Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Volume 9, Number 2, 2008

Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s films: pursuing and escaping history

DAI Jinhua (Translated by ZHANG Jingyuan)

Taylor and Francis ABSTRACT This article situates Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s films in the post Cold-War global setting. It discusses two common interpretive approaches to Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s films – French auteurism and ‘national allegory’ – and puts these two approaches within their historical context of Cold-War and post Cold-War global politics. The article places the rise of Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s films parallel to the rise of the mainland fifth generation of film directors, pointing out that their apparently opposite directions – Hou Hsiao-Hsien going political in his Taiwan trilogy and the fifth generation film directors going apolitical – are part and parcel of the same phenomenon of alternative politics in its particular contexts and the reconstruction of a new identity politics. Particular attention is given to Hou’s Taiwan trilogy, Flowers of , and Coffee Jikou.

KEYWORDS: Hou Hsiao-Hsien, auteurism, national allegory, Cold War, post-Cold War, history, Taiwan films

Axes of interpretation pean culture, especially in France, Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s films are seen as entirely orig- It is dangerous to try to offer a deep read- inal, and therefore as embodying the ‘pure ing of Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s works, but not film’ genre. Jean-Michel Frodon explains: because Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s film world is an elaborate labyrinth. On the contrary, his Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s films question all films are often plain and down-to-earth the cinematic elements, and break from from start to finish, demonstrating the European tradition of fiction and emotional suffering and bewilderment yet theater art. This places his films at the without narcissism or affected sentiment. core of modern cinema. … Hou Hsiao- Hsien’s films address a particular His films gaze squarely at history and its history, geography, and culture. These trauma with frankness and ease. Reading films are not based on films by others. his films is ‘dangerous’ not because they Hou is closer to the original formalist suggest a myriad of conflicting readings, inventors of the 1920s and 1930s, such but because they seductively invite clear as Fritz Lang, F.W. Murnau, Carl and simple approaches to interpretation. Theodor Dreyer and the Russian One simple approach is auteurism. Hou formalists, than to the New Wave Hsiao-Hsien is a mature first-rate film direc- movement of the mid-1950s, which tor; and his films display a clear set of grew out of the long cinematic tradition personal narrative styles, from The Boys from in France, America, Italy, and Japan. (Frodon 1999: 27) Fengkuei, which won him international fame in 1983, to Café Lumière (Coffee Jikou) in 2004. Starting from the mid-1980s, there have He has been recognized in various interna- been many new waves of Chinese films. As tional film festivals in Europe as the leading a film auteur, however, Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s Chinese film director and one of the leading only equal in representational style is the film directors of Asia. In the eyes of Euro- Iranian film director Abbas Kiarostami. In

ISSN 1464–9373 Print/ISSN 1469–8447 Online/08/020239–12 © 2008 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/14649370801965604

240 Dai Jinhua terms of treating historical themes, the clos- ern European/art films, each involving est Asian film director to Hou Hsiao-Hsien global film distribution, film showings and is the famous Japanese film director Yasujiro film criticism. Auteurism, coming of age in Ozu. When Hou Hsiao-Hsien was invited to the intellectual rebellions of the 1960s, holds make a Japanese film Coffee Jikou to mark the certain critical attitudes and maintains a 100th anniversary of the birth of Yasujiro certain distance from the universal Ozu, he was widely regarded as the obvious (American) values promoted by Hollywood. choice for the job. But auteurism also condones the great A second simple approach reads the (European) humanist tradition based on films as what Fredric Jameson called third- ‘individuality,’ ‘aesthetics’ and ‘originality.’ world ‘nation-state allegories.’ Here, Hou If it had some radical influence during its Hsiao-Hsien’s Taiwan trilogy – A City of time, then this radical influence has now Sadness (1989), The Puppetmaster (1993), and become a post-modern political practice Good Men, Good Women (1995) – seems to be which holds that ‘the personal is political.’ the best entry point. From here, readers can Different from the ahistorical and proceed forward or backward into the apolitical focus on the author, the national history of Taiwanese society, revealing the allegorical reading of literature and art, memory of blood and pain in a heavy and from its inception, was based on a salient many-layered emotional structure. geopolitical idea: the Third World ‘in the era These two modes of interpretation of multinational capitalism.’ It is first of all clearly occupy different discursive spaces: historical, communal, and political. the author-focused approach is international Third-world texts, even those which are or more specifically European, while the seemingly private and invested with a national allegory approach is favored by properly libidinal dynamic, necessarily third-world critics. It is interesting to note project a political dimension in the form that although these two interpretations may of national allegory: the story of the seem to differ only in interpretive strategies private individual destiny is always an alle- and emphases, in reality they differ more gory of the embattled situation of the public fundamentally in their historical roots and third-world culture and society. (Jameson discursive purposes. 1986: 69) The authorial approach, which began As a result, auteurism and the ‘national alle- after the Second World War, focused on the gory’ approach are incompatible in the eval- dimension of individualistic style and uation and interpretation of one artist’s aesthetics, as if the author, once declared to works. The difference is not only in the be dead, had been resurrected in the young dimension of time (modernity and post- body of film. As a recognition mechanism industrial societies), but also in the dimen- and critical practice, auteurism started by sion of space (Western Europe, North selectively recognizing Hollywood film America, and the Third World). directors and later became more of an inter- In view of these two divergent interpre- nal European or Western European cultural tive paths and attractions to Hou Hsiao- phenomenon, focusing on European film- Hsien’s films, perhaps we should also take makers and art films. By the time auteurism account of a Cold War to post-Cold War axis. became a synonym for ‘art film’ or ‘film We should read Hou’s films in the historical artist’ in the late 1950s and early 1960s, it context of the Cold War and post Cold War, stood for resistance to commercial films as to re-politicize the auteur Hou Hsiao-Hsien. represented by Hollywood and its narrative This means placing auteurism and the models. Auteurism became the recognition national allegory approach within such a mechanism mediated by European film historical context as well. Like the develop- festivals. In so-called ‘world cinema,’ there ment of the concept of the Third World, are therefore two unequal powers: Holly- auteurism and the national allegory wood/commercial films and French/West- approach were both born in the specific

