Taipei has recently been portrayed as an exotic landscape for a Swedish mother and her son in Miss Kicki (霓虹心) and as a city of romance in Au Revoir Taipei (一頁台北). Now comes television commercial director Hsiao Ya-chuan’s (蕭雅全) Taipei Exchanges (第36個故事), which was commissioned by the Taipei City Government’s Department of Information and Tourism (台北市觀光傳播局). The movie attempts to downplay the city’s reputation as a center of capitalism populated by money-grubbing consumers by limiting much of the action to a cafe where an idealistic young woman opens a side business based on bartering.
The film begins with Doris (Guai Lun-mei, 桂綸鎂) fulfilling a dream by opening a coffee shop in an artsy neighborhood. Doris wants the store to look elegant and tasteful, but after a party to celebrate the establishment of her business she finds it piled with odd gifts such as a recipe written in Thai, a wig and a life-sized, anatomically correct doll.
These unwanted housewarming presents give Doris’ sassy younger sister Josie (Zaizai Lin, 林辰唏) the idea to run a bartering business out of their shop. Soon Doris’ dream comes to look more like a warehouse than a cafe.
Doris, the more pragmatic of the two sisters, decides to put up with Josie’s shenanigans as more and more customers are drawn to the cafe looking for things to exchange. “They will order more coffee when they try to figure out what they want to barter with,” Josie says to Doris.
One day, a man named Chou (Chang Han, 張翰) walks into the store and wants to exchange the 35 bars of soap he has collected from 35 different countries for something, but he’s not sure what that something is. Chou becomes a regular at Doris’ coffee shop, and each time he visits, the traveler recounts a story about one of the bars of soap.
Captivated by Chou’s stories, Doris starts to dream again. Only this time, in her dreams she is visiting the places Chou has been talking about, encountering people and having experiences that will give her her own stories to tell.
Given its director’s background in an environment that prizes efficiency, Taipei Exchanges paints a surprisingly sweet, romantic portrait of a Taipei where capitalism is superseded by a barter economy, and memory and relationships are more valuable than commerce and commodity. The film neatly plays with the two distinct value systems as represented by the two sisters, one practical, the other utopian, and aims for a reconciliation between the two.
The movie is well-crafted, and its fairy-tale feel is charmingly enhanced by artist Wu Meng-yun’s (吳孟芸) child-like illustrated art, and a warm, comforting score by Summer Lei (雷光夏) and Ho Zhi-jian (侯志堅). The narrative flow is sometimes interrupted by footage of street interviews with real-life Taipei residents, who comment on the choices Doris makes in the film.
But with 80 percent of the film taking place inside the coffee shop, Hsiao stretches his already thin material a bit too much and loses the momentum he would have needed to make a serious statement. Much like the pretty drawings and postcards on display in the cafe, the film’s characters seem to live exclusively in delightful vignettes that are inspired by the real world but not truly rooted in it.
Doris’ Coffee Shop (朵兒咖啡館) was built from scratch by the film crew in an old apartment on Taipei’s tree-lined Fujin Street (富錦街), an area that is home to an assortment of interesting boutiques and other shops. It became a real coffee shop after the shooting of the film, and it wouldn’t be much of a surprise if this stylish cafe becomes a popular tourist attraction after Taipei Exchanges hits theaters across the country.
In case you were wondering, no, you can’t trade in your old toaster for someone else’s discarded teddy bear at Doris’ Coffee Shop. That’s just in the movie.
On Jan. 17, Beijing announced that it would allow residents of Shanghai and Fujian Province to visit Taiwan. The two sides are still working out the details. President William Lai (賴清德) has been promoting cross-strait tourism, perhaps to soften the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) attitudes, perhaps as a sop to international and local opinion leaders. Likely the latter, since many observers understand that the twin drivers of cross-strait tourism — the belief that Chinese tourists will bring money into Taiwan, and the belief that tourism will create better relations — are both false. CHINESE TOURISM PIPE DREAM Back in July
Could Taiwan’s democracy be at risk? There is a lot of apocalyptic commentary right now suggesting that this is the case, but it is always a conspiracy by the other guys — our side is firmly on the side of protecting democracy and always has been, unlike them! The situation is nowhere near that bleak — yet. The concern is that the power struggle between the opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and their now effectively pan-blue allies the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) and the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) intensifies to the point where democratic functions start to break down. Both
Taiwan doesn’t have a lot of railways, but its network has plenty of history. The government-owned entity that last year became the Taiwan Railway Corp (TRC) has been operating trains since 1891. During the 1895-1945 period of Japanese rule, the colonial government made huge investments in rail infrastructure. The northern port city of Keelung was connected to Kaohsiung in the south. New lines appeared in Pingtung, Yilan and the Hualien-Taitung region. Railway enthusiasts exploring Taiwan will find plenty to amuse themselves. Taipei will soon gain its second rail-themed museum. Elsewhere there’s a number of endearing branch lines and rolling-stock collections, some
This was not supposed to be an election year. The local media is billing it as the “2025 great recall era” (2025大罷免時代) or the “2025 great recall wave” (2025大罷免潮), with many now just shortening it to “great recall.” As of this writing the number of campaigns that have submitted the requisite one percent of eligible voters signatures in legislative districts is 51 — 35 targeting Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus lawmakers and 16 targeting Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers. The pan-green side has more as they started earlier. Many recall campaigns are billing themselves as “Winter Bluebirds” after the “Bluebird Action”
RSS