer. As a result, it is difficult to get a fix on a unique style in her work. From melodramas, to documentaries, to historical dramatic serials, to animated cartoons, Wang has created a huge variety of work for theater, television and the silver screen.

Born in 1953, Wang majored in drama at Chinese Culture University and got her masters at Trinity College in Texas before going on to study film at the University of San Francisco. When she came back to Taiwan, she worked as an assistant director on the film The Battle of Taertan, wrote the screenplays for Strawman and Banana Paradise, produced television shows and taught at the National Institute of the Arts and at Chinese Culture University.

In 1979, Wang established Minghsin Television Production, which has created more than 200 hours of dramatic series, and more than 80 hours of news programs. Many have won Golden Bell Awards, including those for best production, best director and best screenplay.

Back when there were only the three over-the-air stations in the 1970s and 1980s, well made sitcoms that Wang either produced or wrote and directed, such as Neighbors to Neighbors, Angels, Are We Not, Mother Hen and Her Ducklings and My Home in Nansanma Valley, provided many young workers with an invaluable foundation of experience.

In 1987 Wang Shau-di, Sylvia Chang and Chin Kuo-chao each directed one segment of the three-part The Game They Called Sex, but Wang didn't direct her own full-length feature presentation until after her student Tsai Ming-liang and protege Chen Yu-hsun had already made films of their own.

Seven years after The Game They Called Sex, she finally obtained a NT$10 million film grant from the government, which she used to make her first full-length film Fei Tien. The film was based on Chang Ta-chun's The Happy Thief, which was based on a folk legend. But after being adapted by Wang, it expanded into something quite different from the original. The Happy Thief was a mischievously funny novel. Fei Tien added much more material describing people's struggles, the Mandarin exam system, and the bureaucratic culture.

Filmed on the loess plateau in mainland China, and packed with folk customs and fantasy, the work was not a box-office success. "I really like works of fantasy and I had filmed historical dramas," she says. "I felt that a combination of historical realism with fantasy was well suited to describe Chinese life. At the time, I was very confident in my abilities, and I didn't think I was biting off more than I could chew."

Creating movie magic

In 1996 she went on to film Yours and Mine. The film, much in the same vein as the warm and witty screenplays she had written earlier for Wang Tung, conveyed the states of minds of modern people in Taipei. Bringing together rich and poor, male and female, young and old, it forms a many-sided portrait of life in Taipei, divided into four sections: "Car," "Home," "Body" and "Feeling." From the lives of people who consider themselves normal, she uncovers so much that is humorous and twisted.

Grandma and Her Ghosts (1997) was an even bolder effort at innovation, and Wang Shau-di posed a great challenge to herself by using animation to create a conversation with the audience. This NT$30 million cartoon put Wang heavily into debt.

A mother leaves her little boy Doudou in the countryside under the care of his scowling but good-hearted grandmother, who is a Taoist exorcist. This is the starting point for some warmly amusing fantastical adventures.

"I made the film after having been moved by Hayao Miyazaki's Kiki's Delivery Service," says Wang. "At the beginning of that film a little girl is sitting by a river listening to a radio. The wind is blowing. After deciding give up waiting for her friends, she levitates and then flies off with her cat to finish her training. The whole story is very clean and simple. As you watch it, you can't help but think of similar experiences in your own childhood, how you might have given up waiting for your own friends by a river." The truth is that Asians are excellent story tellers. When Wang's collaborator Huang Li-ming mentioned that her experiences of watching her mother as a grandmother got her to think about writing a screenplay portraying the relationship between a grandmother and a five-year-old child, Wang thought that using animation might be a fresh approach.

"She successfully captured the mysteriousness of weird folk tales, and threw in a lot of stuff about ghosts-Ghost Festival ceremonies, the wandering of lonely ghosts without living descendants, and the mischief committed by evil spirits," writes the critic Wen Tien-hsiang. "She showed how a small boy would identify with his grandmother and all the traditions and tolerance that she symbolizes, and from there went on to develop an atmosphere of equality and mutual respect between the natural and the supernatural, and between the living and ghosts. This created great scope for the treatment of moral themes, yet was highly entertaining." Although Taiwan once led the world in animation processing, it produces very few cartoons, which Wen ascribes to a lack of creative talent and willing capital. Wang Shau-di, however, has been working hard to change this sorry state of affairs. Although she was on a tight budget, she produced a work that surpassed everyone's expectations and truly stands as a milestone in Taiwanese animated film.

Although Grandma and Her Ghosts was nominated for a Golden Horse for best cartoon, it was not given the award because it was deemed "too superstitious." Instead, no film was honored in that category. Happily, it did go on to win best film award at the Taipei Film Awards-showing that justice eventually prevails.

A call for solidarity

Perhaps because the Taiwanese film industry has hit hard times, Wang has been working mostly in television over the past few years. In 1998 she produced Nine Years Old for PTS, which tells the story of a boy whose mother died as a result of an asthma attack and whose father is an alcoholic. He decides to leave home with his younger sister. In 1999 Wang finished Taiwan Jade; in 2000 she produced the series Big Hospital, Little Doctors; and in 2001 she completed Lost. She is now at work on Floating in the Love between Intimacy and Loneliness.