Pursuing and escaping history 241 historical period of the Cold War. The rise of Cold War dichotomies. In a sense, the politi- Asian/Chinese films on the world stage cal and spiritual crises in France created by through the medium of European interna- Algeria’s war for independence directly and tional art film festivals was directly related indirectly produced the new-wave French to the drastic geopolitical changes from the films and the French ‘film author’ theory, Cold War to the post-Cold War. Another while Fredric Jameson’s article ‘Third- historical reference linking the non-Euro- World Literature in the Era of Multinational pean-American or third-world films is the Capitalism’ proposed the concept of ‘Third national liberation movements that World national allegory.’ The article happened simultaneously with the Cold attempted to create an island of resistance in War and had a very complicated historical the Western total system, to speak for Third relationship with the Cold War. World nationalism and to highlight national The appearance of the numerical desig- allegorical writing (Jameson 1986). Such nation ‘Third World’ was itself a product of practice was itself the politics of the Other the Cold War structure. Putting aside the within the Western/American culture, a history of the term, ‘Third World’ has social and cultural grounding outside the always been associated with the undevel- binary structure of the Cold War. oped regions and countries in most of Asia, The interesting thing is that during the Africa, and Latin-America. It shows a third entire Cold War period, Hollywood and kind of existence outside the Western camp, eastern bloc socialist realism occupied the led by the USA, and the Eastern camp, led majority of the global cinematic market. by the Soviet Union. Here, I only want to The European new wave of films amid the point out three distinctive features of Third post-war European devastation, reconstruc- World discourse in the Cold War context. tion, and crisis was third in importance in First, the term was first adopted by the the global film industry. The end of the majority of Asian, African, and Latin Ameri- Cold War with the collapse of the Soviet can countries, with the help of the non- Union and the changes in Eastern Europe aligned movement and the Bandung brought about the collapse of the Soviet Conference, at which China proposed a and eastern bloc film industry. The Polish ‘Third World’ theory to break through the director Krzystof Kieslowski, later named enemy encirclement of China. Third World as one of the greatest European film direc- theory was adopted by the pan- Asian– tors of the twentieth century, came to be African and pan-Latin American move- regarded as a French director. His experi- ments, in order to obtain their own rights to ence is a kind of trophy of Western histori- exist, speak, and exercise national sover- cal victory. eignty in the Cold War structure of dividing Although the end of the Cold War humanity into two camps. Secondly, the reunified Europe, it did not revive the glory Third World was constructed by the hege- of European art films. On the contrary, long monic battles between the US and the Soviet before the end of the Cold War, with the Union through their military and political establishment of new liberalism in England assistance and intervention. The US and the and America, Hollywood as the sole tran- Soviet Union fought over these Third World snational film superpower had already regions for ideological influence and invaded the European film market, just as it economic dominance. Thirdly, and closely demolished the film industry in other coun- linked to our current topic, Third World tries. In the last 20 years of the twentieth theory was given importance by post-war century, while European art films were European and American intellectuals whose declining, the European film industry began critical theory was a discursive transference a global set of institutions that recognize to the Third World. Here, ‘Third World’ and introduce non-European-American film became the Other in the self-criticism of artists and their products through European European culture and the overcoming of international film festivals.

