Taiwanese IT tycoon Terry Gou’s (郭台銘) first foray into film funding, Empire of Silver (白銀帝國) has generated hype galore since shooting began in 2006. Three years, 46 locations and NT$400 million later, the period drama about an affluent banking family in Shanxi Province is a decent but less-than-impressive movie directed by Christina Yao (姚樹華), a Taiwan-born theater scholar, director and writer who has worked at theatrical companies and universities here and in the US.
The story centers on the powerful Kang family in late 19th-century China. Led by Lord Kang (China’s Zhang Tielin, 張鐵林), the family-run banking empire single-handedly built up what has come to be known as the Wall Street of imperial China through managing funds and issuing money orders.
Third Master (Aaron Kwok, 郭富城) is Lord Kang’s debauched and least favorite son. After his brothers meet with a series of tragic accidents, he becomes heir apparent to the clan’s mighty enterprise.
Aside from possessing neither the ambition nor the aptitude to become a money-driven businessman, Third Master’s conflict with his father involves his young Western-educated stepmother, Madam Kang (Hao Lei, 郝蕾), a diplomat’s daughter. She taught Third Master English and the two fell deeply in love before Lord Kang stepped in and stole the fair maiden.
The son embarks on a self-imposed exile in the desert, only to return upon hearing the news of his stepmother’s death. Meanwhile, as foreign intervention and civil war weakens the tottering Qing Dynasty, the economic meltdown that ensues forces Third Master to take the reins and lead his family.
Honed by some of China’s top filmmaking professionals, including artistic consultants William Chang (張叔平) and Yee Chung-man (奚仲文), cinematographer Anthony Pun (潘耀明) and editor Liao Ching-sung (廖慶松), the film has an immaculately polished look and shows unforgiving attention to the smallest detail in its profile of the affluent family. Reams of research went into the art direction — all of the antiques and artifacts used in the film are reported to be genuine.
The period’s banking operations are revealed in an early scene in which branch managers from across China gather in Lord Kang’s courtyard, waiting for their yearly shares to be announced after a ceremony that involves rows of abacuses. The Kang family’s luxurious lifestyle is eloquently painted and contrasted with the destitute world inhabited by the poor and the sick outside the clan compound’s stone walls.
Inside, a familial war is played out in silence between Lord Kang, the autocratic patriarch, Third Master, the conflicted son, and Madam Kang, the wife who goes as far as to mutilate her genitals as an act of rebellion. Such sober human drama recalls Zhang Yimou’s (張藝謀) 1991 masterpiece Raise the Red Lantern (大紅燈籠高高掛) and its focus on the repression of women.
Yet Empire of Silver fails to become a contemporarily relevant and absorbing story. Based on Chinese writer Cheng Yi’s (成一) three-volume novel The Silver Valley (白銀谷), the epic tale spans from late imperial to early Republican China and takes in the Boxer Rebellion (義和團) along the way. But unlike the tumultuous backdrop, the world of early banking proves to be barren ground for drama.
None of the characters is fully explored. The film’s story lines and themes vie for the audience’s attention and end up obscuring the narrative. On the one hand, there is the ideological clash between Confucian teachings and profit-driven pragmatism. On the other, we have the son experiencing a coming-of-age adventure in the Gobi Desert that involves a pack of wolves. Towards the end of the film, when their characters bid farewell to each other, the two romantic leads, Kwok and Hao, turn in stiff performances that are more soap opera than movie magic, and appear to read their lines from a teleprompter.
Cameos by Hollywood actress Jennifer Tilly and Taiwanese veterans Chin Shih-jie (金士傑) and Tien Niu (恬妞) merely add confusion to the dramatically incoherent film. And rather than smooth over the narrative blips, the recurrent and punctuated musical leitmotifs become annoying.
Last week saw the appearance of another odious screed full of lies from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) Ambassador to Australia, Xiao Qian (肖千), in the Financial Review, a major Australian paper. Xiao’s piece was presented without challenge or caveat. His “Seven truths on why Taiwan always will be China’s” presented a “greatest hits” of the litany of PRC falsehoods. This includes: Taiwan’s indigenous peoples were descended from the people of China 30,000 years ago; a “Chinese” imperial government administrated Taiwan in the 14th century; Koxinga, also known as Cheng Cheng-kung (鄭成功), “recovered” Taiwan for China; the Qing owned
Jan. 20 to Jan. 26 Taipei was in a jubilant, patriotic mood on the morning of Jan. 25, 1954. Flags hung outside shops and residences, people chanted anti-communist slogans and rousing music blared from loudspeakers. The occasion was the arrival of about 14,000 Chinese prisoners from the Korean War, who had elected to head to Taiwan instead of being repatriated to China. The majority landed in Keelung over three days and were paraded through the capital to great fanfare. Air Force planes dropped colorful flyers, one of which read, “You’re back, you’re finally back. You finally overcame the evil communist bandits and
I am kneeling quite awkwardly on a cushion in a yoga studio in London’s Shoreditch on an unseasonably chilly Wednesday and wondering when exactly will be the optimum time to rearrange my legs. I have an ice-cold mango and passion fruit kombucha beside me and an agonising case of pins and needles. The solution to pins and needles, I learned a few years ago, is to directly confront the agony: pull your legs out from underneath you, bend your toes up as high as they can reach, and yes, it will hurt far more initially, but then the pain subsides.
When 17-year-old Lin Shih (林石) crossed the Taiwan Strait in 1746 with a group of settlers, he could hardly have known the magnitude of wealth and influence his family would later amass on the island, or that one day tourists would be walking through the home of his descendants in central Taiwan. He might also have been surprised to see the family home located in Wufeng District (霧峰) of Taichung, as Lin initially settled further north in what is now Dali District (大里). However, after the Qing executed him for his alleged participation in the Lin Shuang-Wen Rebellion (林爽文事件), his grandsons were
RSS