What a view | A Taiwanese Tale of Two Cities on Netflix is sweet, sentimental and sells Taipei as the ultimate destination
The contemporary take on Dickens’ classic tale for the Chinese diaspora connects communities in Taipei and San Francisco, and makes Taiwan’s capital look great while it is at it
Comedian Sacha Baron Cohen’s alter ego Borat famously undertook “cultural learnings of America for make benefit glorious nation of Kazakhstan”. Now, it seems, Taiwan’s Ministry of Culture might have shared similar ambitions when bequeathing a government grant to Netflix series A Taiwanese Tale of Two Cities. Presumably not while wearing mankinis.
In fact, China Airlines must be busy laying on extra planes off the back of the show, because it’s hard to imagine how the tourist board could have done a better job of promoting the self-ruled island, and in particular Taipei.
Dickens descendant A Taiwanese Tale is the story of Li Nien-Nien (Tammy Chen), a highly photogenic young woman and trainee Chinese medicine practitioner from the capital. She is obsessed with one day living in San Francisco, home of her fiancé and her biological mother. Whacking the point home with a sledgehammer, she keeps a San Francisco city map on her bedroom wall; two clocks, one displaying Californian time; and a plethora of American tchotchkes, so nostalgic is she for a place she has never even seen.
In San Francisco lives Josephine Huang (Peggy Tseng), a highly photogenic young woman and tech-industry programmer who dreams of visiting the homeland that, in true, third-culture style, haunts her Taiwanese-American community.
Both are disgruntled, disappointed and disillusioned. Amid all that dissing, Nien-Nien is grounded by a protective family, and Josephine stultified in her job – which she quits, before having noisy sex with her boyfriend, who she also quits.
Josephine strikes out for Taipei and meets new best friend Nien-Nien at a sham beauty pageant. Cue home-swap and the beginning of their (mis)adventures in love and life, against a revolving backdrop of teahouses, shophouses, lion dances, temples, festivals of the gods, obscure herbal preparations and Taipei 101. Five episodes in and San Francisco has become little more than the Golden Gate Bridge, but cityscapes will surely follow in the remaining 15 instalments.