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Without going into questions about the of the nation-state. And while these new- power relationship between Europe and the wave art films on both sides of the Straits Third World, or the cultural mechanisms by reflected the entrance of many new film which Third World films made their way to artists and won many international awards European film festivals, we can point out at European film festivals, the native film that the selection of Third World film artists industries on both sides of the Straits was in usually marks their works as expressing continuous decline as local markets for dissident views in the context of their home native films were collapsing. The emergence social political system, and as produced of the new-wave films and the decline of the ‘underground’ or independently of the local film industries foretold the coming of established industry of their home countries. drastic social changes on both sides of the However, the transcendental norms and Straits. standards of auteurism conceal the political In a sense, in the 1980s, the beginning of contexts, obscuring the films’ involvement the global new liberalism within the frame- with real conflicts outside of the scripts. Like work of Cold War institutions allowed a various other international awards, the deep social democratization in both China Western European international film festi- and Taiwan. With the aging of the military vals clearly share the purpose of political totalitarian regimes in China and Taiwan, assistance or ‘enlightenment’ of countries forces of social resistance began to gather, perceived to be in need of such modernizing and there emerged a promise of future help. But a complication is added by the transformation and reconciliation. As with many roles of the ‘author’s film’ during the many other latecomers to modernization, Cold War: critical, left-wing, and European the changes flanking the Taiwan Straits (as against Hollywood). The award-winning began with changes in culture and art, in non-European and non-American films at which literary writers and other creative these European international film festivals artists played an important role. Not by are therefore placed within many subject– coincidence, the direct or indirect involve- object relationships. ment in social politics by intellectuals and Among these many axes of significance, artists was mainly by way of non-political Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s films reflect a rich vari- expression. This was not just because the de- ety of images and meanings. It is especially politicized cultural practice distanced itself interesting that the year 1983, when Hou from the orthodox/main ideology of the Hsiao-Hsien began his ‘author films’ series reigning regime, but also because such de- with his fourth film, , politicized expression often successfully and thus began the new wave of Taiwan obtained recognition of alternative politics films, was also the year when young main- in its particular context, calling for and land directors produced the film One and reconstructing a new identity politics. Eight (1984) and began the new wave of Perhaps, it is from this perspective, Hou Chinese films. Coincidentally, the art film Hsiao-Hsien’s ‘author-film’ series, in its movements on both sides of the Taiwan ‘pure’ individualized writing, began the Straits began simultaneously although these cultural-political practice among Taiwan two places were completely separated by the films. Cold War. Taiwan new-wave films began At the turn of the 1980s and 1990s, when with films about the native land, and the the world entered the so-called post-Cold mainland fifth-generation films began by War era, as the Soviet Union disintegrated telling sentimental stories of the lost youth of and capitalism won without a fight, a special the fourth generation. While the Taiwan film Cold-War situation in the post-Cold-War screen was showing a lone individual who time began to emerge in northeast Asia and has tired of urban life and returned to his the Taiwan Straits. Even after the fall of the hometown in the countryside, the mainland Berlin wall, the Cold-War division still screen was showing self-conscious allegories existed between South and North Korea, and

Pursuing and escaping history 243 between China and Taiwan. The American memories. He is forever looking for and military bases whose presence was to secure recording the lost ‘best times.’ A Japanese the divisions were reinforced. The various film critic, Shigehiko Hasumi, has raised the nationalisms on both sides of these divisions question, ‘What do these absences and long- made this region one of the most tense in the ings in Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s films mean?’ world. In this context, the art-film directors Hasumi’s own answer to his question is: in China and Taiwan began a re-politicized During the turbulent years of the practice in their creative works. In the case of Second World War, Taiwan went from Hou Hsiao-Hsien, when the heavy historical being a Japanese colony to being a part cloud began to dissipate, beginning with A of China, looking very much to past City of Sadness, his films launched a clear and future. For Hou Hsiao-Hsien, who political intervention in reality. left the mainland to come to Taiwan in very early childhood, the present tense was always an insignificant speck Traces of memory among grand historical dramas. A long Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s films remind people of time passed before Hou realized this, the films by Francois Truffaut (the origina- but the loss and absence of the present tense were the important experiences in tor and conscious practitioner of the idea of his childhood and youth. Because it ‘author-films’), and especially his ‘Antoine was not possible to touch on the Doinel’ series. From The Boys from Fengkuei present, he turned to the history and and Daughters of the Nile (1987), Hou’s films the past of a Taiwan which he had not are inscribed with his own personal memo- experienced. The lifting of martial law ries. The coming-of-age stories in his films in Taiwan in 1987 made it more possi- are quite revealing. However, unlike the ble for him to do so. The finely detailed narcissistic, melancholic, and mocking tone ‘sadness’ in Hou’s historical trilogy in Truffaut’s ‘Antoine Doinel’ series, the films can be regarded as the profound tone of Hou’s films narrating youth is mean- expression of loss in the collective memory and in his personal memory. dering and slow, clear of narcissism and (Hasumi 1999: 27) affectation, until the historical memory of the bloodshed and gun-shot suddenly We can also situate Hou’s films in the histor- intrudes in the film . After A ical framework of the Second World War City of Sadness, Hou’s films no longer deal and the Cold War. As a chronicler of directly with the traumatic history of personal history, Hou Hsiao-Hsien experi- Taiwan; and yet his later films seem to be enced his youth as a closed and suspended forever wrestling with the ghosts of history, ‘present’ – it was a temporary residence, a from the personal memory in The Puppet- waiting with no end in sight, a stopover by a master to the re-encounter with history in family in constant relocation. As a historian Good Men, Good Women. However, the writing with his camera, Hou Hsiao-Hsien attempt to escape the nightmarish past only created an allegory for contemporary invites it back to the present through the Taiwan: the light and cheap bamboo furni- process of repression. ture in Fengshan’s home. It could be (1998) is an exception, though: it portrays a discarded easily before moving, corre- past directly, staging the late Qing era in a sponding to Chiang Kai-shek’s coffin in the closed environment. The original novel on Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall. This which the film is based takes place in the comparison occurred several times in the foreign concession in Shanghai, and the film film, showing the frozen and undeveloped is the result of the historical links among historical moment. While the Japanese occu- Zhang Ailing, Hu Lancheng, the Zhu sisters, pation and departure divided Taiwan’s and the Taiwan new-wave films. twentieth century into two halves, the It is fair to say that Hou’s films always division of the Cold War became a spatial center on reminiscences and the search for division across the Taiwan Straits. The

