In 1945, Taiwan was colonized by Japan. A fine young man from the gentility in Keelung went against his father’s expectation, and didn’t go to study...
In 1945, Taiwan was colonized by Japan. A fine young man from the gentility in Keelung went against his father’s expectation, and didn’t go to study medicine in Japan. Instead, he pursued his enthusiastic dream of music. Out of the confinement of his serious and old-line family, he started the quest of life in Japan, Shanghai and other places, sipping the delight, solitude and desolation of life.
Looking at the nightlife of Shanghai, a metropolis with its European look, the beau monde shine with opulent colors. The air was all romantic and delirious, tinted with the glamour and loneliness of fin de siecle. An extremely beautiful and incomparable dancing girl, Yuenfang played deliberately and fairly in the world of men’s desire. She was like the bloomy butterfly lingering among the flowers and never set her heart on anyone. Men fell for her, yet the only person she had a crush on was Wubao, a young woman singer that was pretty, delicate and adorable.
A touching romance was brewing among the fine young man wandering from Japan to Shanghai, Yuenfang and Wubao. It lasted till Wubao’s death in war.
The turbulence of the time forced the vagrant souls to restart yet another endless quest.
In the 1960s, in the May Flower wine house, Yuenfang continued to circulate in the men’s world full of junkies who only seek to release their desire. There the gangsters fought, and the fugitive Chinese diaspora looked for memory and comfort once belonged to them. The damage brought by the war led to the shortage of resource. No more halcyon days. The beauty was aging.
Down and out, and merged in desolation, the musician worked as an announcer in a radio station at the time, under the inevitable force of reality. He encountered Yuenfang again. However, seasons and times changed. Sigh was the only thing that was ever left.
Love’s Lone Flower
A young and pure soul as Juan Juan was undergoing the most unbearable life experience. She followed her mother’s pace and became mad, under the spell of fate. Her presence represented the reappearance of Wubao. Therefore Yuenfang can temporally place the incomplete love with the musician on Juan Juan. Since Yuen-fang and San-Lang were getting old, they did not feel love for Juan Juan so much as they pitied with her. For them, the most luxury of one’s lifetime was probably the sudden retrospect to their past.
In the passage of time and at the intersection of fate, the lives of Juan Juan & Wubao, Wubao & Juan Juan constantly raveled and overlapped; they are intertwined at the bottoms of their hearts, and the corner of their memory.
Low life forcefully made the innocent lives become frenetic. Juan Juan killed somebody, got into a breakdown, and was sent to the sanatorium.
The only mark of their life passages was the song Love’s Lone Flower written by the musician for Wubao／Juan Juan. In the air full of cozy breeze, the song was sung softly and lightly. It is only when the touching romance condenses into memory, it becomes everlasting. Because the reminiscence of youth is the most beautiful sadness, and also the eternal nostalgia for life in exile……
