Representations of familial intimacy across the Taiwan Strait: The reinvention of homeness among Taiwanese wives in documentaries

Chang’e’s Monthly Visit: Domestic labour and the confinement of home space

Chang’e’s Monthly Visit is a documentary film that references migratory trajectories of taishang wives from Taiwan to China, through four stories taking place in Beijing, Shanghai and Dongguan. Chang’e refers to an ancient Chinese folklore that recounts how Chang’e swallowed the elixir she stole from the Heavenly Empress, after which she fled to the moon. Chang’e was therefore separated from her husband Houyi. The title explicitly points to the separation of the filmed subjects and their families in the first place. The subtitle of this film, ‘Taishang mums’ worries about migration’ (台商媽媽的遷徙心事), suggests these women’s insecurity and rootlessness in their cross-Strait migration. The narrative is built upon four segments seen through the lens of four Taiwanese wives, accompanied by a voice-over. This fragmented representation thus gives us a glimpse of how women reacted to their cross-Strait move, and also presents the director’s intention and strategy of filming these stories through her selection of filmed subjects.

The narrative of Chang’e’s Monthly Visit is built upon four personal stories of Taiwanese wives. Shuqing, who used to be a journalist, moves to Beijing because her husband has been appointed to a new job. Beginning with Shuqing’s house hunting in Beijing, the story conveys the circumstances surrounding Taiwanese migrants’ relocation and settlement in China. The second subject is Rui’e, who decides to move her family to Beijing in order to make more money. Because her children are growing up, she feels she has to find a job and reconstruct her social status. Zhuping was a qualified accountant in Taiwan, and her husband lawyer in international business. He is dispatched to Shanghai and seldom stays home. After settling down in Shanghai, Zhuping feels as if she is on a long vacation, taking piano lessons and painting classes for leisure. The last story concerns Guiyu, who is on her own with her children. Her husband is the owner of a medium-sized firm in Taiwan and China, and she has moved to Dongguan in order to take care of her daughters. Unlike the relatively comfortable marriage and unified family of the previous three cases, Guiyu lives in an apartment rented by her husband near the Taiwan Businessmen’s Dongguan School. Wives in such circumstances are called ‘rent mothers’ – a term which depicts their marginalization. The film ends with a brief summary of the four filmed subjects’ current situation. Shuqing has been busy packing up her belongings and furniture at her place in Taipei. The director follows her wandering around the neighbourhood in Taipei, documenting her reminiscences through her interaction with vendors. Rui’e had worked for a while but eventually lost her job. Zhuping is still on her long vacation. However, Guiyu has started a printing shop with her friend, and she has turned her unhappy life into a positive one. In the film, these four cases unveil the women’s everyday life after migrating – ever subjected to economic drives – and the transformation of their lived experience, subjectivity and identity.

It is noteworthy that men are absent and women figure in the leading roles, expressing their thoughts in their own voices. Interestingly, the film starts with a shot of the Shanghai landscape, with a caption reading ‘The Paramount’ (百樂門大舞廳), which is a symbol of the entertainment culture in Shanghai established in the 1930s and regarded as a space of modernity. In Leo Ou-fan Lee’s renowned book Shanghai Modern, he regards ‘Shanghai in the 1930s as a cultural matrix of Chinese modernity’ ¹⁵ and points out that the dance hall is a symbol of modern architecture and urban space. ¹⁶ The introduction of female dance waitresses and hostesses was closely associated with the dance hall culture. Thus, the dance hall and the ‘modern woman’ symbolize Chinese modernity of 1930s Shanghai. The image of a dance hall with a dancing couple not only emphasizes the shift in geographical location from Taiwan to China, but also implies sexual encounters between the taishang and Chinese women. The opening scene can be treated as a taken-for-granted masculine narrative celebrated by the mass media. It is common for Taiwanese men to have affairs with Chinese women and to frequent restaurants and clubs with their clients and business partners. The screen then turns black, and we hear the voices of the four interviewees describing their difficulties after migrating. The blackened screen foreshadows their uncertain futures, fortunes, and the dramatic changes in their lives, contrasting with the prosperity of their husbands’ businesses. The colourful dance hall and black screen present contrasting scenes denoting the migratory journey of Taiwanese wives. The marginalization of women thus takes place right after the relocation in black, signifying transition.