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Nationalist desire to return to the mainland cannot perform the duties of the fathers in became an empty and absurd narrative. If dealing with their sons. The present the Cold War cut short, blocked or emptied ‘absence’ of the father from Hou’s films Taiwan society from historical depth, then cannot be explained in terms of psychoanal- the prolonged delay of the ‘return to the ysis, but rather can only be explained in mainland’ put the future forever into a terms of the family genealogy that has been realm of cloudy doubt or inaccessibility. severed by historical violence. Therefore, From this perspective, the early films by the prominent presence of the grandparents Hou Hsiao-Hsien showed a closed present, in the domestic scenes of these films repre- a present that struggled to move on but ran sents fragments of history, not bridges into the glass walls. The repeated images of between memory and history. The young railroad trains, of waiting on the platform, men in Hou’s early films grow up alone, and of repeated journeys, represented a struggling with innocence and awkward- certain spatial mode of existence on the ness and finally reconciling with fruitless Taiwan island, but also a rupture and love. Unlike European psychoanalytic suspension of time and meaning. For narrative models of coming of age, the instance, in the film A Time to Live, A Time to fatherless childhood and fruitless love in Die (1985), the old grandmother who Hou’s films are not obstacles to youth and wanted to return to her hometown packed growth. The protagonist is reconciled to his up her cloth bundle but was unable to walk fate after an outburst of despair at the end of across the bridge. Images like this are alle- the film The Boys from Fengkuei; in the film gorical explorations of the absurdity of the Dust in the Wind the protagonist, after fate of Taiwan and the promise of ‘returning silently weeping over his heartbreak, to the mainland.’ returns to his family in the mountains, puts The literal history within these films is a on the clothes made by his former lover, certain kind of personal coming-of-age passes by his mother napping on a Japanese story. These stories are about fatherless mat, and chats with his aging grandfather childhood and youth. The fatherlessness is about the weather and the harvest. Never- not literal; rather, fathers always stay within theless, on the symbolic level, what chokes the domestic household, silent and timid, off the narrative voice of Hou’s coming-of- like decorations in space but not in time. age tales is the coming of age itself. Once These fathers do not hold authority or the Hou’s protagonist becomes an adult, he power of castration, but instead seem to be faces a world that cannot tolerate him and a the remains of historical castration. In the world to which he no longer belongs. He film The Boys from Fengkuei, the father is a faces wholly negative and murderous social mindless zombie. In the film A Time to Live, forces. A Time to Die, the father is always sitting at Looking beyond the historical events his desk alone and speechless, finally dying narrated in several of Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s there. The father who married into his wife’s films, perhaps we can situate his film writing family and therefore was kept quiet and within a certain male double pattern. On one humble in the film Dust in the Wind (1986) side we find a restless youth growing up has been reconceived as the self-consciously without parental guidance, and on the other political writer and interpreter in the film A side we find an adult man, mature, faithful, Borrowed Life (1994) by its director Wu Nien- and socially responsible. But the former has Jen, based on his own life story. And yet never formed any relationship with the although Hou’s films often portray protago- latter. Rather, the latter seems to be the ideal nists who are in a sense fatherless, the sons persona or the mirroring idol of the former. do not fall in love with their mothers either. This idol reflects aspects of Hou Hsiao- Most of Hou’s films show prematurely Hsien’s own life experience, with added weathered mothers under the heavy burden traces of martial-arts fiction and cops-and- of daily chores and worries – mothers who robbers films. In a sense, this idol serves as a

