The other road was through standardized exams, with the hope that one’s child could somehow improve the family’s situation. What did Chi’s parents want her to study? We are so used to hearing this kind of story: they wanted her to be a doctor. What school was it that Chi was admitted to, when all her neighbours came over to congratulate her? Of course it was Taipei First Girls’ High School (北一女), the best girls’ school in the country.

This wasn’t about admittance to National Taiwan University, the country’s best university, this was just about Taipei First Girls’. Even that was something to set off firecrackers for.

When I saw it I was very moved and became lost in thought about its connection to my own life. The first remarkable thing about this film is that it made me think about these questions. Hollywood movies don’t make you think, they only make you cry. But the best works of art and literature are the ones that ask questions.

The introduction of our current discussion posed the question of whether this is a film about our country’s people and whether it can be interpreted from a political perspective. To me, this is too much. But it is also too narrow to view the film merely as a biography or the director’s personal life story. So, my compromise is that the film achieved at least one thing, which is that it let us relive a period of Taiwan’s history. It is a story of two generations that every parent has experienced. Of course the film actually covers three generations, but the grandmother’s story is more in the background and is dealt with more abstractly.

From the point of view of my research as a sociologist, the film is about the “economic miracle” period of Taiwan’s history, and not the era before it.

Taiwan had thirty years of rapid economic growth at almost 10 percent GDP growth per year, which is as fast as China is growing today. This era, between the ‘60s and the ‘80s, has already passed in Taiwan, and Chi was born in 1975, so she mostly lived after this era.

We now live in the “post economic miracle” period. In the fifteen years after the economic miracle, with enough hard work and enough luck, a person could lift their social status, make money, become rich, and go from being a gangster to a business owner. However, after economic growth became saturated, opportunities became fewer and competition became even more fierce. As a result, the contradictions between interpersonal competition and societal structure became more serious. Similarly in China, the accumulated contradictions in society have become even greater than they were twenty or thirty years ago.

Chi and her friends lived through this period. They played together, they were forced to stand in punishment together by their teachers, and attended cram sessions together after class. My teacher was just like the one in the film; exam questions would be revealed during the cram session and if you didn’t attend, your grades would suffer.

I thought it was just too apt that Sheng-en’s (聖恩) father raises pigeons for a living in the film. Back then, Taiwanese were crazy about betting on pigeon races; it was a way to get rich (or lose everything). I raised pigeons too when I was young, but after awhile I just let them go.

I thought this film had a strong class consciousness, which is really rare for Taiwanese films. It has been there in Taiwanese literature, but not so much in films. I think of the film as a fable on class mobility which belongs entirely to Taiwan. It’s really so very Taiwanese, the visual details and story are really very Taiwanese, and its flavour is that of a lower class satellite city of Taipei.

Chi’s grandmother is Amis, and she played two roles in her life. Sometimes when Chi felt unhappy, she would provide a fix: there was one time when she drew a tattoo on her as a sort of therapy. She also played the role of a spiritual teacher. Her grandmother said many times that as long as people have food to eat, they are happy; as long as you can cook, and cook well, then things are alright. When Chi mulled her return to Taiwan she said, “I don’t know how to do anything.” But according to her grandmother, if you have enough to eat then you have happiness.

This saying was also spoken by other characters. Could it be a way for those on the lowest rung of Taiwanese society to humorously accept their fates, a sort of philosophy for lower class living? Or is it a stereotype that Taiwanese have of themselves? I think it’s worth thinking about.

The part of the film where Chi decides to return to Taiwan, I thought of another literary work. Has anyone read Night Freight (夜行貨車) by Chen Ying-chen (陳映真)? Having suffered enough, the male and female protagonists decide to return to their hometown, but this doesn’t solve their problems. Likewise, Chi returns to Taiwan to be together with her parents again, but the problems only start from there. Her parents are growing older, and Chi is already forty years old. What will she do to care for her aging parents? This is a very relevant problem for today’s young generation.