30-second overview: Wang Shaudi is one of Taiwan's most important television directors, having nurtured an entire generation of actors and screenwriters over four decades. Her father was General Wang Sheng (王昇), the head of the intelligence and political warfare system during the martial law era, yet she chose to speak for ordinary people. From the 1980s series Whole Family Happiness to the 2016 project Qseries (植劇場), she has used her camera to document the dignity of Taiwan's social underclass, proving through action that making television is a form of social movement. In 2014, she received the National Award for Arts.
The Math Teacher's Tears
In 1953, Wang Shaudi was born into a military family in Taipei. Her father, Wang Sheng (王昇), rose to the rank of Army General, a trusted confidant of Chiang Ching-kuo, and served as Director of the General Political Warfare Department under the Ministry of National Defense during martial law — the core of Taiwan's intelligence and political warfare apparatus. The family had five children; Wang Shaudi was the fourth, and the only one who could not be kept in line.
"Nobody in our family smoked or played cards. The ashtray and cigarettes on the table were for guests. In fifth or sixth grade, I was curious and took a cigarette to the bathroom. I choked on it. Nobody had taught me anything." (From a Mirror Media interview)
She smoked, skipped school, and changed schools three times before finishing elementary. In junior high at Jinling Girls' School as a boarder, she splashed water from the first bathroom stall to the last in winter. When she got in trouble outside, her brothers waited at the door to hit her, and then her father followed up. "It's not that I wasn't afraid — but once I got going, I forgot everything."
She scored single digits on math tests; hiring a tutor didn't help. Her father shook his head and told her to transfer. During a meeting in the office, she ran from the third floor to the first, shouting, "Bye everyone, I'm transferring!" But after getting in the car, her father said the math teacher had told him that Wang Shaudi was actually very bright — when the teacher explained a problem three times, she understood it the first time, so she put her head down and slept. No transfer.
After that, the curriculum shifted from geometry to algebra, and her scores jumped from the teens to 95. But switch to another unit, and she plummeted again. On graduation day, her qipao-wearing math teacher asked her what she'd do if she wasn't taking the college entrance exam. She said play basketball. The teacher said nothing — she thought she was about to get hit — pat, a tear fell: "Wang Shaudi, you... what a shame. Go home."
📝 Curator's Note
That "what a shame" changed everything. She joined the Tamkang High School basketball team, played at the provincial games, and could have been admitted to a physical education program on athletic scholarship. But one day she suddenly remembered those words and began wondering whether life held other possibilities. She took the college entrance exam and was admitted to the drama department.
A Nun, a Teacher, One Sentence
Getting into drama school, she felt ashamed. "When I sneaked out to see outdoor opera as a kid, adults always said, 'Actresses and women are hard to keep.' College was so hard to get into — did even actors need a college degree?" But her father was thrilled — his child had gotten into university — and even gave her a book: Ten Great Chinese Drama Masters.
Actually, it was a nun in middle school — Sister De — who had seen through her: You love showing off in class and imitating teachers so much, why not try for the drama department? At the time, she scoffed, thinking the nun was mocking a bad student. Then she actually passed the entrance exam.
After graduating from the drama department, in 1975 she went to Trinity University in Texas to pursue a master's in theater. There she encountered another life-changing moment.
For a school production, she played a two-headed monster, and everyone cheered. The next year, the teacher asked her to play Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire — a female role. She refused: "I won't play a woman." The teacher asked: "Is it that you can't, or that you won't?" She said she could, but wouldn't.
"The teacher asked, 'So you want to be less?' — Do you want to become a narrower person? That question floored me. I was stunned. I had never thought about it from that angle. Later, I did the role, and it was very successful. After that, this question never really troubled me again." (From a Mirror Media interview)
✦ "No one's life is easy — everyone struggles. Within that struggle, ordinary people have limited conditions. The more ordinary the person, the more admirable."
From _Strawman_ to Rice Film Studio
Returning to Taiwan in 1979, Wang Shaudi founded Minxin Film & Television and served as assistant director on the film The Battle of Erdan. She then worked as screenwriter for director Wang Tung (王童)'s Strawman (1987) and Banana Paradise (1989) — Strawman earned her the Best Original Screenplay award at the 24th Golden Horse Awards.
But it was television that truly made her "Teacher Hsiao-ti" (小棣老師).