Since the stories of taishang in the mass media are focused on men, women appear to be marginalized and voiceless. I propose that the documentary film genre creates a space for women to speak, with their own versions of stories of migration in China. According to Kuei-fen Chiu, ‘If New Cinema was informed by a bourgeois outlook, the new documentary was marked by its inclination to represent the marginalized and the suppressed.’ ¹⁷ Tze-lan Sang also notes, ‘Documentary film plays a major role, fulfilling its promise as a powerful medium for preserving and shaping personal and collective memories.’ ¹⁸ Both of these views point to the significance of documentary filmmaking in Taiwan in terms of its social and cultural importance. Chiu further argues:

Documentary filmmaking by women is gaining momentum in contemporary Taiwan. What is particularly striking about this specific phenomenon is that in a lot of the documentaries by women, ‘subjectivity’ is not treated as ‘given’ but something that is disturbingly problematic. This is very much in line with contemporary theoretical views on subjectivity as ‘non-static’, or, in the words of Judith Butler, ‘performative’. ¹⁹

The Taiwanese director Jin-Gui Liao seeks to create a space for women through her camera work, and presents women’s suffering under the forces of capitalism galvanized by their husbands. Chang’e’s Monthly Visit challenges the superficially colourful picture of successful taishang lives in China as portrayed in the mass media. Liao interweaves four personal stories with a special focus on cross-Strait migration, in order to investigate multiple survival approaches from the wives’ perspectives, and to inform viewers of their predicament which unfolds as a result of migrating to China.

In Chang’e’s Monthly Visit, the four interviewees are Taiwanese women whose husbands are employed in local/transnational enterprises or in their own firms in China. As the director’s interactive interviews with these women show, most of them used to be career women in Taiwan. However, in order to reunite with their husband and maintain their marriage and family, they decide to quit their job and move to China. Most of them thus become housewives, taking care of their children and doing the housework. As the first interviewee Shuqing confesses, ‘Once I moved to China, my focus was family.’ After relocating to China, these women were confined to the domestic sphere and became unpaid domestic labour. The family, as well as home space, thus becomes a fundamental site in these women’s everyday lives.

Seen in light of the gendered division of labour, I argue that economic-oriented migration reinforces the patriarchal family structure in taishang families, and the cinematic representations demonstrate the interplay between capitalism and patriarchy to which Taiwanese wives are subjected. In Marxist cultural studies, the development of technology and the transformative mode of production bring about a transformation of women’s roles. According to Linda McDowell and Doreen Massey’s study on the influence of women’s roles in different parts of Britain in the 19th century:

Extremely schematically, capitalism presented patriarchy with different challenges in different parts of the country. The question was in what ways the terms of male dominance would be reformulated within these changed conditions. Further this process of accommodation between capitalism and patriarchy produced a different synthesis of the two in different places. It was a synthesis which was clearly visible in the nature of gender relations, and in the lives of women. ²⁰

Cross-Strait migration is an example of the confluence of capitalism and patriarchy in the contemporary era, and thus men resume their power and domination within the household after moving to China. The displacement of geographic location and social conditions in line with the capitalist mode of production reshapes the structure of gender politics within the taishang household.

The film explicitly showcases the transformation of women’s roles by way of settings in the domestic sphere, rather than painting a broad picture of business enterprise/ambition and nation-state/ideology. In the second segment of the film, Rui’e, whose husband works in a transnational advertising company in Beijing, quits her job and relocates from Taiwan with her husband and children. The opening shot of Rui’e story shows her teaching her son how to write the Chinese characters of the film’s title at home, and it is worth noting that the characters are traditional (as used in Taiwan), not simplified (as used in China) – thus a close cultural tie to Taiwan as a symbol of identity construction is maintained. The mother–son relationship highlighted in this scene not only suggests that Taiwanese wives are doing housework and helping to educate their children in line with traditional social expectations, but also registers the transition of Rui’e’s subject formation from a confident career woman to a mother in despair. In a disheartened manner, she says, ‘I put too much emphasis on this space. I totally don’t take myself into consideration.’ Rui’e’s case reveals the loss of her freedom and public identity in cross-Strait migration, while family, especially husband and children, become more important in her new life. According to the explanation provided in the voice-over right after Rui’e’s self-reflection, ‘Five years ago, the family dream was the same as Rui’e’s, but five years later, Rui’e feels more confused.’ Rui’e’s story discloses women’s unheeded voices and lost selves beneath the seemingly shiny veneer of taishang’s lived experience in China. While the taishang succeed in establishing their businesses, their wives feel a sense of uncertainty and even loss.

