Accidental director
By the time Ah-tang had returned to film, the golden years of the industry in Taiwan had already passed. Opportunities were few and far between. First he worked as a producer and wrote a script, Connection by Fate, which was turned into a film by Wan Jen.
In 1998, the newly established Public Television System sought scripts for its Life Story drama series. PTS placed no restrictions on the subject matter, other than stipulating that it relate to "a river's flow." It turned out that back in the 1980s Cheng had written a story based on his childhood home by the Lanyang River. Unsatisfied with the script, he had just stuffed it into a drawer. But with the deadline for PTS looming, he pulled out his old screenplay. Public Television liked what they saw, and Cheng argued that rather than turning it over to someone else to direct, he would do the best job of capturing its true feeling. Lanyang River Youth was the first work he directed.
Cheng didn't betray any of the nervous jitters of a rookie. "I'd worked many times as a script supervisor and producer, and I'd shot commercials and documentaries. The basic skills were there." To meet PTS' planning requirements, he started off with Lanyang River Youth, and then wrote a total of 11 other scripts about rivers in northern, central and southern Taiwan. Because Lanyang River Youth did well, PTS also agreed to let him shoot the TV movies Chuoshui River Agreement and Vanity Tamshui. These three works comprise Ah-tang's "river trilogy."
Cheng is enraptured with images of the mountains, rivers and sea. In his river trilogy, rivers represent idealism and a sense of belonging, as well as the inner feelings hidden behind people's outer appearances. Chuoshui River Agreement garnered four Golden Bell nominations for excellence in television, including best director. With Leon Dai winning the award for best actor, the film brought a lot of glory to PTS.
Having earned the trust of PTS, Cheng proposed his next plan: a "tribal trilogy" that would discuss in depth the situation of indigenous peoples in Taiwan. His interest in them sprang from his earlier social movement work. Back then he had frequently made merry with Aborigines, hitting the bottle and talking until the wee hours. "I'd often heard the singer Kimbo Hu tell stories about Aboriginal life. I'd never let go of them. They were all filed away in my mind."
PTS gave him NT$4.5 million to shoot Maya's Rainbow, The Youth Nabus, and Watan's Bottle. That was a lot of money for public television. But Cheng was intent on doing the best job possible. After starting to shoot the trilogy on videotape, he decided that he wanted the feel of film and put up his own money to shoot Watan's Bottle in 35 millimeter. Apart from becoming a TV movie, this NT$3.5 million work also served as the basis for Somewhere over the Dreamland.
With Guey Lun-mei as the female lead, The Passage succeeded in giving the National Palace Museum a "younger" image.