From the late 1980s through the 1990s, she produced a series of "everyman" television dramas at CTS: Whole Family Happiness (1989), Happy Home (1990), Mother Hen Leads the Ducklings (1992). These works didn't chase ratings miracles; instead, they aimed their cameras at Taiwanese families on the street — grandmothers playing mahjong, couples arguing, children sneaking cigarettes. In an era when Taiwanese television was dominated by prime-time dramas and variety shows, these works quietly proved that television drama could have social warmth.
In 1992, she co-founded Rice Film Studio with her creative partner Huang Liming (黃黎明), and from then on produced primarily for public television. The name "Rice Film" captured her lifelong creative attitude — not reaching for the stars, but planting rice.
📝 Curator's Note
She studied film, and director Tsai Ming-liang has said Wang Shaudi was his film mentor. Yet she consistently chose television over film. Why? "With film, you have creative freedom. But making television is a social movement — the moment the TV turns on, it enters every household, and the impact is far greater." That sentence explains everything.
The PTS Era: Pioneer of the Workplace Drama
In 2000, Wang Shaudi directed Doctors in a Big Hospital for PTS, starring Lan Ching-lung and Ma Chih-hsiang. That same year, Meteor Garden swept across Asia, and idol dramas officially became a keyword in Taiwanese television. Doctors in a Big Hospital was compared to Meteor Garden and hailed as "Taiwan's first-generation idol drama" — but it was also Taiwan's first true workplace drama.
Over the next fifteen years, the name "Wang Shaudi" appeared repeatedly on Golden Bell Award lists:
- 1999 — Golden Bell Award for Best Director in a Drama Series: PTS At Nine Years Old
- 2004 — Golden Bell Award for Best Drama Series: PTS The Banquet
- 2008 — Golden Bell Award for Best Screenplay in a Drama Series: PTS I'm at Kenting — What About the Weather (co-winner with Wen Yufang and others)
- 2014 — Golden Bell Award for Best Drama Series + Best Screenplay: PTS The Hedgehog Boy
In 2014, Wang Shaudi received the 18th National Award for Arts in recognition of her lifetime contribution to Taiwanese film and television.
💡 Did You Know?
In 1997, Wang Shaudi directed the classic Taiwanese animated feature Grandma and Her Ghosts (Magic Grandma) — a fantasy adventure about a grandmother and her grandson. The film won awards at the Taipei Film Festival, the Hong Kong International Film Festival, and the Vancouver International Film Festival. In 2025, the long-awaited sequel Grandma and Her Ghosts 2: Magic Bean Sprout was officially released, 28 years later.
Qseries: The Gentle Revolution of _Mother Hen Leads the Ducklings_
In 2016, Wang Shaudi launched her most ambitious project yet.
She saw Taiwan's production environment in decline, dramatic genres flattened, and a generational gap among actors. So she joined forces with eight directors — including Tsai Ming-liang and Chen Yu-hsun — to co-found "Qseries (植劇場)" — an experimental platform for nurturing new actors and expanding dramatic genres. Four genres (romance and coming-of-age, suspense and mystery, supernatural horror, literary adaptation), eight productions, spanning an entire year.
At the 2017 Golden Bell Awards, Qseries' Close Your Eyes Before It's Dark won five major awards including Best Drama. At the ceremony, the name thanked most often was Wang Shaudi. But at the celebration party, she gave the stage to the nominees who hadn't won so they could give speeches, while she cheered and applauded from the side, happier than anyone.
"The entertainment industry is rigidly hierarchical — Brother Na, Brother Xian, Sister Little Yan — like an agricultural-era clan village. She alone breaks through gender norms, the only 'Teacher Hsiao-ti.'" (Mirror Media)
After Qseries, in 2022 she launched "Thorn Series (茁劇場)" — continuing the same spirit: discovering new talent, exploring genres, and treating every story with seriousness.
📝 Curator's Note
From "Qseries (植劇場)" to "Thorn Series (茁劇場)," the names themselves are a statement. Plants need time, soil, and patience to grow. In an era chasing traffic and clicks, she is still slowly planting trees.
Boys Over Flowers
Wang Shaudi has long felt that "her soul lives in the wrong gender." As a child, she couldn't avoid wearing a uniform to school, but when the family went out to eat and she had to wear a skirt, she would cry and stomp her feet at home. In high school, she saw a film about gender identity at the Xinsheng Theater near Zhongshan Hall, and sat alone in a shaved ice shop crying: "So I'm not the only one in the world like this."
