Or, Chassez St.Germain…il revient au galop!
Unfortunately, Boris was not there… http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xtqsp_vian-a-st-germain-des-pres_music
On the mountainous northeast coast of Taiwan, a little town overhangs the Pacific Ocean: Jiufen. At the end of the 19th century (1893) gold was discovered in the village in which only nine families used to live. For fifty years, the city attracted gold diggers and after the end of the sino-japanese war (1895), was fully exploited by the Japanese… while its development stagnated. The mine shut down in the 70’s, and people forgot about the Gold Rush in “the little Shanghai” of Taiwan, which led for two decades to the dramatic economic decline of the former Hit City.
However, a man brought Jiufen back to life in 1989, 42 years after the “incident” of the 28th February 1947 in Taipei. Hou Hsiao-hsien directed a movie which revolves around the influence of the Kuomintang on the island at the end of the WWII. At the time, it finally put an end to the silence imposed on the “white terror” exerted by the KMT from 1949 to the abolition of the martial law in 1987 (*). “A City of Sadness” gave Jiufen a renewed potential of attractiveness… and abound now of restaurants, gift shops, and tea houses.
(*) “I didn’t make A City of Sadness because I purposely wanted to open up old wounds’, but because I know that we have to face ourselves and our history if we are ever to understand who we are and where we’re going.” (Hou Hsiao-hsien)
I wandered for a few hours in the old and narrow streets of this resurrected town with my grand father’s silver camera, and tried to capture the every-day life of the workers of the new Jiufen.
“You are the one whistling at night! Don’t do that!”
N-Ray -my Taiwanese roommate- caught me off guard with this unexpected remark! Was I such a bad whistler?! I humbly asked for an explanation, and eventually came to know about Asian mythology. “Ghosts will haunt your nights if you continue to do so!”
I wonder what would Scatman Crothers say about those ghost riders in the sky of Taipei…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBYAis7akKw