Pursuing and escaping history 245 bearer of history and a ghost of history; he martial law, events of social conflict were represents both historical continuity and kept out of public sight, hidden deep in discontinuity. Even within the film narra- silence. Hou’s use of long camera shots and tive, the idol is shown as a heroic man out of depth of field in his films have been place in his time. In the film A City of Sadness, discussed by many film critics. These tech- the idol is older brother Wenxiong who takes niques not only form the narrative rhythm part in historical events but dies before the of slow and lyrical motion in Hou’s films, start of the bloody new age. In the film Good but also the narrative distance within his Men, Good Women, Zhong Haodong tries to films. However, such a distance is not an carry the historic burden but ends like a observation from afar, not transcendental structural absentee. In the same film, Ah Wei withdrawal, but a persistent gaze with soft- remains a vivid presence after his death. In ened pain. It is introspection of introspec- current metropolitan society, the idol cannot tion and layered distances. Hou’s stance take the center stage even for a moment: he resembles a stance taken by the mainland remains a marginalized man. Such examples writer Shen Congwen, who chose silence as can be found among the protagonists Lin a way of refusing to accept the historical Xiaoxiang (in the film Daughters of the Nile), changes in China in the late 1940s and 1950s. Ah Wei (in the film Good Men, Good Women), Hou’s pure and original film language and Gao (in the film Goodbye South, Goodbye). therefore reflects another historical identity: The idol is murdered many times in Hou’s it is more than an identification with the later films by various opponents: the good, nation-state; it is an individualized gesture the bad, the underworld, or the government. in dealing with historical trauma. In the film Taipei Story (1985; a film for which Although Hou’s early films seem to tell Hou helped to get funding, was involved in the stories of individuals and even of the screenplay writing and even played a himself, many of them have an omnipresent character), Hou himself plays a part in the narrator. The off-screen narrator, commonly concluding death scene: in the shadow of the in the form of diaries and letters in female abandoned black-and-white screen, Ah voices, add alternative perspectives to the Long quietly dies at a garbage dumpster, main narrative lines of these stories, mainly along with his long forgotten glory and about men. In Hou’s films, the structural dream. The scene wordlessly replays the rhythms are reflected not only in the use of cruelty of historical exile. the long shot, but also in the prolonged Hou’s writing style is especially appar- lingering after the conclusion of the plots. ent in this scene: he likes to write about the The long anti-climaxes toward the ends of ups and downs of grand social and human the films depart from the traditional narra- dramas, but he tries to avoid depicting great tive format and violate the rules of classical historical events directly. The deep and sad film making. The ending of a love affair memories of tragic historic moments surface does not stop the growth of the protagonists momentarily in the retelling of the events by in Hou’s films, and even the death of the others years later, as the long echoes of protagonists does not close the curtain on history in life. Hou Hsiao-Hsien once said, history or on the story. For instance, at the ‘The world is not so dark or decadent. end of the film A City of Sadness, behind During times of drastic change, people have Wenxiong and Wenqing, we can hear no choice over the course of their lives. Kuanmei’s voice reading aloud her letter, Death and parting from family and friends retelling her farewell to Wenqing and are as inevitable as the running river’ (Hou reporting the growth of the children. The 1998). This philosophy is the basis of Hou’s camera fixes its long shot on a wide-angle charming narrative style, and indeed it view of the repeated domestic scene of the differs from Euro-American philosophy. At Lin family eating dinner together under a the same time, it exposes a certain historical lamp in the evening. It shows not just the symptom: in Taiwan under the cold-War empty seat at the head of the table symboliz-

