This work by renowned director Pai Ching-Jui, created shortly after his return to Taiwan from studies in Italy, marked his directorial debut. Instead of using dialogue to drive the narrative, Pai adopts a pseudo-documentary approach, using action and imagery to construct a tapestry of Taipei’s everyday life. We see neon lights in the night gradually overtaken by the first rays of dawn, giving birth to the city’s morning. As sunlight opens the frame’s field of vision, the camera traces paths through scenes of 1960s Taipei, such as parks, churches, markets, textile factories, and the telecommunications office, guided by the newspaper tossed from the bicycle of a delivery boy, leading us into the morning of a white-collar household.
Strongly experimental in nature, this work has stood the test of time. In 2019, musician Lim Giong composed a new score for the originally silent film. The pulsing rhythms of electronic music and layers of experimental sound breathe new energy into the images, blending a modern spirit with the Taipei cityscape of the past and creating a vivid, cross-media dialogue that reinterprets a living, breathing impression of Taipei.