Edward Yang: Using the Coldest Logic of an Engineer to Film the Hottest Loneliness of the Human Heart

30-Second Overview: Edward Yang (1947–2007) worked as a submarine software engineer in the US for seven years, giving up everything in his early thirties to return to Taiwan and learn filmmaking. With the precision of an engineer, he hand-drew storyboards and used the calmest camera angles to dissect the confusion of Taipei’s middle class, creating works like A Brighter Summer Day and Yi Yi, which are now listed among the top 100 films in cinema history. He was also the first Taiwanese to win Best Director at Cannes. But this "coldness" came at a cost—he scolded actors until they faced the wall, and his relationship with Hou Hsiao-hsien went from close friends to distant, resulting in Yi Yi not being screened in Taiwanese cinemas for seventeen years during his lifetime. What he filmed was never other people’s stories, but the side of ourselves we cannot see.

In the early 1980s, a tall man walked into the Central Motion Picture Corporation in Taipei. On his T-shirt were printed three names: Herzog, Bresson, Yang¹. The first two were Herzog from Germany and Bresson from France, names that cannot be bypassed in the history of world cinema. The third was himself. At that time, he had not yet directed any feature films.

This is the image remembered by screenwriter Wu Nian-zhen: Edward Yang, when he first arrived at CMP, had an unruly and defiant look². He placed his own name after those of two masters.

That year, Edward Yang was in his early thirties. Four years earlier, he had been in Seattle, writing control programs for US Navy submarines³.

A T-Shirt Placing Himself Beside Masters

He was not formally trained in film. This must be stated first, as it is the key to understanding everything about him.

Edward Yang was born in Shanghai in November 1947 and moved to Taiwan with his family in 1949, growing up in Taipei⁴. His father had worked in a bank in Shanghai and came from the countryside, Yang said himself⁵. In 1965, he graduated from Keelung High School, and in 1969, he received a degree in Control Engineering from National Chiao Tung University. He then went to the University of Florida in the US for a master’s degree in electrical engineering⁶. This was a standard path for scientific elites, the path taken by the best students in Taiwan at that time.

After obtaining his master’s, he actually went to the USC School of Cinematic Arts. He enrolled in 1973 and left in 1974. He gave two versions of the reason. In an interview with Mirror Weekly, he said it was a "diploma mill," where poor students could not afford film stock, so "there was no way to make films, why study!"⁷. In another interview, his account was more honest and cruel: "I realized I had no talent, no the things needed to enter the film industry, so I dropped out."⁸

Thus, he returned to the track of an engineer. In Seattle, at the Applied Physics Laboratory of the University of Washington, he designed control programs for US Navy submarines, staying there for seven years⁹. This was a good job: stable, respectable, and utilizing all his training. In his spare time, he and friends made short films with 16mm film¹⁰. His brother, two years his senior, took him to watch film festivals at the University of Washington¹¹. A rational person lived a rational life.

The turning point happened in a cinema. He watched Herzog’s Aguirre, the Wrath of God, a film about a group of Spanish conquistadors going mad in the Amazon jungle. Walking out of the cinema, he felt he was "already another me"¹². Years later, he repeatedly mentioned this event: Herzog used the most concise imagery to precisely express feelings deep in the soul, and that a film could be completed by the will of one person¹³.

For an engineer, this was a message about feasibility. Film did not necessarily require Hollywood’s massive machinery; it could be supported by the logic of one person, like writing code.

In 1981, he returned to Taiwan¹⁴.

He gave up his job in Seattle, his visa, and a clearly visible life path. What did he return to Taiwan to do? To learn filmmaking. A person who calculated risks to the extreme made a decision that pulled risks to the extreme.

📝 Curator’s Note
We are accustomed to telling the story of "engineers turning into artists" as a romantic awakening: a boring technician finally finds their soul. But the example of Edward Yang is exactly the opposite. What actually gave him the courage to gamble was an engineering message: Herzog proved to him that a film could be completed by one person. He did not abandon rationality to chase a dream; he used rationality to calculate the feasibility of that dream. He was an engineer his whole life, only changing the problem he solved from submarines to the human heart.

The Blackboard at 69 Ji Nan Road

When Yang returned to Taiwan, he was met by an industry that was loosening.

