Okay, I know I’ve been writing too much about films recently, and I really intended to diversify a bit more, but I have another film-related event I want to talk about. For the past few weeks, the University of Oklahoma has been holding Sensing Taiwan, a Taiwanese film series and a roundtable discussion. Consisting of four films from different eras, the event still has one film and the panel discussion left so please check it out!
Unfortunately, I missed the first two films due to schedule conflicts and the fact that I don’t live in Oklahoma, so today I would like to talk about the third film in the event: Storm Over the Yangtze River.
Filmed in 1969, Storm Over the Yangtze River (揚子江風雲) is a historical film that tells the story of the “Yangtze River 180 Blockade,” a battle that took place in China during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Many of the characters, including the two main characters, are spies, and the film is full of undercover double-crossing as the Chinese villagers try to figure out how to hold off the imminent Japanese invasion of Jianli. There is a lot to like about this movie: the shots are cinematic, the colors are vibrant, and three of the actors won awards for their performances at the 7th Golden Horse Awards—including Li Lihua who plays an incredibly badass female spy who gets the upper hand no matter who she’s up against.
In addition to being a great action movie, it’s also an interesting example of how the Kuomintang (KMT, 中國國民黨) co-opted cultural policy in Taiwan for their own political goals. When the KMT arrived in Taiwan after World War II, they were aghast to find that the residents of Taiwan—the majority of which were ethnically Han Chinese—had become “Japanized” during the Japanese occupation. Not only did Japanese-influenced Taiwanese identity cause friction between the island’s residents and the newly arrived Chinese, but it also undermined the legitimacy of KMT’s rule. As a result, the main focus of KMT’s cultural policy was to promote traditional Chinese culture as a unifying identity.
In 1969, when Storm Over the Yangtze River was made, cultural policy in Taiwan was a centralized movement controlled by Chiang Kai-shek and the film industry was also under KMT control. The studio that made Storm Over the Yangtze River—the Central Motion Picture Company (CMPC)—even had their assets frozen in 2018 by the Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee (CIPAS, 黨代會), which was a committee established under the Tsai administration to reallocate “ill-gotten” assets from the period of White Terror, after they were determined to be a subordinate organization of the KMT. This ultimately led to the CIPAS and CMPC reaching a settlement of $950 million TWD ($34 million) and the CMPC agreeing to transfer the intellectual property rights for 330 movies made before 2005 to Taiwan’s government.
It isn’t hard to see the KMT’s fingerprints all over the movie itself. One of the most obvious examples is when one character, who is introduced as Taiwanese, is asked by a Japanese soldier if she can understand him when he speaks Chinese. “Of course, I understand Chinese because I am Chinese,” she proclaims, “I just don’t speak to Japanese dogs!” Some real subtle subliminal messaging right there.
Despite the film’s clumsy attempts at nationalist propaganda, it was overall a fun watch and an interesting window into Taiwan’s film industry in the 1960s. I’m looking forward to watching the next film in the Sensing Taiwan series: Super Citizen Ko. If you’re looking for something new to watch this weekend, I hope you’ll join me!
(Featured Image by CMPC via IMDB)
Taiwan Culture Corner 