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The Age of Independence is Still Here with Us

By Keeto Lam

Taipei owes Edward Yang a word of thanks, for he has made Taipei an independent city.

From an observer to an enquirer
Edward Yang's films have never stopped probing the city of Taipei and the people of Taipei. That Day, On the Beach (83), Taipei Story (85) and The Terrorizer (86), the three works before A Brighter Summer Day (91), constitute a chronicle of Edward Yang's observations and reflections on the rise and the fall of the city. It is nothing short of lyrical to preserve a city in film. A Brighter Summer Day, on the other hand, is pervaded by a kind of sentimentality associated with taking leave of the city, signaling a valedictory gesture to an earlier generation. It captures in light and shadows memories that have since turned to dust.

With A Confucian Confusion (94), Edward Yang's tasks turn from those of an observer to an enquirer. He lays out his new expectations for Taipei and proposes new possibilities for alternative forms of its existence, Together with his tater works, Mahjong (96) and A One and a Two (01), A Confucian Confusion represents a wide enquiry into the possible development of Taipei on the eve of the twenty-first century.

Seeing A Confucian Confusion again today, we understand more of Yang's unique study. He is particularly insightful as to whether Taipei could become a city of Confucianism.

Taipei: A Possible Confusion City
A Confucian Confusion begins with a question raised in the Zilu chapter of The Confucian Analects. In concert with Mahjong – which echoes another phrase from The Analects, "What a pleasure it is to have friends visit from afar!" – and A One and A Two, which examines three kinds of rituals, this film takes a close Look at Taipei at its richest moment in history. What else is needed when materialistic wants are taken care of? The answer: a kind of spiritual culture, which Confucianism has promoted all along.


If one were to construct or reconstruct a Confucian city in the twenty-first century, Beijing would not be the place for it. Nor Hong Kong. The ideal site would be Taipei.

The goal of enrichment has been achieved in Taiwan in the 1990s, but The Analects asks, "What is to be done after the people are enriched?" The answer, according to Confucius, is "to educate" the people; an answer that Edward Yang deliberately leaves out in the beginning credits of A Confucian Confusion, making it clear that this is what the film intends to explore.

A Confucian Confusion is, at its root, a love story of young men and women, all of whom are involved with arts and democracy. As the film wryly observes, life is but a play, and so is democracy. The best trick that dramatists have up their sleeves – much like politicians – is to play on the audience's emotions. Drama is a metaphor for politics in the film, and emotions become the hallmark of the ethos of the city. True to their character and the plot, the government workers and artists in the film reflect their perplexity as they took for their niches in modern Taipei.

No space for a one-to-one love affair
In Edward Yang's films, men are ruled by their emotions and women by their brains. Men are stuck in their ways, and women evolve. This is particularly the case in A Confucian Confusion. After they grow up, men continue to be men, but women become a world onto themselves. Even when they are at a loss, they know how to adapt. Edward Yang's men are always in the position of a son. They do not grow. Even when they become adults or fathers, they remain tike children. They do not know how to face up to the ever-changing world, especially in a modern metropolis, or how to deal with emotions inside or outside.

Women reflect the world. Look at Edward Yang's women characters, and one gets a good idea of his views of the city. The rotes that Jin Yanling plays in his films, for example, are pillars of the tradition. The appearance of Qi Qi (Chen Shiang-chyi) and Molly (Ni Shu-Jun) in A Confucian Confusion, on the other hand, symbolizes that the city has entered a new age. Their rendezvous by the pond, and the ending scene when the sun rises just outside the window seat, leave the audience with the impression that the quintessential Taipei has been captured.

But Molly's sister (Chen Li-Mei) plays the most important role in this enquiry. As a famous hostess in the media, and the wife of a reclusive writer, she remains steadfast in her love for her husband (Hong Kong). While she chooses to adapt to her situations, her man remains a mere oversized college kid. This brief love interlude stands out from the many love scenes that Edward Yang has created. It is also very characteristic of Taipei that the scene begins with their sweet mutterings to each other and ends with a shouting match between them. (Similar renditions of love also appear in A One and a Two.)