In the early 1980s, Taiwan’s film box office was dominated by Hong Kong films and Qiong Yao-style literary films, with local production stuck in formulas. Inside CMP, two young planners named Hsiao Hsien and Wu Nian-zhen wanted to find new directors to shoot something different¹⁵. In 1982, Sunny Days was released, featuring four new directors each shooting a segment: Tao Te-chen, Edward Yang, Ke Yi-cheng, and Chang Yi. The four segments corresponded to childhood to adulthood¹⁶. Yang’s segment was titled "Expectation," about a girl secretly in love with a college student tenant in her home. The New Taiwanese Cinema is generally considered to begin with this film.

He quickly showed differences from others. The Sea of Trees (1983) was his first feature film, starring Sylvia Chang and Hu Yin-meng, with cinematography by Do Chi-fung, who was serving as a film cinematographer for the first time. This decision caused angry reactions from CMP’s internal cinematographers; he withstood the pressure and insisted on using him¹⁷¹⁸. The runtime was nearly three hours, far exceeding the standards of the time. This was not a person who knew how to compromise.

The New Cinema was not the work of one person. It had a physical base: 69 Ji Nan Road, Section 2, Yang’s home from childhood, a Japanese-style old dormitory allocated by the unit where his father worked. A group of people later written into the history of Taiwanese cinema often gathered there¹⁹. On November 6, 1986, Yang’s birthday party was held here²⁰. Inside the house was a blackboard, filled with everyone’s ideas about film and the tentative name for the future company²¹.

The conversations of that night grew into a document two months later. On January 24, 1987, a manifesto drafted by Chan Peng-chih and signed by fifty film workers was published simultaneously in Wenxing, the China Times Human Interest Supplement, and Hong Kong’s Film Weekly²². It discussed in three sections: our views on film, our fears about the environment, and our hopes for change. This document, later called the "Taiwan Cinema Manifesto," was a collective voice of the New Cinema against the entire system²³.

The ideals of the manifesto were not realized; instead, they brought a counterattack from the system. The New Cinema as a movement also came to an end shortly after²⁴. And Edward Yang, standing among this group, was destined by his personality to be a difficult ally.

Guling Street Built in Pingtung

To understand where Yang’s "coldness" truly lay, we must look at the four-hour film he spent five years making.

On June 15, 1961, at 10 PM, near Guling Street in Taipei, a sixteen-year-old boy named Mao Wu stabbed a girl of the same age, Liu Min, seven times with a scout knife; she died on the spot²⁵. Mao Wu was a student in the second year of junior high, Class C. Two months prior, he had been expelled from school after a spring knife was found in his backpack²⁶. The case’s judgment was tossed back and forth for nearly two years, from fifteen years, remanded for retrial to seven years, to the final verdict in February 1963 of ten years, because the perpetrator was a minor and could not legally be sentenced to death²⁷.

This case was close to Yang. In 1959, he entered Keelung High School’s junior high night department, transferred to the day department the following year, and entered the senior high department in 1962²⁸. He attended the same school as Mao Wu, just a different cohort. Years later, he told British film critic Tony Rayns that he knew many people close to this boy, so he could study the details of the case quite thoroughly²⁹.

But A Brighter Summer Day never intended to reenact that murder, nor was it nostalgic. What truly captured Yang was the environment itself. He told Tony Rayns that he quickly realized the point was not just what happened to this pair of teenagers²⁹. What he wanted to film was the entire era’s atmosphere that could kill a boy. In 1961 Taipei,外省 families were squeezed into small houses, the shadow of White Terror pressed on every adult, and teenagers clumsily sought a position for themselves in the chaos by forming gangs and adopting江湖 nicknames. The flashlight swinging in the dark in Xiao Si’s hand illuminated the insecurity of an entire generation.

His narrative philosophy was also stated most clearly in this film. He told Tony Rayns: "My philosophy of storytelling is that it’s not interesting when a bad guy kills someone or a good guy does good things; it’s interesting when a good guy does bad things, or vice versa."³⁰ This sentence can almost explain all his films: he never gives you a character you can simply love or hate.

✦ "It’s interesting when a good guy does bad things, or vice versa."

