Taiwan

Wei Tesheng’s “Seediq Bale” triggered hot discussions on the Wushe Incident. Eighty-one years after the occurrence, most of the relevant studies, research papers, books and films that are available in Taiwan and other countries were made by the Han Chinese or the Japanese. In the course of relevant discussions, two intellectuals from the tribe: Takun Walis (Chiu, Chiang-Tang) and Dakis Pawan (Kuo, Ming-Cheng), expressed their hope to show the Wushe Incident from the perspective of the tribe.

Sakuliu is a Paiwan artist who treasures his tribal traditional culture. After leaving his tribal village due to unpleasant circumstances for many years, he decides to return to help rebuild his hometown, Da-She Village, which was devastated in the August 8th typhoon in 2009. However, gulf and conflicts between personal vision and traditional thinking, between old and new, which traumatized him in the past, gradually surface once again as rehabilitation process moves on.

In 1949, the Chinese Party of China occupied the whole of mainland China, and the Nationalist Party of China, commonly known as the Kuomintang, retreated to Taiwan. But not all nationalist forces crossed the Taiwan Strait. Some went into hiding, waiting in the jungles of northern Burma and Thailand for orders from Taiwan. They ended up waiting for fifty years. Once a secret army, they became a lost army. The soldiers in the lost army were strangers in a strange land, stateless persons in northern Thailand. They had to put their lives on the line – even to bleed – in order to get Thai citizenship. Their story is a historical tragedy. A sense of displacement shaped their national identity, and their children, though born in Thailand, yearned for a faraway home: Taiwan. They’ve been fighting for fifty years. Maybe at the end of the day it’s hard to say who the real enemy is, and where their true country lies.

KE is a failed businessman in Taiwan who seeks to rebound and then works as a “Taiwanese Expat” in Shenzhen, China. Lili, a laborer from China, meets her Taiwanese husband online and moves to Taiwan in hope of a better life. Both KE and Lili cross the straits in hopes of achieving what they cannot find in their homeland. But how much do they really know about that country across the straits?

Political and social turbulence soon replace individual prosperity and self-fulfillment, creating conflicts and contradictions in the lives of these new immigrants. And despite the similar ancestry, KE and Lili must reconcile vast differences in their adoptive homes and come to terms with the fact that they will forever be “outsiders.”

How can an eight-year-old child come to understand the feelings of her family in one short visit?

Born in Taiwan, Tongtong has never seen snow. Her mother comes from Inner Mongolia, China, where it is minus 40 degrees. This winter, the mother decides to take Tongtong back to her hometown to visit her ailing grandmother. In this distant frozen land, Tongtong sees fish that freeze almost the moment they are caught and mountains covered with endless snow. She also enjoys the company of her loving grandparents. But the most unforgettable part of this short week is that she sees a different mother, a mother who smiles more but also cries more.