Fisherman's Life

Part of my evening was spent at the Chinese Family Service of Greater Montreal (shown in collab with the Sierra Club), watching a short documentary following the lives of fishermen in small-town Taiwan called “Fisherman's Life", （河口人）. It was not even in Mandarin/Guoyu, but in Taiwanese dialect, and the subtitles were in Chinese. It was nonetheless easy and straightforward to understand: the adoption of modernity in an indirect way forces the reluctant ones out. One could argue that you could indeed not give a damn about globalization et al., and just uproot entire communities and impose them an urban lifestyle, and make their family plantations into corporation-owned ones, or their fishing activities into vast pisciculture operations. But of course, the idea is that freedom of choice remains the foremost value in these societies, and that if they want to live in small villages, they can, and should be able to do so.

I‘m probably a little desensitized. In our society, the only couple of things worth something is a vote, and the power of money, or that which you have of choosing to support the causes of those you deem worthy of.

The film's director (I think?) has a blog. Even if yours truly couldn't understand most of what was said or written during the movie, it remains very beautiful visually, and eye-opening, giving one a new perspective of Taiwan.