The production method of this film was itself the work of an engineer. Five years of preparation³¹, one hundred and ten working days of shooting³². The book street in the film was not shot on Guling Street. On the way home from work, Yang caught a glimpse of the roundabout near Changchun Park, close to the Pingtung County Governor’s Residence, through the car window, and decided to rebuild 1960s Taipei there³³. The most astonishing part was the cast: he told BFI personally, "75 percent of the cast and more than 60 percent of the crew had never worked on a film before."³⁴ For this, he held acting training classes, grinding a group of amateurs into a cast capable of supporting a four-hour epic.

Edward Yang on the set of The Sea of Trees in 1983. This was his first feature film, with a runtime of nearly three hours, far exceeding the standards of the time.

The Thirteen-Year-Old in the Pitch-Black Room

Among the amateurs was a thirteen- or fourteen-year-old boy named Chang Chen³⁵.

He later became an international film star, but when filming A Brighter Summer Day, in his own words, "he didn’t know what filmmaking was at all, completely zero, completely blank!"³⁶ How did Yang extract the expressions he wanted from a blank sheet? Chang Chen recalled a scene: Yang locked him in a pitch-black room, scolded him until he couldn’t speak, made him face the wall for half an hour, and then suddenly called him out of the room and pulled him in front of the camera to shoot. He wanted that naturally流露, frightened expression. "This is a very shocking memory for me," Chang Chen said³⁷.

This was another side of Yang on set. Actor Deng An-ning remembered that trembling atmosphere: the set was silent, then suddenly a loud "F*** you!" Everyone was startled; after scolding, he turned and walked out³⁸. Screenwriter Hsiao Hsien was more direct: Yang almost changed actors halfway through every film, because if a character made him feel wrong, the scene was wasted³⁹.

A person who valued logic over feelings easily became a tyrant on set. His "coldness" really hurt people.

But the same Deng An-ning also remembered that after acting under such high pressure, Yang would come over and pat him: "Deng Zi, good acting!"⁴⁰ During the time Hsiao Hsien’s mother was in the late stages of cancer, Yang drove him back and forth between the hospital and the set every day⁴¹. Actor Hsiao Bi-khim’s description might be closest to the truth. Yang’s way of leading people was "high-density interaction in daily life"; he often kept everyone close, discussing scripts, watching movies, listening to music, visiting exhibitions, reading, and commenting on current events together⁴².

A person not good at communication, who even stuttered when speaking⁴³, used the clumsiest and most laborious method: living his whole life as a class. Hsiao Bi-khim, Chen Yi-wen, Wang Wei-ming, Yang Shun-ching, Hong Hong, these Taiwanese filmmakers who later stood on their own, were all brought up this way. Years later, Hsiao Bi-khim比喻 at a forum that these people’s credentials were like having attended an extra "Edward Yang School"⁴⁴.

📝 Curator’s Note
The term "Edward Yang School" sounds warm, but it actually hides a contradiction. A person公认 as not good at communication and with a fiery temper, how could he become a teacher to an entire generation of filmmakers? The answer might be: precisely because he could not lead people in ordinary ways, he could only use the most extreme methods, keeping actors close, forcing truth through high pressure, and then affirming them in the most direct way. He was as merciless in scolding as in praising. This was a seriousness so clumsy that it was exceptionally forceful, unrelated to gentleness. His high standards for film hurt people first, then created them.

Taipei Guest House: The Highest Point and the Lowest Point

If we only look at international honors, Yang’s path was beautiful, one film higher than the next.

• Terrorizers (1986) won Best Feature Film at the Golden Horse Awards, and the following year won the Silver Leopard Award at the Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland⁴⁵. A Brighter Summer Day (1991) received twelve nominations at the Golden Horse Awards, winning Best Feature Film and Best Original Screenplay, and also won the Special Jury Prize at the Tokyo Film Festival⁴⁶. This path led to Yi Yi in 2000, for which he won Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival, becoming the first Taiwanese director to receive this award⁴⁷.

But on the other side of honors was his clarity regarding Taiwan’s film environment, bordering on despair.

In early June 2000, holding the Cannes trophy, Yang returned to Taiwan and held an awards tea party at the Taipei Guest House. A reporter from Kuanghsia Monthly was present and recorded his words: "This is my personal high point since entering the film industry, but psychologically I am very sad, because it is also the lowest point for Taiwan film. Film workers have worked until their hair is white. I hope young people entering the film circle will not have their passion erased by Taiwan’s environment."⁴⁸

Personal high point, Taiwan film’s lowest point. This sentence was both his pride and his sorrow, and it planted the seed for the next seventeen years, the most confusing thing for Taiwanese audiences.

