made in taiwan

Early this week, H's nephew called. He'd been on the website of my director friend Monika Treut who he had met at my place when H brought him to Taipei in April this year. And realized that her latest project Made in Taiwan, a documentary about a 17-year old girl, part of a German tv documentary series about teenage girls all over the world, was showing this week (thursday to be exact, with a rerun at 2pm on friday). I called my brothers and sister, H called his mum and our neighbours to make them watch it. And we watched it, too, of course :-)

It was fun, not only to see the girl and her parents whom I had met briefly at Monika's farewell party or to recognize street corners in Taipei. But also to watch a scene and remember Monika coming home in April and saying: "Today, we filmed a family discussion." Or to see that after H had told her about a giant picture of Taiwan that you could walk on in front of CKS memorial, she'd taken the girl to do just that. Or to remember her amused report of going on a schooltrip with the kids. Or to recognize the video tape the dad was watching ;-)

I think all in all, it gave quite a good introduction of main features of life in Taiwan, like the Mainland Chinese military threat, the strict school days of a 17-year old (including maths buxiban), normal family life, the girl going out with her friends, not to mention the pearl milk tea :-(((( or the karaoke session on the bus ;-) Mind you, Yi-Chun and her family are pretty extraodinary because even though they're just a normal family, neither of them had any problems living with a camera following them around for two weeks.