"It cannot be said that Taipei is a modern and Western-style city, in the same way that one could affirm this of Shanghai, for example. Rather it is an example of some generally late-capitalist urbanization (which one hesitates, except to make the point, to call postmodern), of a now classic proliferation of the urban fabric that one finds everywhere in the First and Third Worlds alike." - Frederick Jameson, The Geopolitical Aesthetic
"How was Los Angeles?"
"It's just like Taipei."
A very lazy viewer could point to the Western pursuits of the two main characters in Taipei Story and draw the conclusion that the film is a comment on American influence on the far east. Chin (Tsai Chin) has a…