The minute I set foot in Taiwan, I was assaulted by smells, sultry, piquant, and strange: assaulted, too, by spitters and shouters, by offers, importunities, cries of “Why you no buy? Best price for you!” Waiters dropped plates on my table as if they were hot (which they never were), men whispered, “Dollar, dollar,” crowds pushed and shoved and squawked. There was the sudden shock of car crashes in the light-dizzy streets, of winking cabbies, of women in blinding pantsuits who caught my eye and held it. Three days later, landing in Southeast Asia, I felt again, in a rush, all the things I had been missing in Japan, not so much the roughness now as the spiced softness, the seduction of kerosene lamps and unlit back lanes, the lure of night-market meals and clove-scented villages; thronged festivals, black markets, a flash of white smiles among the trees. The whole whirl of tropical sensations hit me like a fever dream: the darkness full of spirits, and whisper-soft girls in off-the-shoulder dresses; the sound of gonged instruments in the night.
What do You think about The Lady And The Monk (2011)?