The opposing voice was always there, and never without target. Art critic Chen Tai-sung criticized his films as having an "artsy tone" that was intolerable, with dialogue like maxims, "one after another 'confessions of truth'"⁴⁹. Writer Chiang Hsun gave the评语 "bordering on superficial" for A Summer at Grace in the judging panel discussion that year⁵⁰. Even Hong Hong, who had a minor role in the film, felt those long philosophical monologues were "very dry and boring," inferior to Woody Allen’s subtle touch⁵¹. In 1994, A Summer at Grace was in official competition at Cannes; the British film critic circle was confused. Even Time Out admitted that this film "left most of the drowsy British journalists at Cannes baffled"⁵².

These criticisms actually all pointed to the same place: he was too cold, too fond of reasoning, too much like a person standing outside the crowd with a scalpel. And this was the cost of the method he chose. When you decide to dissect emotions in the most rational way, you must bear the accusation of "standing outside the matter." His coldness came at a cost.

Edward Yang on the set of A Summer at Grace in 1993. This film, criticized for its "artsy tone" and "superficiality," was precisely his representative work pushing rationality to the extreme.

A Film Proving Itself as a Taiwan Film

Yi Yi was Yang’s last completed film, and the sum of all his contradictions.

This film tells the story of a Taipei middle-class family: NJ (the name is an abbreviation of Nian-zhen) played by Wu Nian-zhen, the mother played by Elaine Jin, daughter Ting-ting, and the little boy Yang Yang who takes a camera everywhere to shoot adults’ backs⁵³. It was a Japan-funded work—the producer was the "1+2 Production Committee," with Pony Canyon’s participation, Yang’s own Atom Films production, and producer Mayu Kaii⁵⁴.

Its evaluation in the world was astonishingly high. It premiered at Cannes on May 14, 2000⁵⁵. In BBC’s 2016 selection of the Top 100 Films of the 21st Century, Yi Yi ranked eighth⁵⁶. In the British Film Institute’s Sight & Sound 2022 list of the Greatest Films of All Time, Yi Yi tied for ninetieth⁵⁷. In the New York Times’ 2025 Top 100 Films of the 21st Century, it ranked fortieth⁵⁸. It entered the Criterion Collection⁵⁹.

Then there was the confusing thing: this film, which won Yang Best Director at Cannes and was hailed by the world as a masterpiece, was never screened in Taiwanese cinemas during his lifetime⁶⁰. Taiwanese audiences had to wait until 2017, ten years after his death, to see it in a cinema for the first time⁶¹.

This matter is easily written as a romantic story: the master, in a huff, refused to let his hometown see this film. But the truth was much more complex. It was the result of several layers of obstacles stacked together.

The bottom layer was copyright. The copyright of Yi Yi was held by the Japanese producer. In 2001, at the Hong Kong Film Festival, when asked about this, Yang’s answer was平淡 and technical: "It hasn’t been released in Taiwan because no one came to handle distribution; the film copyright is in the hands of the Japanese producer, and distribution fees are too expensive."⁶² No accusation, just like explaining an administrative trouble. One layer up was the认定 of the News Bureau: because the producing company was Japanese, this film was classified as a non-national film, unable to receive Taiwan’s subsidies, and even travel expenses for film festivals became problematic⁶³. These technical exclusions stacked up layer by layer, finally crushing a person’s willingness to continue pushing. Curator Wang Jun-jie later relayed that Yang felt Taiwanese audiences did not know how to appreciate his works⁶⁴. Objective obstacles and subjective disillusionment bit together, becoming seventeen years of silence.

This absurdity continued until after his death. In 2017, for the distributor to release Yi Yi in Taiwan, they had to first "prove that the main actors’ nationality was the Republic of China," struggling with the authorities for a while before obtaining the rating certificate, with the final official record stating a contradictory sentence: the producing company of this film is Japanese, but the nationality is the Republic of China⁶⁵. A film about Taipei, acted by Taiwanese, had to exert such effort to prove it was a Taiwan film.

The Yi Yi 25th Anniversary 4K Restoration Trailer (Janus Films Official). This film, which Taiwanese audiences waited seventeen years to see in cinemas, returned to the Cannes Classics section as a restored version in 2025.