246 Dai Jinhua ing the historical trajectory of a clan in the Shanghai dialect, Mandarin, and Japanese. realist epic tradition but, more importantly, In a very interesting scene in the film, when it shows by way of the young people in the Kuanrong and his friends are talking loudly shadowy background who keep getting up about political affairs, Wenqing’s wife Kuan- to refill their rice bowls that life goes on after mei walks to Wenqing who is quietly sitting a catastrophe. The young generation will at a corner. Kuanmei writes down for grow up in another time and perhaps have Wenqing the words of the song playing on its own interesting stories to tell. It is in such the gramophone. The two of them pen a gaps and suspensions that Hou Hsiao-Hsien written conversation about the happy events silently conveys the stunning truth of life of their childhood. The sunlight through the and history. window cuts a bright section on the screen and situates the two in a loving and personal space, marking them off from the tragic Toward history and away from history historical moment. Similarly, during a A City of Sadness is undoubtedly a landmark midnight scene, a messenger comes to in Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s filmmaking. Not only deliver the news that Kuanrong has died and does it begin a very important, perhaps the the rebels’ base has been destroyed. most important of his film series – the Wenqing holds the picture frame tightly. Taiwan trilogy – it also touches on a part of Kuanmei leans against him, afraid to wake Taiwan’s history that had been suppressed up their young son. In a corner of the screen, by the KMT government for decades. the family helplessly awaits the approaching Released at the time when martial law was historical catastrophe. lifted in Taiwan, A City of Sadness lifted the In contrast to the main characters of the curtain of taboo covering the great scar in film, such as the strong man Wenxiong and Taiwan’s history: February 28, 1947, when the idealist Kuanrong, Wenqing was the KMT government killed thousands of involved in history involuntarily. Rather civilians in order to put down an uprising. It than being an active participant, the mute is in fact the first Taiwan film in the post- Wenqing serves as a witness to the historical Cold War construction and deconstruction tempests. He faces historical reality, but he of the nation-state narrative. cannot or will not get involved. In the flight Lin Wenqing, a major character in the scene, the passing train in the foreground film, reveals a subtle but culturally signifi- shadows Wenqing’s family on the platform cant feature of the position of the film narra- in the background. There is a symbolic rela- tor. Deaf and mute, Lin is a moving and tion between the narrative of A City of meaningful character in the film, and is Sadness and history itself: Taiwan native played by the Hong Kong actor Leung Chiu history, which is also Cold War history. The Wai. Lin’s muteness could indicate the role of Wenqing is connected to the narrative silenced part of the official Taiwan history. action of the film, but his profession as a His muteness was a result of his deafness, photographer is not a way for the film to which isolates him from the space of sound refer to its own filming. In the film, the most and from historical time. He did not hear the effective historical action by Wenqing is to radio broadcast of the surrender statement express certain final messages: from prison, by the Japanese Emperor; nor did he hear the he writes to his wife and son, ‘You have to radio broadcast by Chen Yi (the Governor- live with honor. Your father is innocent.’ General of Taiwan) on the day of February ‘Alive I leave my country; upon death I 28, 1947, the patriotic song ‘Songhua River,’ return to my country. Life and death are nor the gunshots from the prisons. He did determined by Fate; I don’t have any not hear people’s arguments and thoughts or worries.’ He writes to his friends: complaints, nor indeed any of the conversa- ‘Don’t tell my family. When I am dead, I tions the film parades before us in the belong to the beautiful future of my country.’ Minnan dialect, the Guangdong dialect, the Wenqing passes on his last will, but his will

Pursuing and escaping history 247 cannot be executed. If we can say that a of Sadness and parallel to the historical time- legacy is also a debt, then Wenqing (or the line in The Puppetmaster, which depicts film text) cannot pay the debt. A City of Taiwanese grassroots life under Japanese Sadness has revealed another kind of history rule. In Good Men, Good Women, the narra- and at the same time it has written a legacy tive line of revolutionary leftist resistance that has been sealed by blood. By revisiting against the Japanese rule is almost non-exis- the legacy, the debt, the film has opened a tent. The part of Taiwan history in which the magic box of the unknown. leftist patriotic young people went to main- The position of Wenqing in A City of land China to join the resistance against the Sadness resembles the structural position of Japanese invasion in the late 1930s and early many female characters in Hou Hsiao- 1940s appears as a film within the film: we Hsien’s films. In fact, the male ‘he’ repre- see rehearsals, scenes from the film, and sents another axis in Hou’s film series. cosmetic makeup photos. In the closed Starting from the film Daughters of the Nile ‘present,’ Liang Qing, a young urban (1987), Hou Hsiao-Hsien turns his eyes woman character in Hou’s film who plays a from a fishing village at the foot of the role in the film within the film, waits alone mountains, strange small towns, a lonely and endlessly for the camera to start rolling. train station, and a fatherless son’s comings Liang Qing tries to get close to the model for and goings, to the hustle-and-bustle life of her role in the film, a woman called Jiang the metropolitan cities. Over the course of Biyu from a bygone era. Over Liang Qing’s his film career, his protagonists also change whisper, a few brief cruel and absurd histor- from lonely youths and hot-blooded men to ical scenes are shown in the secondary film. drifting and wandering young women. The Between the noisy present and the history young girl becomes Hou’s main narrator that Liang Qing is attempting to call back and recorder of events. Women in Hou’s and enter alone is a dimming light and a films are the survivors of disasters. ‘She’ great gap. Liang herself lives in the memory travels through the glass wall of the pres- of yesterday: the telephone rings, but when ence of sealed history. However, in the few the phone is picked up, there is no sound at films where women are the main protago- the other end; Liang Qing’s stolen diary is nists, such as Daughters of the Nile; Good faxed through her fax machine – these are Men, Good Women (1995); Flowers of Shanghai like ghosts that cannot be driven away, like (1998); (2001); and Coffee an old wound that will not stop bleeding, Jikou (2004), female protagonists are all reminding her of her betrayed dead lover alone in their struggles against the ghostly and the time in which Liang struggles to impact of history and memory in the forget about him. When Liang Qing finally metropolis. If we say that the ‘present meets Jiang Biyu, it is not at a historical absence’ in Hou’s films means the hidden moment, but at the occasion of death, the presence of history, then with the arrival of final departure and separation. When Liang female protagonists or female narrators, the Qing, speaking into the silent telephone, present and the city also mean the escape calls out the name of her dead lover Ah Wei from the history – except in Flowers of and sings songs of heartbroken love, she Shanghai. thereby arrives at a moment parallel to a Good Men, Good Women, the last film in moment in Jiang Biyu’s life. Jiang, a woman Hou’s Taiwan trilogy, is his most structur- of great composure, broke down and wept ally complicated film up to this point. bitterly over her executed husband’s body. Unlike the other two films in the trilogy, The one meeting between Liang and Jiang, Good Men, Good Women reaffirms a certain at the latter’s funeral, is merely an occasion historical absence and escape, instead of for the display of personal pain, women’s representing or even calling for the presence pain, the despair of the survivors of of history. The film follows historical events catastrophe, and wounds that cannot be antecedent to the historical events in A City healed.

