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.
Cheng Ching-hsiang (鄭青祥) turned a small triangle of concrete jammed between two old shops into a cool little bar called 9dimension. In front of the shop, a steampunk-like structure was welded by himself to serve as a booth where he prepares cocktails. “Yancheng used to be just old people,” he says, “but now young people are coming and creating the New Yancheng.” Around the corner, Yu Hsiu-jao (饒毓琇), opened Tiny Cafe. True to its name, it is the size of a cupboard and serves cold-brewed coffee. “Small shops are so special and have personality,” she says, “people come to Yancheng to find such treasures.” She
In July of 1995, a group of local DJs began posting an event flyer around Taipei. It was cheaply photocopied and nearly all in English, with a hand-drawn map on the back and, on the front, a big red hand print alongside one prominent line of text, “Finally… THE PARTY.” The map led to a remote floodplain in Taipei County (now New Taipei City) just across the Tamsui River from Taipei. The organizers got permission from no one. They just drove up in a blue Taiwanese pickup truck, set up a generator, two speakers, two turntables and a mixer. They
The low voter turnout for the referendum on Aug. 23 shows that many Taiwanese are apathetic about nuclear energy, but there are long-term energy stakes involved that the public needs to grasp Taiwan faces an energy trilemma: soaring AI-driven demand, pressure to cut carbon and reliance on fragile fuel imports. But the nuclear referendum on Aug. 23 showed how little this registered with voters, many of whom neither see the long game nor grasp the stakes. Volunteer referendum worker Vivian Chen (陳薇安) put it bluntly: “I’ve seen many people asking what they’re voting for when they arrive to vote. They cast their vote without even doing any research.” Imagine Taiwanese voters invited to a poker table. The bet looked simple — yes or no — yet most never showed. More than two-thirds of those
Former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairwoman Hung Hsiu-chu’s (洪秀柱) attendance at the Chinese Communist Party’s (CPP) “Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War” parade in Beijing is infuriating, embarrassing and insulting to nearly everyone in Taiwan, and Taiwan’s friends and allies. She is also ripping off bandages and pouring salt into old wounds. In the process she managed to tie both the KMT and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) into uncomfortable knots. The KMT continues to honor their heroic fighters, who defended China against the invading Japanese Empire, which inflicted unimaginable horrors on the
RSS