Taipei Story 1985

Ah-chen works as a senior assistant for a construction company that is about to be acquired and merged. When her boss, Mrs. Mei Grace Chen Shu-Fang, leaves the company, Ah-chen is faced with a future that could reduce her to a mere secretary, prompting her to quit in protest. She pities her mother, who lives as a concubine to her unreliable chauvinist father, and she makes a clear choice to escape the suffocating family situation. To distance herself, she rents an apartment away from home and hands a spare set of keys to Ah-lung, her childhood sweetheart. Ah-lung runs a cloth shop on Dihua Street and is a former Little League national team player, carrying with him memories of past glory.

While Ah-chen plans to immigrate to the United States with Ah-lung to join his brother-in-law’s import business, he is not eager to leave. Upon returning from a US visit, Ah-lung’s hesitation and passivity about their immigration plans push Ah-chen toward rising frustration.

Ah-lung is a conservative yet generous man who clings to the nostalgia of his former triumphs. He goes out of his way to help others: he pays back his father-in-law’s debts, aids a severely gambling-impacted teammate in bringing his wife back home, and supports his former lover Ah-gwan Su-Yun Ko as she fights her divorce. The two appear to be living in two different worlds—her modern, Western-influenced life versus his local, traditional milieu.

As Ah-lung wanders through the city in indecision, Ah-chen sends money to her sister for an abortion and helps her mother pay down some of her father’s debts. She also engages in an ambiguous relationship with a married architect from her former company who claimed he would divorce. Soon, Ah-chen discovers that Ah-lung had traveled to Tokyo to meet Ah-gwan on his way back from the US, and she slaps him when he returns to her apartment, prompting a breakup.

Ah-lung sinks into gambling and drinking. He visits a friend whose gambling wife killed herself and mocks him for crying, deepening the sense of disconnection between them. Meanwhile, Ah-chen finds solace in her younger sister’s gang of delinquent youths, enjoying the freedom of partying and bike riding, yet still crying when she contemplates her life.

One of the young men in the sister’s gang develops a crush on Ah-chen and begins waiting outside her apartment. One night, Ah-chen spots him and calls Ah-lung for help. He escorts her home and she asks him to marry her, but Ah-lung declines, saying that neither marriage nor immigration offers a real solution to their problems.

As he leaves, the young man confronts him outside, and Ah-lung warns him to back off. He hops into a taxi and heads back to his place on Yangming Mountain. The pursuer follows on a motorbike, and a confrontation erupts on the mountain road. The young man stabs Ah-lung and rides away. Ah-lung staggers along the desolate road, finds an old TV set in a trash pile that replays footage of his Little League days, lights a cigarette, and dies. His body is discovered the next morning.

Unaware of Ah-lung’s death, Ah-chen accompanies Mrs. Mei to inspect a new office space for a local branch of a US electronics company she plans to establish. In stark contrast to Mrs. Mei’s excitement about the prospects, Ah-chen stares out the window, unsure what the future holds.