Eighteen years after Ang Lee’s (李安) Eat Drink Man Woman (飲食男女) hit the big screen, the film’s producer Hsu Li-kong (徐立功) and award-winning television director Tsao Jui-yuan (曹瑞原) are releasing what’s billed as the sequel, Joyful Reunion (飲食男女—好遠又好近), which stars one of the original cast, Kui Ya-lei (歸亞蕾).
The film relies on the same concept of mixing food and human relationships, but content-wise it’s not sequel at all. The result, a narratively uneven tale about two families in China and Taiwan, delivered with a message of reunification, is nothing like Lee’s 1994 work, which explores familial relations and social reality.
In present-day Hangzhou, China, aging chef Tang Shizhe (Kenneth Tsang, 曾江) and his two daughters lead respectable and comfortable lives, thanks to the father’s prosperous vegetarian restaurant.
Photo courtesy of Activator Marketing Company
The elder daughter, Wa’er (Huo Siyan, 霍思燕), whose boyfriend, Chang Chuan (Blue Lan, 藍正龍), is a slightly nerdy computer game designer from Taipei, manages a luxury health resort.
One day Chang takes his aunt, Pai Ping (Kuei), who raised him like her own son, back to Hangzhou after a trip to Taipei.
To Ping, the Chinese city, which she grew up in and has not visited after fleeing to Taiwan during the Chinese Civil War, looks unrecognizable at first. But she soon settles into the luxurious surroundings at the resort where Wa’er works.
Meanwhile, Shizhe announces his plan to sell the restaurant because the chronic illness he suffers from is starting to take its toll. While agonized by her father’s condition, Wa’er is fed up with being neglected by Chang, who spends too much time in the virtual world, and decides to break up with him.
In an attempt to get the two back together, Pai phones Shizhe, who invites her to his restaurant for a feast. When the elders meet, memories come rushing back.
The film’s most glaring flaw is its structurally shaky screenplay, which was penned by six writers and two contributors, who are credited with “script coordination.”
While the movie’s most enjoyable moments are when the screen is dominated by Kui’s high-energy performance, she sometimes overdoes the comic delivery.
Anchored by Tsang’s quiet poise, Kui moves freely from a forthright, loud-mouthed waishengren (外省人, or person who fled to Taiwan after the Chinese Civil War) visiting The New China, to a woman reliving the emotions of her past life.
As the English title suggests, Joyful Reunion is more of a fairy-tale in which two generations learn to get along and live happily ever after. Whether the film is politically naive, or just a cynical ploy to tap China’s market, is up to the audience to decide.
On April 26, The Lancet published a letter from two doctors at Taichung-based China Medical University Hospital (CMUH) warning that “Taiwan’s Health Care System is on the Brink of Collapse.” The authors said that “Years of policy inaction and mismanagement of resources have led to the National Health Insurance system operating under unsustainable conditions.” The pushback was immediate. Errors in the paper were quickly identified and publicized, to discredit the authors (the hospital apologized). CNA reported that CMUH said the letter described Taiwan in 2021 as having 62 nurses per 10,000 people, when the correct number was 78 nurses per 10,000
As we live longer, our risk of cognitive impairment is increasing. How can we delay the onset of symptoms? Do we have to give up every indulgence or can small changes make a difference? We asked neurologists for tips on how to keep our brains healthy for life. TAKE CARE OF YOUR HEALTH “All of the sensible things that apply to bodily health apply to brain health,” says Suzanne O’Sullivan, a consultant in neurology at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in London, and the author of The Age of Diagnosis. “When you’re 20, you can get away with absolute
May 5 to May 11 What started out as friction between Taiwanese students at Taichung First High School and a Japanese head cook escalated dramatically over the first two weeks of May 1927. It began on April 30 when the cook’s wife knew that lotus starch used in that night’s dinner had rat feces in it, but failed to inform staff until the meal was already prepared. The students believed that her silence was intentional, and filed a complaint. The school’s Japanese administrators sided with the cook’s family, dismissing the students as troublemakers and clamping down on their freedoms — with
As Donald Trump’s executive order in March led to the shuttering of Voice of America (VOA) — the global broadcaster whose roots date back to the fight against Nazi propaganda — he quickly attracted support from figures not used to aligning themselves with any US administration. Trump had ordered the US Agency for Global Media, the federal agency that funds VOA and other groups promoting independent journalism overseas, to be “eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law.” The decision suddenly halted programming in 49 languages to more than 425 million people. In Moscow, Margarita Simonyan, the hardline editor-in-chief of the
RSS