Dust in the Wind

Dust in the Wind is a 1986 Taiwanese film directed by Hou Hsiao-hsien. It is based on co-screenwriter Wu Nien-jen's own experiences, and is the first of a trilogy of Hou and Wu's collaborations, the others being A City of Sadness (1989) and The Puppetmaster (1993). The film depicts the bittersweet love story of two village sweethearts, Ah Yuan  and Ah Yun, who left hometown Jiufen to work in Taipei city together after graduating from junior high school. It is highly acclaimed for Hou Hsiao-hsien's nostalgic depiction of Taiwan's rural past, when trains were the main transportation in the 1970s. The soundtrack by Chen Ming-chang and the cinematography by Lee Ping-bing won the Best Cinematography and Music Award in Festival des 3 Continents in 1987. Plot Ah Yuan and Ah Yun are childhood sweethearts who live in Jiufen, a rural town on the hills in northern Taiwan. Their fathers were all coal miners. They went to school together everyday by train and walked on the railway and the winding uphill road to go home together. After graduation from high school, Ah Yuan went to Taipei to find a job in a printing shop. A year later, Ah Yun also came to Taipei and worked in a tailor shop. They had a hard time adjusting to urban life in Taipei. Ah Yuan’s motorbike was stolen when he and Ah Yun were shopping for shoes at Chunghua Market (中華商場) and Ah Yun was terribly homesick. Thankfully they had some friends, who were also from the countryside. Later, Ah Yuan was drafted and went to serve in the Kinmen Defense Command of the Army. He wrote many letters to Ah Yun and she wrote back to him regularly until one day Ah Yuan’s letters to her began to be rejected and she stopped writing to him. He was totally heartbroken when he received the letter from his younger brother telling him Ah Yun had married a postman without letting her parents know. But he fully recovered from the breakup when he was discharged from the army and returned to his hometown wearing the shirt Ah Yun made for him. Finding his mom soundly asleep and listening to his grandpa’s familiar complaints about how the typhoon caused a poor harvest of his sweet potatoes, Ah Yuan was filled with the happiness of being at home. Cast