She dislikes being referred to with the female-gendered "她" in press coverage. To this day, when given a choice in public, she opts for a gender-neutral restroom. Has she considered transitioning? "I have thought about it. On one hand, I feel my body and hair are a gift from my parents — I don't have the courage. On the other hand, I'm in good health, and I don't know what that surgery would change."
After returning to Taiwan, she decided not to discuss her gender and not to pretend: "If you're at ease with yourself, others will be at ease too."
Past sixty, a boy still lives inside her heart. Screenwriter Wen Yufang recalls that in 2005, while filming the story of Lien Chia-en, 45°C Under the Sky, and flying to Africa, Wang Shaudi could play video games for 20 hours straight on the plane, until her thumb blistered. She loves Jay Chou, and on location scouting trips would listen to "Secret Code" on repeat. A boyish heart — and so Doctors in a Big Hospital, Police Etiquette, The Hedgehog Boy: line up her works and they are all stories of boys growing up.
✦ "I don't want to be a teacher either. I just want to help others the way I was helped during my own growing up."
Between the Stone and the Egg
The general's child standing on the protesters' side — this contradiction runs through Wang Shaudi's entire life.
In 2013, when the Dapu incident erupted, she publicly declared: "Oh my god! Our country is so terrible! ... I'm being pushed to the point where I want to run for president!" She went on to support the Wenlin Yuan urban renewal dispute, the Hualong Self-Help Association, the closed-factory workers, and other social movements.
| Action vs. Contradiction |
|---|
| Her father was a core figure of the martial law regime, yet she became a public supporter of social movements |
| Born into the privilege of a general's household, yet she spent her life telling stories of ordinary people |
Speaking of her father, her attitude is complex and honest: "I often feel I'm unfilial. I only have one feeling — the father I knew was completely different from what's written outside. But I feel I still don't know enough."
Yet her actions have placed her entirely on the opposite side from her father. "Only in recent years have I felt myself becoming more and more radical. I even think in leaps — I want to launch a movement to abolish political parties. Is there really any difference between the Communist Party, the KMT, and the DPP?" (From a Mirror Media interview)
Huang Liming
Huang Liming (黃黎明), her partner in founding Rice Film Studio in 1992, shared 28 years of deep mutual understanding with Wang Shaudi. All of their works were co-created. Around 2014, Huang Liming passed away from cancer.
In 2017, Qseries' A Thousand Walls in the Dream — a supernatural-themed production — was released to coincide with the anniversary of Huang Liming's death. Wang Shaudi said she didn't want to make a commercial ghost film; she wanted to explore: "When the person closest to you has passed away, when longing and calling still exist, what kind of force would that be?"
At the Golden Bell celebration, while the younger cast members played and laughed, she ate quietly in a corner. Speaking of Teacher Huang: "I don't really believe in the supernatural, but along this journey, I believe she has been helping me. She has always been with us."
Is there anything she'd like to say to Teacher Huang? "There's nothing in particular I'd want to say to her. If she knew, she would understand very clearly — without her, I would not be who I am today."
When Teacher Huang was alive, she would stay up late playing video games at night and had to be urged by Teacher Huang to go to bed. After Teacher Huang passed, she often told the people around her why she hadn't understood back then to cherish the time and treasure the people close to her — why did she have to play so many video games?
✦ Having suffered growing up because of her gender identity, she understands empathy. Between the egg and the stone, she will always stand on the side of the egg.
References
- 王小棣 — 維基百科（索引）
- Wang Shaudi — Wikipedia (English)（國際視角）
- 【一鏡到底】是好老師，也是壞學生 王小棣專訪之一（一手訪談，鏡週刊 2017）
- 【一鏡到底】靈魂住在錯誤的性別裡 王小棣專訪之二（一手訪談，鏡週刊 2017）
- 【一鏡到底】拍電視是一種社會運動 王小棣專訪之三（一手訪談，鏡週刊 2017）
- 【一鏡到底】少年的愛 王小棣專訪之四（一手訪談，鏡週刊 2017）
- 王小棣：國家爛到我想出來選總統！ — 公視新聞議題中心（一手，公視 2013）
- 台灣退化 王小棣：國家爛到我想選總統 — 自由時報（新聞報導 2013）
- Wang Shaudi — IMDb（國際影視資料庫）
- 稻田電影工作室官網（一手，Archive.org 存檔）