In his seven-and-a-half works lay the spiritual history of Taiwan over forty years since the post-war period. From the repression of the Martial Law era, to the alienation of the city after the lifting of Martial Law, to the spiritual void of the middle class under economic takeoff. Taipei from 1980 to 2000 under his lens became the most honest visual archive of Taiwan’s modernization. What he filmed was always Mandarin-speaking urban middle class; the lens did not extend to factories, fields, or the Taiwan that spoke Taiwanese. This was his choice, and also his boundary.

Edward Yang and Hou Hsiao-hsien: The Gravity of Two Mountains

When talking about the New Taiwanese Cinema, one cannot bypass another name: Hou Hsiao-hsien. The relationship between these two was itself a story of complementarity and estrangement.

How did they meet? Hou Hsiao-hsien’s account was light: "No particular reason, just met. He returned, we talked about films and got along well."⁶⁶ Chu T’ien-wen remembered that honeymoon period, saying the two were like what Tsai Chin described, "like two people in love," spending every day together when there was nothing to do; that was their best time⁶⁷. In 1985, when Yang filmed Terrorizers, Hou Hsiao-hsien not only starred but also provided funding. What to do if the money wasn’t enough? Hou Hsiao-hsien’s original words were: "What if the money is spent? Just owe the mother-in-law’s money."⁶⁸

Terrorizers was only screened in Taipei for four days before being pulled⁶⁹. Hou Hsiao-hsien recalled this matter with a generous tone: the filming was done, Yang also married Tsai Chin because of this film, still very ambitious, "Next, how well and how amazingly Terrorizers was filmed"⁷⁰.

But the gravity between the two mountains later became distance. When Hou Hsiao-hsien spoke directly about the reason for the estrangement only once, he said: "It’s quite miserable, after filming they got married, and in the end it just fizzled out. So actually, Hou and I later became a bit distant because of Tsai Chin."⁷¹ As for more details, he only left one sentence: "The matter is hard to explain clearly, and it’s hard for you to understand even if explained."⁷²

These two sentences together were more honest than any breakup drama. He admitted the fuse, but refused to explain the full picture. The marriage between Edward Yang and Tsai Chin, which lasted ten years before ending in 1995⁷³, was a fact in the context of this estrangement, but it should not be the center of anyone’s story. The two people who were once closest ended up separated by a distance no one could explain clearly—that was all.

Comics Drawn Until the Moment of Coma

To conclude Yang, we must return to the boy at the very beginning.

His first love in this life was actually comics, earlier than film. He said himself that besides film, his other love was comics, Japanese style, the kind with complex narratives⁷⁴. During his time at Keelung High School, he "serialized" self-drawn WWII comics in class⁷⁵. Those manuscripts are still there today: crumpled creases, blue ballpoint pen base with pencil lines, in the grids were broken walls and soldiers shooting silently⁷⁶. When he established his film company, he named it "Atom Films," commemorating Tezuka Osamu’s Astro Boy⁷⁷.

Edward Yang’s hand-drawn WWII comic manuscript from his youth. From the serialization in Keelung High School class to the unfinished animation in his later years, comics were his first love in life, and also his last.

So in his later years, the thing Yang倾盡 all wanted to do, went in a big circle back to animation, back to the enlarged version of his childhood’s first love. This film was called The Wind Rises (or Chasing the Wind), partnering with Jackie Chan, who served as martial arts director, co-producer, and invested his own portrait rights⁷⁸. The story was set in Kaifeng during the Northern Song Dynasty,取材 from Along the River During the Qingming Festival and Dongjing Meng Hua Lu⁷⁹. He required the animation to be "one continuous shot," using the most engineer-like obsession to challenge the most difficult technology in animation⁸⁰. The budget was about twenty-five million US dollars, but in the end, only nine to ten minutes were completed⁸¹. Upon learning of his illness, the partner terminated the plan; the company subsequently fell into financial disputes and was liquidated and dissolved⁸². The project was too massive, unable to hold up⁸³.

In 2000, he was diagnosed with colon cancer. For the next seven years, he concealed his illness, refused visitors, and replied to all concerns with a single "Very good"⁸⁴. Cancer cells metastasized to his brain, spine, and ribs; he underwent brain surgery three times⁸⁵.