In the director’s interview with Rui’e, the camera shifts to her friend Grace, who is also a Taiwanese wife. Grace says, ‘My 10 years of work experience mean nothing now. When my husband asks me to prepare something, I feel like an old servant.’ Calling herself an old servant, she portrays Taiwanese wives as domestic labour, exploited by their husbands. The terms ‘housewife’, ‘old servant’, and ‘old mum’ (老媽子) are related to the power structure and gender politics within the household.

The confinement of these women is limited not only to the domestic sphere. The cinematic representation of the local landscape and geographic location also connote the enclosure of women’s bodies in the host country. After the sequences of the home space and the interview with Rui’e, the director expressly traces Rui’e’s footprints in the alleys of Beijing. While taking a walk, Rui’e says, ‘Living here in Beijing is painful. I’m not content with feeling like duckweed.’ ²¹ She wanders about Beijing aimlessly, and finds the Temple of Heaven, a symbolic location which she begins to visit when she misses her hometown in Taiwan. Although she enjoys talking to elders in the Temple of Heaven, an invisible boundary still excludes Rui’e. The voice-over reveals, ‘Although the wall of Beijing has collapsed, there seems to be an invisible boundary keeping Rui’e out of Beijing’s inner world.’ In the film, the director applies a close-up of the frame of the door of the Temple of Heaven to symbolize the relation between Rui’e and Beijing. Her body is not only confined inside, but excluded by the physical geographic landscape. In addition to her status as a housewife, her identity has been changed from that of a local in Taiwan to a foreign migrant in Beijing. The spatial representation thus lays out women’s position within the household as well as in the host society. The double confinement in terms of the framing shots and visual setting in the film calls our attention to the marginalization of these Taiwanese women.

Similar to the geographic mapping through camera framing in the film, the director intentionally chooses three major cities in China – Beijing, Shanghai and Dongguan – which are all popular destinations for Taiwanese migrants. The narrative draws out the symbolic trajectory of the cross-Strait migration from north to south, from the metropolis to the countryside. The last interviewee, Guiyu, resides in Dongguan, Guangdong Province, which is home to the majority of the taishang and their firms in China. However, the camera does not focus on the prosperity of the urban space and the progress of these Taiwanese firms, but deliberately zooms in on an unknown village where a Taiwanese school is located. The Taiwanese Businessmen’s Dongguan School (東莞台商子弟學校) was established in 1999 in Shangyi village, Dongguan, for taishang children. ²² This school is the first school of its kind and it is recognized both by China and Taiwan. It is located in an upcoming wealthy district with advanced transport and infrastructure. ²³ However, the film director shoots the location of the school and local landscape from a totally different perspective. The lighting and framing employed depict what appears to be a remote and backward village. How and why does the director portray Guiyu’s story in a setting that does not match reality?

Through the dim light and dismal landscape in the background, we are told that the school and the village are located in an unknown area of Guangdong Province. In a long shot on the village, the voice-over reveals, ‘Shangyi village is a place you cannot find on the map. Guiyu and other Taiwanese mothers are residing here.’ The portrayal of the geographic location of the village suggests the marginalization of these Taiwanese wives and children, ignored by their husbands/fathers. They are confined to an enclosed area, in contrast with the developed prosperity of the urban space. Such filmic framing presents a harsher reality after their move to China and is indicative of the director’s purpose of unveiling the dark side of cross-Strait migration.