248 Dai Jinhua

Hou’s Taiwan trilogy violates political of China’s culture. In the words of Scott taboos and shows a rift in history and Tobias, an international film critic, Hou’s emotion. The historical structure and film Flowers of Shanghai ‘creates a beguiling memory of half a century of the Japanese world unto itself, sealed off from all other occupation in Taiwan marks the difference in worlds, real or cinematic … what remains is emotional structures between the mainland a succession of tableaux so vividly realized and Taiwan. During the second half of the in purely cinematic terms that the emotions twentieth century, the KMT government seem to waft from the screen like smoke’ stayed in Taiwan and practiced martial law (Tobias 2006). In Hou’s own words, ‘To me, for several decades of white terror, success- China is the origin of Taiwan culture. But I fully eliminating both the Chinese and the do not mean contemporary mainland China, indigenous Taiwanese leftist social and that concrete entity separated politically cultural tradition. In other words, even from Taiwan. When I was young, I was though both the Taiwanese new wave films educated in classical Chinese, reading classi- and the mainland Chinese fifth-generation cal masterpieces and classical poetry. Later I films were made during the same global liked reading classical martial art novels and post-Cold War situation, and for a time the classical drama. These Chinese classics have film people from both sides of the Taiwan formed the background of my life and the Straits formed a kind of blood-is-thicker- basis for all of my creative works. But classi- than-water network, the oceanic political cal China is entirely different from contem- gap deeply informed the filmmaking on both porary mainland China’ (Hou 1998). Indeed, sides. The fact that Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s films Flowers of Shanghai used long shots and an cannot deal with certain features of ‘Chinese’ immobile camera to make a splendid history is an effect not just of the spatial display of late Qing interior decoration, distance between Taiwan and the mainland, achieving a dreamy and yet claustrophobic but also of the psychological distance. Even effect. During the 1980s and 1990s, both if one repudiates the Cold-War conception of Taiwan and Hong Kong filmmakers red China as a ‘strange beast,’ even after the adopted the strategy of avoiding the red beast has dissipated into dust, one can still (communist) period of mainland China by feel the shadowy hole left by its absence. At using the period between late Qing and the the beginning of the 1980s, both sides 1940s as the entry point of their narratives launched art films. However, just when on China. But the filming process of Flowers Hou’s films began their political interven- of Shanghai revealed a deeper symptom: tion, the fifth-generation film directors were because of difficulties about permission to abandoning the function of social criticism. If film in mainland China, Flowers of Shanghai, we say that Hou’s Taiwan trilogy shows which was scheduled to be filmed in Shang- traces of the Cold War in its structural gaps, hai, had to be finished indoors in Taiwan. the mainland Chinese films at the turn of the The scenes of Hou Road and the Qian family 21st century toy with the ‘red ghost’ of cold- residence have disappeared in the war history and memory. As both sides of completed film; but the end-of-film screen the Taiwan Straits become more involved in still credits ‘Qian Zigang played by Xie globalization and in regional conflicts and Xian,’ reflecting the anticipated but unreal- restructurings, the shadow and ghost will ized arrival on the mainland. In the film, surely recur constantly in the texts and soci- people rush to the window to look at the eties of these two places. non-existent Hou Road. The scene is like a Perhaps, in a way, Flowers of Shanghai is reversal of the famous picture on Zhang no exception. For the first time, Hou set a Ailing’s book cover, where a modern person film on the mainland, and for the first time is outside the window looking in at a he planned to film on the mainland. But in domestic scene of the late Qing and the reaching ‘China’, he departed from it on beginning of the Republic: here Hou’s film another level, for the film shows the absence portrays a modern China from afar, in a late

