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Latent Image - Summer 2003 Taiwanese Identity in the Films of Hou Hsao-hsienDaniel Matz The cinema of Taiwanese director Hou Hsao- hsien is one of identity as perceived through history and personal experience. For almost twenty years he has been one of only a few artists to represent to the West an image of modern Taiwan. That Hou is a “Taiwanese director” already connotes a sense of identity, but to fully understand his work, we must understand first what it means to be “Taiwanese.” This question in itself could warrant an essay, so my brief analysis here must simply serve to enrich our understanding and enjoyment of Hou’s films. Since history plays such a large role in the creation of Taiwanese identity and, therefore, in the films of Hou Hsao-hsien, a brief historical overview of Taiwan, with an emphasis on events relevant to this creation, is necessary. With this knowledge we can analyze some of Hou’s films, and build something of an understanding of his work as a whole. Taiwan is an island off the coast of China; between them runs the Taiwan Strait. Most of its inhabitants came, at one time or another, from China. China’s influence on the island is one of the major themes of Taiwan studies, and one of the dominating elements of Taiwanese identity, but it would be inaccurate merely to see the people of Taiwan as displaced Chinese. Taiwan is a country made up of refugees with histories of their own. The earliest known inhabitants on the island are aboriginal tribes, still in existence, but living on the margins of society, with a similar status as Native Americans in the United States. A Chinese presence appeared on the island as early as the thirteenth century, but there was little, if any, official recognition of Taiwan by China. The island was a frequent stop for European pirates, and in the early 1600’s, it was colonized by the Dutch, thus beginning a long history of colonial rule, which would come to define the Taiwanese people. The Manchu conquest of China saw large numbers of Chinese flee to Taiwan, many with the idea of someday returning to the mainland. It was used as a military base to help reclaim China for the Ming dynasty. While this never happened, the Dutch were ousted by the mid seventeenth century. At this point in history, the cultural identity of Taiwan’s people gets more confusing. Mainland China is now ruled by the Manchu dynasty, which has just overthrown the Ming dynasty. Taiwan has just experienced an influx of refugees identifying with the freshly defunct Ming China; China is their homeland, but as it exists now, it is their enemy. Taiwan is seen as a temporary home; many expect to return to the mainland at some time, though this time never comes. On top of this are the many residents of Taiwan who are ethnic Chinese, but bear no cultural relationship to the Ming refugees of the mid 1600’s. Furthermore, there are many ethnic divisions within the “Taiwanese” people. The two most prevalent are Fukienese (often simply called Taiwanese) and Hakkas. The Fukien Taiwanese originally came from southern and coastal China, and represent a large majority of the Taiwanese population. Most of the refugees of the Manchu conquest were Fukienese. The Hakkas were a persecuted minority in China, and they became one as well in Taiwan. The most distinct difference in the two is their language. The Fukien Taiwanese spoke a Fukien Chinese dialect now called Taiwanese. The Hakkas spoke a Hakka Chinese dialect. Although the writing of the dialects is the same, they are incomprehensible to each other when spoken. From the 1680’s to 1895, Taiwan was ruled by China. During this time, the hope of returning to the mainland disappeared as younger generations came to associate with Taiwan, not China. Taiwan was a colony of China, and while the culture of the people was Chinese in origin, centuries of separation had created more differences in the two. The people of Taiwan considered themselves Taiwanese, not Chinese, and there were many unsuccessful attempts at rebellion. In 1895, China lost a war with Japan and Taiwan became a Japanese colony. It was one of the defining moments of Taiwanese cultural and national identity. The Japanese colonization lasted until their defeat in World War II. In those fifty years, Taiwan was subject to intense cultural change enforced by the Japanese. Most significantly, the Japanese forced their language upon Taiwan. For fifty years then, children grew up speaking Japanese, not Taiwanese. The wedge this placed between Chinese and Taiwanese identity is incalculable and cannot be stressed enough. The Japanese also enforced their systems of education, science, and social practices. Traditional Chinese art and culture were banned. For all of the adverse treatment, however, the Japanese also made a concerted effort to modernize Taiwan. Under Japanese colonial rule, education (especially literacy), health, and standards of living improved. Japan