Film Circulation and Mutual Influences between Hong Kong and Taiwan during the Cold War

With the exception of a short comparison by Sam Ho (2022, 423-24), the relationship between taiyupian and Hong Kong Cantonese cinema is under-examined, as most research focuses on the link between Amoy film produced in Hong Kong and films produced in Hoklo in Taiwan. The reason, as Ye Long-yan’s seminal study of taiyupian elucidates (Ye 1999, 60), is that both Amoy and Taiyu belong to the same Southern Min linguistic group (Ye 1999, 39). It is also because Hong Kong Amoy cinema stimulated Taiwanese producers, who launched Taiyu film production on the island. However, Ye, like most conventional Taiwanese critics, often considers taiyupian from a localist perspective and perceives Hong Kong Amoy-language and Mandarin films as invaders of Taiwanese local culture. From a Hong Kong and comparative perspective, I argue that we should consider the structural similarities between the shared production conditions of taiyupian and Cantonese films and adopt a broader view on film circulation from wartime Shanghai to post-war Hong Kong and Taiwan, in Mandarin, Cantonese and Taiyu. The porosity of these competing film industries will be illustrated in this chapter with the particular example of the female spy series that spanned between 1946 and 1966, between Shanghai, Hong Kong and Taiwan. I will show that taiyupian and Cantonese films share the same sources from Chinese culture and the West. Moreover, Taiwan cinema (Taiyu and Mandarin) and Hong Kong cinema (Amoy, Cantonese and Mandarin) also influenced each other.