On June 29, 2007, Edward Yang passed away at his home in Beverly Hills, US, at the age of fifty-nine⁸⁶. Before passing, he took painkillers, his consciousness was unclear, but he still held a pen, drawing a sketch of an unfinished animation. This film was called Little Friends, about a child and a dog, full of family affection and fatherly love. He emailed the sketch to his old friend Chang Yi, then fell into a coma⁸⁷.

The boy who serialized comics in Keelung High School class, until the last moment, was still that boy.

In December of that year, the Golden Horse Awards posthumously awarded him the Lifetime Achievement Award, presented by Hou Hsiao-hsien and Chang Chen⁸⁸. The world had crowned him; this time, Taiwan itself claimed him back. In 2023, the Taipei Fine Arts Museum held the first complete Edward Yang retrospective in the world, titled "Yi Yi Reconstructed"⁸⁹. His widow, Peng Kai-li, insisted the exhibition must be held in Taipei; the keyword she set for this exhibition was "warmth"⁹⁰.

The 2023 Taipei Fine Arts Museum "Yi Yi Reconstructed: Edward Yang" Retrospective. This was the first complete retrospective of his work globally, using "warmth" to close the case for the person accused of being too cold.

A person criticized as too cold, too rational, standing outside the matter, was finally closed out by his closest people with the two words "warmth." This was not a overturning of the verdict—he was indeed cold, he did hurt people. It’s just that this coldness was always for one hottest thing.

Seven and a Half: A Spiritual History of Post-War Taiwan

Edward Yang only completed seven and a half feature films in his life (Sunny Days was a collaboration of four people, counted as half). The quantity was not large, but almost every film was a slice of Taiwan’s modernization.

Source: National Film and Audio Culture Center, Golden Horse Awards, BFI

In Yi Yi, there is a widely circulated line: "After the invention of film, human life has been extended by at least three times compared to before."⁹¹ This line was spoken by a film character, not Yang himself, but was later cited by countless Taiwanese film fans as his footnote. It can almost describe what Yang did for Taiwan: through film, he saved for us several times the lives we didn’t even see clearly ourselves.

I Film It for You to See

At the end of Yi Yi, the little boy Yang Yang, who always took a camera to shoot adults’ backs⁹², stood at his grandmother’s funeral and read a letter. The reason he shot backs was because he discovered adults could not see their own backs—so he filmed the unseen side and showed it to adults.

At the end of the letter, Yang Yang spoke to his newborn, nameless little cousin: he felt that he, too, was old.

A child saying "I am old too," the weight of this sentence was Yang’s lifelong self-explanation. He was that Yang Yang holding the camera. He gave up Seattle’s stable engineer life, returned to Taiwan, and with the calmest, most engineering-like method, filmed one by one, filming the back of our own heads that we couldn’t see, and showed it to us.

What he filmed was never others. It was us.

Using the coldest logic of an engineer to film the hottest loneliness of the human heart—this was the pair of eyes Edward Yang left for Taiwan, and also for the world.

Further Reading: Taiwan Film (Edward Yang was one of the two standard-bearers of the New Taiwanese Cinema; here is the map of the entire movement he belonged to), Hou Hsiao-hsien (the other mountain alongside Yang, from close friends to distant), Ang Lee (also brought Taiwan film to the world stage, but the path was completely different), Tsai Ming-liang (after the New Taiwanese Cinema, another way to dissect urban loneliness), Guling Street (the real street where the knife fell, the origin of a four-hour epic).

Image Sources

• Cover Image / The Sea of Trees Set (1983): Central Motion Picture Corporation, Shaw Brothers (Hong Kong), The Sea of Trees production photo, 1983. Provided by Peng Kai-li, deposited at the National Film and Audio Culture Center. Source from TFAM "Yi Yi Reconstructed: Edward Yang" exhibition public image (tfam.museum), Fair use editorial commentary.
• WWII Comic Manuscript (c. 1965-1970): Edward Yang’s hand-drawn WWII comic manuscript from his youth. Provided by Peng Kai-li, deposited at the National Film and Audio Culture Center. Source same as above TFAM exhibition press kit, Fair use editorial commentary.
• A Summer at Grace Set (1993): Atom Films, A Summer at Grace production photo, 1993. Provided by Peng Kai-li, deposited at the National Film and Audio Culture Center (TFAM website also marks c. 1994, here adopting the press kit’s 1993). Source same as above, Fair use editorial commentary.

References