also began the industrialization of Taiwan, eventually changing it from a rural farming society to one with vibrant cosmopolitan cities. Though the Taiwanese resented their colonizers, they soon came to associate with some of the ways of Japanese thought, the most ostensible being the Japanese language. The next, last, and perhaps most significant migration of Chinese into Taiwan occurred in the years after World War II, when Taiwan was “returned” to Chinese rule. In China, a civil war was waged between the Nationalist (Kuomintang or KMT) government and Mao Zedong’s communist uprising. As Mao took power, many Nationalists fled to Taiwan, where a Kuomintang government was set up, planning to recapture the mainland. In 1949, a large number of Nationalists relocated to Taiwan, along with the entire KMT government, led by Chiang Kai-shek. This group, known as the Mainlanders, soon took control of the Taiwanese government, becoming the dominant social class of Taiwan, relegating the now native Taiwanese to second-class citizen status. The Mainlanders were highly prejudiced against the Taiwanese, whom they saw as insignificant Japanese colonials. Once again, Taiwan was being ruled by outsiders. The Japanese had been bad enough, but the Chinese seemed even worse. There was a language barrier, and, thanks to Japan, Taiwan was more industrialized than China. And again, even the outsider ruling class people were outsiders because they too were refugees. This history may seem long, but it is necessary, and even more so at this point. Hou Hsao-hsien was born in China in 1947, the year of the first wave of migration of Mainlanders to Taiwan. His parents fled with him in 1949 with the bulk of the Nationalists. Though he was a Mainlander, he grew up among many Taiwanese in a rural village. His sense of identity therefore was shaped by his Chinese roots, but more so by his Mainlander status, and his association with other Taiwanese. 1947 also saw the implementation of martial law in Taiwan, following a large Taiwanese protest, met with massacre by the KMT government. The February 28th Incident (or 2-28 as it is known), had a lasting effect on the psyche of the Taiwanese nation, though the government denied its existence until the lifting of martial law forty years later in 1987. This period of Nationalist rule, from 1947-1987 was defined by the government’s attempt to define Taiwan as the true heir of Chinese culture, calling itself the Republic of China, and referring to Mao’s People’s Republic of China as a group of rebels. Travel and communication between China and Taiwan were forbidden. The mainlanders also brought with them the Mandarin dialect of Chinese, typically considered an upper-class dialect compared to the local dialects of rural people. Mandarin was forced onto the Taiwanese as Japanese had been. A Taiwanese consciousness began to emerge, along with great social change. In the 1980’s, Taiwan saw its first Taiwanese president, Lee Teng-hui, put an end to the history of Mainlander rule of the island. China was opened up to trade and visitors were allowed to travel to the mainland. Today, Taiwan is one of the largest trading countries in Asia. Influence from the United State, Europe, Japan, other parts of Asia, and now China, have all had a great impact on the social structure of the country. As the economy grows, some, including Hou, fear modernization is bringing a loss of Taiwanese tradition and identity, especially as Western influence creeps in. In his films, Hou has recreated historical times and drawn on personal experience, to create his vision of Taiwanese identities: ones that he never knew, the ones he was raised with, and the ones forming now. Hou’s place in Taiwanese, and international, film is interesting. Until the early 1980’s, Taiwanese cinema was dominated by governmental influence. During the Korean War, anti-communist and anti-Russian themes were common; film served as a political tool. (Yu 37). By the 1970’s, escapist melodrama and action films were popular, and government censorship, kept in place by martial law, assured films represented a strict code of governmental values (Rodriguez 72). Hou began making films in the early eighties as part of a young generation of “Taiwanese New Wave” filmmakers. These directors made more personal films, with more distinct style. The lifting of martial law in 1987 allowed Hou to make his epic masterpiece A City of Sadness, which focuses on a family during the time of the February 28th Incident. This was one of the first times the incident was addressed publicly in Taiwan, and the film is said to have been seen by half of Taiwan’s population (Variety, Feb. 17. 