Pursuing and escaping history 249

Qing building in Taiwan. The revisiting of the story of time itself, encapsulated in the modern Chinese history has become another film’s final image of a train going through a flight from history, a failure to bridge the dark tunnel. huge gap created by the Cold War. Once again, caught in the struggle A few years later, a young woman between history and reality, Hou Hsiao- roaming in metropolitan cities searching for Hsien has returned to himself, temporarily historical traces appears in yet another of suspending the long march into the hinter- Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s masterpieces, Coffee land of history and reality. Jikou. Hou Hsiao-Hsien made this Japanese film to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of Japan’s famous filmmaker Yasujiro References Ozu. Coffee Jikou has established Hou Hsiao- Frodon, Jean-Michel (ed.) (1999) Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Hsien as the pre-eminent Asian art film Cahiers du Cinéma. master. However, the fact that Japan Hasumi, Shigehiko (1999) ‘Contemporary nostalgia’. remains as the ambiguous Other within In Jean-Michel Frodon (ed.) Hou Hsiao-Hsien. Taiwan informs Hou’s (non)historical narra- Hou, Hsiao-Hsien (1998) ‘Preface to A Complete tive. A thin Hou-style narrative thread links Screenplay of Flowers of Shanghai’, A Complete Screenplay of Flowers of Shanghai Taiwan, Japan and China, as these three : , Taipei: Yuanliu places occupy the real and also the imagi- chubanshe. nary discursive space in contemporary Jameson, Fredric (1986) ‘Third World literature in Taiwan. In the film, a young Japanese the era of multinational capitalism’, Social Text woman named Yoko is pregnant with a 15(Autumn): 65–88. child by a Taiwanese umbrella merchant. Tobias, Scott (2006) ‘Symphony space presents The umbrella merchant has already moved Flowers of Shanghai & The Puppetmaster (DOUBLE FEATURE!)’, http://www.sympho- his factory to mainland China. Yoko calmly nyspace.org/event/428. decides by herself to remain unmarried and be a single mother. The story is not about a marriage between history and reality or Special terms about their painful separation. However, A Borrowed Life many episodes in the film show Yoko look- A City of Sadness ing for biographical material and historical A Time to Live, A Time to Die records about a mainland Chinese musician Coffee Jikou named Jiang Wen. Jiang Wen was born in Daughters of the Nile Taiwan, held a Japanese passport, and died Dust in the Wind as a Chinese on the mainland. Jiang Wen’s films about the native land life is clearly linked with a turbulent part of Good Men, Good Women Asian history. Yoko meticulously traces the One and Eight trail that Jiang Wen left in Taiwan, Japan The Boys from Fengkuei and mainland China; but she never wishes The Puppetmaster to arrive at an understanding of history, let Yasujiro Ozu alone to participate in history. The traces that Yoko can find are only the physical places where Jiang Wen spent his days, Author’s biography some existing only as landmarks recorded on old maps. Even those traces are sunk Professor Dai Jinhua graduated from the Depart- deep in historical dust. The figures once ment of Chinese, Peking University, in 1982. She is Professor of the Institute of Comparative Literature alive in history have all become ghosts and Comparative Culture in Peking University, the lingering in the sediments of history, unable Director of the Cultural Studies Workshop, and to form concrete shapes. Even though Yoko Visiting Professor of the Department of East Asia, may not have recovered any fragments of Ohio State University, USA. Professor Dai is history, she may have come to understand engaged in studies of mass culture, film history and

250 Dai Jinhua feminist literature. Her publications include Translator’s biography Surfacing from History: A study of Contemporary Women Literature, Breaking Out of the City of Mirrors: Zhang Jingyuan teaches at the Department of East Women, Film, Literature, The Mirror and Secular Asian Languages and Comparative Literature Myths: 18 Film Cases, Invisible Writing: Chinese Program, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, Cultural Studies in the 1990s, Outlook from a Slanting USA. Tower: Chinese Film Culture 1978–1998. Contact address: Department of East Asian Contact address: Institute of Comparative Literature Languages and Cultures, ICC 306, Georgetown and Culture, Peking University, Beijing 100871, University, Box 571052, Washington DC 20057-1052. People’s Republic of China. USA.