Taipei Story

The literal meaning of the Chinese title, Qing Mei Zhu Ma (青梅竹馬) is a Chinese idiom, "green plums and a bamboo horse". It alludes to an 8th-century poem by Li Bai, and is used to refer to a childhood sweetheart. The English title Taipei Story marks the theme of the failed love story: the Taipei City, which is the common theme in all of Edward Yang’s films, including notably The Terrorizers (恐怖份子; 1986) and A One and A Two (一一; 2000).

The construction company where Ah-chen (played by Tsai Chin) worked as a senior assistant was to be acquired and merged. Her former boss did not have a new job for her. She pitied her mother, who put up with her irresponsible chauvinist father all her life but was determined to leave the confining family as soon as possible. She wished to get married and immigrate to the US with her childhood sweetheart Ah-lung.

Owner of a cloth shop at Dihua Street and former little league baseball player of the national team, Ah-lung on the other hand was not so keen about moving to the US to join his brother-in-law for import business. When Ah-lung came back from a visit to the US, she was troubled by his passivity regarding the immigration plan.

A conservative and generous person, he was nostalgic about the past glory of winning the Little League World Series and willing to help Ah-chen’s father pay back his debt, his poor baseball teammate pitcher get his gambling wife back home, and his former lover Ah-gwan settle her divorce lawsuit.  He and Ah-chen seemed to live in two different worlds, hers was western and modern and his local and traditional.

Ah-chen kept an ambiguous relationship with a married architect in the company, who told her he was going to get a divorce.  When Ah-chen discovered that Ah-lung had been to Tokyo to meet Ah-gwan, she was so angry that she slapped him on the face, which caused him to break up with her. Ah-chen found solace in her younger sister’s gang of delinquent youths and had a good time partying, dancing and bike-riding. In the meantime she found out that the architect was leaving his wife.

One of the young men in her sister’s gang had a crush on her and began to pursue her passionately by waiting for her in front of her apartment. One night, Ah-chen was too scared to go home and called Ah-lung for help. Ah-lung took her back to her apartment. Hoping to get back together with Ah-lung, she asked him to marry her. Ah-lung turned her down by saying that neither marriage nor immigration was any cure for their problems.

On his way out Ah-lung saw the young man outside Ah-chen’s apartment. He told him to stop stalking her and took a taxi to go back to his place on Yangming mountain. The young man followed him and stabbed him when they had a fight on the mountain road. His body was only discovered the next day beside a pile of garbage.

Ignorant of Ah-lung’s death Ah-chen accompanied her former boss Mrs. Mei to inspect the office space for the local branch of a US electronic company she was going to set up. In contrast to Mrs. Mei’s excitement for the new prospect, Ah-chen was at loss regarding her future with Ah-lung.

• Tsai Chin (蔡琴) as Ah-chen, an office worker
• Hou Hsiao-hsien (侯孝賢) as Ah-lung, a cloth shop owner and former baseball player
• Wu Nien-jen (吳念真) as Ch'en, Ah-lung’s friend, a taxi driver and former baseball player
• Lin Hsiu-ling (林秀玲) as Ling, Ah-chen’s little sister
• Ke Su-yun (柯素雲) as Ah-gwan, Ah-lung’s ex-girlfriend
• Ko I-chen (柯一正) as Mr. Ke, Ah-chen's colleague and an architect
• Mei Fang (梅芳) as Ah-chen's mother
• Wu Ping-nan (吳柄南) as Ah-chen's father
• Yang Li-yin (楊麗音) as Chen's wife
• Chen Shu-fang (陳淑芳) as Mrs. Mei, Ah-chen's boss
• Lai Te-nan (賴德南) as Mr. Lai, a football coach

The leading actress Tsai Chin fell in love with Edward Yang during the shooting and they got married in 1985.[4]

Hou Hsiao-hsien, who is the leading actor in the movie and one of the representative directors of Taiwan’s new wave cinema,[5] used to be a friend of Edward Yang.[4] Hou’s character and performance inspired Edward Yang to write the script of Taipei Story and the characteristics of Ah-lung refer to the personal experience of Hou Hsiao-hsien.[6]

At that time, Yang did not have enough money to make Taipei Story. Hou Hsiao-hsien invested 3 million in the production. The box office of the film was so bad that it was only screened for four days in theaters.

Hou Hsiao-hsien’s performance in Taipei Story was his first acting experience on screen. It was impressive enough to get him nominated for the Best Leading Actor at the 22nd Golden House Awards. He fell short for the award, which was granted to Hong Kong star Donald Chow Yun Fat (周潤發), who got one more vote than he from the juries.[6]

The film was digitally restored (4K) by the World Cinema Foundation Project in association with Taiwan Film Institute (now Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Center), Royal Film Archive of Belgium, and Hou Hsiao-hsien in 2017.

Hou Hsiao-hsien is nominated for the Best Leading Actor and Yang Wei-han for the Best Cinematography at the 22nd Golden Horse Awards.[7] The film won the FIPRESCI Prize at the 38th Locarno Film Festival in 1985.[1]

According to the Doc Film Society, the film "displays Yang's uncompromising critique of the middle-class with its dissection of its heroine's emotional fragility, vainly disguised behind the sunglasses she sports day and night. As she flees the past, her boyfriend idealistically clings to it, a Confucian rigidity toward which Yang bears still less patience."[8]

• Taipei Story at IMDb
• Taipei Story (2017 re-release) at Box Office Mojo
• Taipei Story at Rotten Tomatoes
• Taipei Story: Modern Planning an essay by Andrew Chan at the Criterion Collection