海角七號

Well, I finally got around to watching the hit movie "Cape No. 7" in its complete form, with English subtitles, and all hype aside, I found it to be a very enjoyable, touching film. For reasons I'd rather not delve into, the story was very moving on a personal level, but I would've enjoyed it in any event. You don't have to be Taiwanese to understand the story, and there were no political undertones that I could detect, which makes it all the more mystifying why the government of China has decided that "Cape No. 7" is somehow too dangerous to be seen by its people. Why? Is it because the movie is too "local"? OK, it's set in the south of Taiwan, much of the dialog is in Taiwanese 台灣話 (along with Mandarin 官話, Japanese and even a little English) - though I liked the part where Tomoko (Chie Tanaka 田中千絵) complained to the Town Council Representative, that his dialect was "too thick" - Olalan and Rauma (the father and son police officers) are aborigines 台灣原住民族 and Malasun is Hakka 客家. There must be movies made in China that are set in one region of that country. If Taiwan truly is a Chinese province, what's the big deal? Or is it because "Cape No. 7" wallows in nostalgia for the Japanese colonial period? Yes, the subplot of the Japanese teacher leaving Taiwan at the end of the war and writing letters to the love he left behind on Taiwan doesn't touch on any aspects of the Japanese rule over Taiwan, but that isn't the point of the movie (and it hardly yearns for the colonial past). Or is it the case that presenting Japanese people as ordinary human beings (as opposed to raping, pillaging, looting Imperial Army monsters) is unacceptable to the regime in Beijing?

Whatever the reason(s), it only reinforces the bad taste I get in my mouth whenever I start thinking of the Chinese government. My wife, alas, is almost ashamed of her Taiwanese roots and yearns to be Chinese, occasionally bringing up the idea that we should move to Shanghai 上海, which is presumably more sophisticated a place than the country bumpkin-filled island of Taiwan. She sometimes accuses me of feeling jealously at the thought of China's emergence as a major power. The truth is that what I am feeling is fear - fear that a government like the one guiding the lives of 1.3 billion people in China is terrified by a wonderful little movie like "Cape No. 7".

However, I can't go without aiming some criticism at the film. The Taiwan that is presented in "Cape No. 7" is nothing like the ugly, featureless and characterless part of the country that I'm stuck in. Having been to Hengchun (Hengch'un) 恆春, I know it's not like the way it is portrayed in "Cape No. 7", but still it makes me wonder. If I can't break free of Taiwan this year, perhaps a move to the south might make resignation to my fate a little easier to accept.

ABC - Anywhere but China!