The ordinary people struggling with their lives who feature in the stories are rarely the center of most people's attention, but Wang is drawn to them. "I very much like to watch ordinary people going about their lives," she says. "Time and again I see a surprising and powerful vitality in them."

One might think that Wang was establishing a little distance from film circles, but when she saw that the best-grossing film in Korea last year was the locally produced Friends, she started making calls for film world solidarity as soon as she got better.

Wang says that the Korean government stipulates that movie theaters must show Korean films at least 146 days a year, and this rule has prevented all-out domination from Hollywood. Yet even though the Korean government has worked hard to help Korean film, the industry there has held protests, arguing that the government should further limit the proportion of foreign films.

"In fact, togetherness is hardly what the film industry needs," Wang notes. "Instead, everyone should be striving to be doing the most with their own imagination and creativity. But the fact of the matter is that the industry is really in dire straights right now. I just hope that by making some noise we can bring a bit of positive change." When you can see how video games, computers, mobile phones and broadband Internet are all merging, Wang argues, you realize how important video has already become to the culture. And Taiwan has a special history, she explains. It has experienced colonization and imperialism and is a cosmopolitan place with strong ties to the rest of the world, but it also has the rich cultures of the Southern-Fujianese-speaking "Taiwanese," the Mandarin-speaking mainlanders who arrived after the war, and its aboriginal tribes. "How can it not have abundant stories, emotions, conflicts, dreams and all the sweet, sour, bitter and hot that make up people's lives?"

To avoid having filmmakers rely on grants for movies, Wang suggests that the government only supply grants to new directors or people shooting documentaries, but should use tax breaks to encourage industry to invest in film.

Film industry promoter

For many years, Wang has boldly stuck out her head as an unofficial spokeswoman of the film industry. Even more remarkably, in a creative environment where people tend to turn up their noses at each other's work, she has long helped out her juniors. She cultivated the careers of Tsai Ming-liang, Wu Yii-feng, Chen Yu-hsun, Yang Kuan-yu, Yeh Hung-wei, Chen Hsiang-chi, Wang Yu-hui and many others.

"In the Taiwan film world, no one is as magnanimous as her," says Lin Cheng-sheng, who once took a director's class with her. Lin recalls that Wang wouldn't go on and on about a lot of theory. "During shooting, she would just say one thing: 'Where did we get to in the last shooting?' I understood immediately what the continuity clerk's work is about. Only by going through the detailed process of making the movie, can we understand its structure."

"She's not just a director; she's a teacher," says Tsai Ming-liang. After shooting The River, he hit some hard times, and Wang asked him, "Why did you depict the relationship between a father and son in this manner? Was that the only way you could have done it?" he recalls. "I replied that it was the only way, and she said, 'Then that's you; it's part of what makes you unique.' There's no one anywhere in the world as considerate and tolerant as her."

Physician-turned-writer Hou Wen-yung describes Wang as a puppy whose fluffy fur often gets wet when it steps accidentally into puddles, but needs only to shake off under the sun for the fur to regain its beauty. Those resplendent curls are displayed in her work.

Wang's amiable charm has won the high regard of her students and proteges. They admire her for her lack of pretensions and for striving to create work rooted in real life. Yet, however down to earth she may seem in person, in her heart of hearts she still harbors a desire to intone some incantation like the grandmother in Grandma and Her Ghosts and release Taiwanese film from the spells that bind it.

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Senior director Wang Shau-di, though recovering from a serious illness, still speaks out on behalf of the film community. Besides urging filmmakers to work together to get through the current downturn in the industry, she hopes they will take better care of themselves and eat well. (photo by Jimmy Lin)

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Wang Shau-di has been a hands-on contributor to the entertainment industry for decades, working in stage, television, and movies.

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Wang came from a military family (her father was General Wang Sheng) and has three older brothers, which may account for her forthright character.

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Wang's first film as a director, Fei Tien, was filmed in the Loess Plateau region of mainland China. It describes the lives of rural folk scratching out a living from an inhospitable environment.

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Wang is a big fan of the Japanese animation master Hayao Miyazaki. In 1998 she completed Taiwan's first animated film, Grandma and Her Ghosts, winning the best picture award at the Taipei Film Festival that year.

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Wang Shau-di's most recent work is the dramatic serial Floating in the Love between Intimacy and Loneliness. It describes the turbulent romantic lives of urban men and women.

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Wang is skilled at using absurd comedy to evoke the pathos of the lives of little people. The photo shows a scene from the film Yours and Mine.

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Wang made Big Hospital, Little Doctors for Taiwan's public television station. She used large numbers of realistic outdoor shots to depict the difficult life of an intern. The series not only discovered a new group of talented directors, but also launched a "popular idol" craze. (courtesy of Public Television)

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In May, Chinese Culture University, Wang's alma mater, put on a mini-festival of the films by Wang and some of her proteges. Many performers with whom she has worked showed up, including Ma Chih-chin, Pai Ping-ping, and generation idol Lan Cheng-lung, as well as director Chen Yao-hsin. (photo by Jimmy Lin)