62). Hou’s films then serve as a representation of Taiwanese history and identity to the Taiwanese people, but they also give an image of Taiwan to the West. Along with Edward Yang and maybe Tsai Ming-liang, Hou’s is one of the few Taiwanese voices to reach Western audiences. Still, although his films are popular within the festival circuit, not one has ever been released commercially in the U.S. This stands in stark comparison to his contemporaries across the strait. The 1980’s saw in China the emergence of the “Fifth Generation” filmmakers. Like the Taiwanese New Wave directors, they made artistically inclined films that stood apart from the bulk of China’s film output. The Fifth Generation filmmakers though have been very successful in the West, even in the U.S. They win awards worldwide and they get theatrical distribution. However, some Fifth Generation filmmakers, particularly the illustrious Zhang Yimou, have been accused of catering to the West. By presenting exotic images of China’s mythical past, they are “self-Othering,” (Lu 20), distancing themselves from their audience to create a sense of curiosity and wonder. The problem with such films is that the people in their home country do not identify with them; the image, presented to the West, is perhaps a false one. Conversely, Taiwanese films, which rarely reach Western audiences, are said to represent their own culture more truthfully. They are modern stories set a modern world. So while mainland films make money and gain attention by presenting an inauthentic exotic self-image, “Taiwan films are much more closely related to the daily reality of consumer society in the West. In this sense, they are too familiar to provide images of an exotic other” (Lu 17). Hou’s cinema is especially incompatible with Western audiences because of his style and subject matter. Far from the fast pace of American and Hong Kong films his compositions usually remains static or slowly moving. The camera keeps its distance, rarely, if ever, giving the viewer a close-up, the key of American moviemaking. While American film acting is often relegated to the face, Hou’s cinema presents us with the whole body of the actor, as if we were there on the set. His stories are not told in a straightforward way, but in gestures and mumbles. Often an important event is not seen on screen, but is talked about by other characters; the viewer has to piece together the story and its meaning at the same time. Without previous knowledge of Taiwanese history or identity, the subtle themes of his films can easily fail to be grasped. Finally, Hou’s films are difficult for Western audiences because they deal with Taiwanese identity, something few Westerners know enough about to understand fully or empathize with. Fifty years of Japanese occupation, though it ended in 1945, has permanently affected the culture of Taiwan. Even young people today are influenced by Japan through numerous Japanese cable television stations (Ellickson 15). In The Puppetmaster, Hou tells the story of the life of Li Tianlu, a puppeteer and performer who was born in 1910, just fifteen years into the Japanese occupation of Taiwan. Through Li’s personal story, Hou tells the story of Taiwan under Japanese rule; national history in his cinema is inextricably linked to more modest personal histories. In the beginning of the film, we learn that Li’s father was not allowed to give Li his own surname. Born into a Japanese colony, Li has two confused identities, the general one of being Taiwanese, and the one regarding his parents. Throughout Hou’s films is a sense of longing for a definite father figure. If Taiwan has never had a true “fatherly” presence in the form of a set national culture or a government that doesn’t define itself by the country it used to rule, then Li in Puppetmaster is missing a father in name as well. It is even more poignant that Li’s story is not a dramatic device, but truth. This notion of a missing “father” in Taiwan brings up the issue of a gendered nation, seemingly a patriarchal one, or a lack thereof. Interestingly, Taiwan is most often identified in relation to another country, be it China, Japan, or its economic relations to the U.S. In this way, Taiwan is a feminine state, as traditional patriarchal societies tend to define women by their husbands and fathers, whose names they take as their own. Li Tianlu was not allowed to take his father’s name. If he represents the tradition of Taiwan then, it is consistent with a feminized Taiwan that still seeks a “father.” Hou has said that he is “more interested in people and the family, not so much in the politics of society” (Hoberman). In his films, family drama and personal experiences reveal the effects of history on its subjects. Li Tianlu does not seem too affected by the Japanese until they ban traditional Chinese puppet shows, forcing him to find other work. As history affects Li, it affects the people he represents. After The Puppetmaster, Hou made Good Men, Good Women. Though the story takes place in the present, it concerns a movie actress in a biographical role as a socialist attempting to help the war against Japan in 1950s China. The plot allows Hou to switch comfortably between scenes in the present and scenes in the past, as seen through the film within the