by Brian Hioe
語言:
English
Photo credit: PTS
THE PTS DOCUMENTARY Strangers and Their Babies is director Asio Liu’s latest look at unexplored periods in Taiwan’s history that link it to Southeast Asia.
This time, Liu examines refugee camps in Penghu after the Vietnam War, turning to the subject of children who were born in the camps. Most now live abroad. Liu looks at the histories of several families, then, including several families that now live in the United States, and one family that still lives in Taiwan.
In particular, Liu shows both the children of those who were born in the camps as well as their parents. But much of the narrative arc of the documentary comes from Liu following the children’s journeys of rediscovery, in venturing back to Penghu in order to fill in the silences that their parents are reluctant to speak about due to trauma. Some venture to places that they know from their memories or from family stories, while others seek out individuals who assisted them.
In this process, Liu often acts as an interpreter, given that these children mostly speak Vietnamese and English, but do not have Mandarin ability. Yet just as returning to Penghu is a journey of rediscovery for these children, so, too, does this serve in a way as rediscovering Taiwan’s own unknown past.
In focusing primarily on four different stories, Liu draws out the shared experiences of Vietnamese refugees in Penghu. All endured significant hardship at sea in order to make it to Taiwan and survived mostly by luck. One family recounts how the boat captain that brought them to Taiwan was sentenced to three years in jail for aiding refugees, rather than simply setting them adrift.
Likewise, even after ending up in Taiwan, Vietnamese refugees were confined to military facilities and were not allowed to settle directly in Taiwan. While one of Liu’s interview subjects is a woman who married a Penghu local, her family still remained in the camps, and Penghu residents recall that the inhabitants of refugee camps lived in isolation.
Strangers and Their Babies is an insightful watch, even if there is not enough time in the length of a documentary to examine the larger context of the history of Vietnamese refugees in Penghu. This is a thread that is examined in further detail in Liu’s other work, including how the authoritarian KMT sought to use the desperate stories of refugees as part of its anti-Communist propaganda push. In this sense, Strangers and Their Babies is best viewed as part of a larger cycle of work.