But in Edward Yang's eyes, the failure of a man to mature is precisely what makes a man a man, and makes up the main comfort in life. Nurtured in a time when they were allowed to have multiple wives, Chinese men of the last century were at a loss after the New Cultural Movement. The fundamental question as to whether love is between two individuals is by no means resolved in a monogamous system where marriage is free from the interference of the parents. For that reason, there is an optimistic ending for the confused men in A Confucian Confusion. It is probably Edward Yang's biggest fantasy that a grown-up man can be like Yang Yang in A One and A Two or the Elvis wannabe in A Brighter Summer Day.

The Texture of a City
A Confucian Confusion examines the ethos of the people in Taipei through the lens of Confucianism. Mahjong deals more specifically with the linguistic mishaps of westerners living in a modern Chinese metropolis. A One and A Two is even more thorough. It examines both traditional rituals as well as the way the new generation looks at their city, and strives for an anchorage for both the new and the old to coexist.

Will the traditional Confucian system meet with its revival and further development in a modern metropolis? Taipei in real life is in fact a good place where such a question can be explored, but the Taipei of Edward Yang's creation is even better. He believes that prosperous Taipei is a city calling out for healing, because in this city, the conflicts that arise among women and men are going round in circles.

A Confucian Confusion does not cast its eyes on the skyscrapers of Taipei. Instead, one sees the living spaces of adults where the story takes place: offices, food markets, roads (especially roads), and homes. In two days and one night, the film seeks to capture the life force of the city.

Edward Yang's analysis of Taipei is deliberately one-sided. It trains its camera in large part on the generation that came from mainland China around 1949. One does not find temples or churches in his films, but only people who are confused. The religious figures that Yang touches upon are those from imported religions, tike the Gurus of Esoteric Buddhism. There are no poor people, either, and the original inhabitants of Taiwan are completely ignored. Rather, he recognizes that these topics belong to his friend Hou Hsiao Hsien, and leaves them for him to explore.

Can Taipei become a Confucian city? What a pity it is that Seoul still displays traces of Confucian influences, and Tokyo has fundamentally remained a Confucian city, from the Edo period up to the present day, while Taipei has never been free from Japanese influences.

As for Hong Kong, the midway point of the cultural and commercial exchange between East and West, it has never ceased to mutate. It is a cross between an immigrant city and a colony. By comparison, Macau is closer to a traditional colony. Hong Kong, too, owes Edward Yang a word of thanks, because his Taipei offers ample opportunities for comparison to Hong Kong. In Mahjong, Chang Chen's role represents Hong Kong, through whom the East-West mix of Hong Kong is brought to Taipei for analysis.

Mainland China is also promoting the study of Confucianism these days, but only in the interest of serving those in power. Moreover, the study of Confucianism in mainland China is tike a tree without roots when culture becomes commodified. Can Beijing or Shanghai become a Confucian city? Taipei, by contrast, should qualify well as the next Confucian city just as a son, as stipulated in the lineage of Confucianism, will do well continuing the enterprise of the father.

Edward Yang will return
Of all of Edward Yang's seven feature films, my personal favourite is A Confucian Confusion, not only because of its promising premise, but because its finely-crafted characters seem so compassionate, approachable and full of life.

More importantly, the clever use of the subtitles reveals in the beginning what is yet to happen, at the same time underscoring the main theme. Chinese culture is highly complex, some of which is reflected in the traditional writing system. Simplified writings used nowadays not only offer a truncated version of the original character, but also distort in no small degree the meaning of the word. The essence is changed, and people get disconnected from their roots. Today, I believe that Taiwan, where traditional Chinese writing is still being used, is the only place where one can get connected with our cultural source.

Edward Yang has left us for a different world. Upon seeing A Confucian Confusion again, I was struck all the more by its refusal to conform. The flow of time seems to have been scrambled. Life is like going to a film these days. Even though Edward Yang is gone, one still runs into him in the cinema.

In the film, the writer comes up with the story A Confucian Confusion. Confucius, with his impressive accomplishments, returns to the world he built, where he is met with a warm welcome. He finds out later that all that is orchestrated. Even more tragically, a fortune-teller predicts that after his death, he will return and face the same world.

Such is life. It is also the source of perplexity for us, the survivors. And because of such perplexity, Edward Yang will surely come back.

Translated by King-fai Tam

“The Age of Independence is Still Here With Us” by Keeto Lam, translated from Chinese by King-fai Tam and reproduced with permission from the program publication The One and Only Edward Yang, editor Bryan Chang and Li Cheuk-to, published by the Hong Kong International Film Festival Society 2008.