film (cleverly titled Good Men, Good Women). Going from one scene in the fifties to one fifty years later, and back again easily relates the past to the present. Hou uses the device to comment on China’s historically changing relations with Taiwan and the Taiwanese. The period of transition from Japanese to Chinese rule left many Taiwanese wondering if times were not better under Japan (Yip 160). In the film, a group of socialists from Taiwan travel to China to aid the fight against the Japanese, but the Chinese army questions their intentions. Furthermore, because they speak different Chinese dialects, none can communicate well with their interrogators. Locked up in suspicion, they are mistreated by those they have traveled so far to help. In Taiwan a socialist would not fair much better. Indeed, Good Men, Good Women deals with the “White Terror,” the period of Nationalist paranoia over communism during the Korean War, which led to the death and imprisonment of thousands. The Taiwanese government, it would seem, was fighting the Taiwanese people from the moment it came into power. This is likely one reason Hou has commented that “even today, you still have people waxing nostalgic about the days under Japan” (Chiao 53). Hou stories do not exclusively deal with periods of Taiwanese history. Goodbye South, Goodbye is about a group of young men in contemporary rural Taiwan. Here Hou gives us his take on modernization and its effects on Taiwanese nationality. The characters in the film are constantly moving, either by train or by car. Many shots are seen through a car windshield or from the front of a train, a technique Hou used in his earlier Dust in the Wind, which also dealt with urban migration. Even when the characters are sitting around a house or restaurant, the camera itself moves in and around them more than in most other Hou films. Here Hou’s camera acts as he sees contemporary urban Taiwan, in a “state of flux” (Ellickson 15). As mentioned earlier, Hou’s thoughts on modernization are somewhat pessimistic. While Taiwan has become a world economic contender in the past few decades, Hou has witnessed a decrease in awareness of Taiwanese culture and identity. One of his reasons for making The Puppetmaster was to recreate the time of Li Tianlu, a time he sees as admirable for its simplicity. Contemporary Taiwan has, in Hou’s opinion, been negatively affected by Hong Kong and Western materialism (Chiao 53). In Goodbye South, Goodbye as well as in Good Men, Good Women, Hou uses a clever symbol to represent the breakdown of traditional culture, and perhaps the breakdown of communication among Taiwanese and their own identities. In both films, characters are constantly talking on cellular phones, a distinctly modern appliance, often with the miscomprehension inherent in flawed technology and flawed times. As the characters have to continually ask for repetition of the conversation, one cannot help but think of Hou’s use of language. Though today most Taiwanese speak Mandarin and, therefore, should not be hindered by dialects barring communication, they are kept from communicating by a product of their own modern society, a symbol of “progress.” In recent years, Hou has continued to turn his sights on different aspects of Taiwanese identity. In 1998, he released his first film set on the mainland, Flowers of Shanghai. Not coincidentally, 1997, the year the film was made, marked the return of Hong Kong to the People’s Republic of China. Hong Kong, as a British colony for a hundred years, had held a similar position to Taiwan, and the thought of whether Taiwan would remain in its unsure status or one day rejoin the PRC was certainly on the minds of many as Hong Kong became a part of China. Hou’s most recent film, Millennium Mambo, further explores contemporary Taiwan, and the deterioration of traditional culture, as Taiwan becomes an increasingly modern world. Hou Hsao-hsien then should be regarded as one of the most important voices in world cinema. As one of the only outlets of representation for a very complex people, we are lucky that Hou feels obliged to present views of tradition and history in their relation to identity and the contemporary world. We must ask ourselves, however, if Hou’s cinema is the best representation of contemporary Taiwan. Even he admits that his films have little do to with mainstream Taiwanese movies (Noh), and that he has trouble representing the youth of Taiwan (Ellickson 19). Furthermore, since we get such a small amount of Taiwanese films (though the amount of Taiwanese films at all is shrinking), we must question the narrow range of representation we are privileged to see. All the same though, we in the West should appreciate the cinema of Hou Hsao-hsien, as he consistently proves his value to world cinema, and to the representation of the Taiwanese nation. Bibliography Browne, Nick, Paul G. Pickowicz, Vivian Sobchack, and Esther Yau eds.
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