It is noteworthy that the isolation of these wives and children is enforced by the Taiwanese husbands and their financial investment. As the film shows, the school was constructed with support from taishang business associations which provided funding. There are many apartments near the school rented by the taishang, which accommodate their spouses and children. The village in the film symbolically registers the segregation of these women and children. As the voice-over says, ‘Inside the iron gate is a world which belongs to mother and daughter. And this is a world of women only.’ However, this situation is not the result of women’s autonomy but of the taishang’s patriarchy and economic capital. In this regard, the school is more than a physical location; it is also a mental space, conceptualized as segregation. The emotional and psychological distress inflicted on these Taiwanese wives and children through the construction of the school as an ‘asylum’ brings to mind Michel Foucault’s discourse on insanity, ²⁴ which reinforces their marginalization. The director’s approach highlights the confines of physical boundaries and portrays the helplessness of these women and children.

Moreover, the running of the school and the renting of the apartments are determined by Taiwanese men’s financial contributions to their families. Familial intimacy within these households is commoditized through the investment of money, rather than physical and emotional caregiving. I propose that the school operated by the taishang is in response to the capitalist mode of production of space, while they virtually sacrifice their families to maintain power and make profit. In the film, the director uses her camera to cast a critical gaze on the exploitation and isolation of these women by focusing on the two buildings invested in by their husbands.

The emergence of the rent mother is associated with cross-Strait migration in light of the gendered division of labour. Whereas the taishang earn money for their families, their wives are given no more than the responsibilities of housework, nurturing their children and supervising their education. The last interviewee, Guiyu, is one such rent mother in Dongguan. Guiyu confesses, ‘Many Taiwanese mothers, who quit their jobs and come here, are despised by their husbands.’ She insisted on taking care of her own children, and thus followed her husband to Dongguan. In Taiwan, she ran a business with her husband, working for the success of the firm with her husband. Although this film does not directly reveal her husband’s affair with a Chinese mistress, her self-reflection implicitly uncovers reality. Guiyu complains that ‘It was difficult living with him in Taiwan. After coming to China, he puts his wife aside and in turn serves his Chinese mistress.… China is men’s heaven but women’s hell.’ The self-reflection in the interview discloses a Taiwanese woman’s misfortune, and reveals some of the outcomes of cross-Strait migration and how it can transform women’s roles.

The transformation of Guiyu’s role exemplifies the reproduction of identity in the Taiwan-to-China migration. Cheng-shu Kao’s study on small and medium-sized enterprises in Taiwan indicates the importance of the ‘boss’s wife’ (頭家娘) in the development of these enterprises. ‘The boss’s wife is not only the boss’s partner, but more importantly, she is part of the Taiwanese experience.’ ²⁵ The boss’s wife takes charge of both the household and enterprise, and she has played a crucial role in the economic development of Taiwan since the 1980s. This phenomenon also marks Taiwanese women’s empowerment within the household. However, after moving their enterprises to China, Taiwanese wives’ roles have been transformed. No longer the powerful boss’s wives in Taiwanese enterprises, they are now subject to male dominance.

In addition to the transformation of women’s roles, their confinement within the domestic sphere raises a question regarding their reconstruction of homeness. In migration, identity formation and physical displacement bring about the redefinition of home for migrants. In the discourse on diaspora, migrants tend to maintain close ties with their homeland. I suggest that the home space represented in the film is fragmented in line with the four stories. Rather than tracing these Taiwanese immigrants’ trajectories in a broader way, through the mapping of the nation-state, the director limits the camera to the domestic sphere, the four interviewees’ homes and village. The absence of Taiwan and China in the big picture calls our attention to these female migrants’ identity formation in their home. Their conceptualization of homeness is in relation to their identity, which is limited to the domestic sphere without reference to the nation-state. The reconstruction of homeness can be interpreted in different ways. First of all, unlike the taishang’s close relations with the local population for business purposes, these female migrants care less about the outside world, including the economy and politics. Second, the director intentionally focuses on the domestic sphere in order to portray women’s everyday lives in lived space after migration. The representation of home space in the film not only demonstrates the transformation of women’s roles, but also showcases the process of their subject formation within the household. Hence, homeness through the lens of these female migrants is of importance, in order to understand women’s migratory trajectories and their reactions to migration.

In summation, Chang’e’s Monthly Visit presents reality and physical migration through the lived experiences of four Taiwanese wives. The film gives shape to the unheard voices of Taiwanese wives and their everyday experiences as a result of migration. The narrative of the documentary film suggests that traditional social expectations about housewives and good mothers have been foisted on women, reinforcing male dominance through the collaboration of capitalism and patriarchy.

A Wife’s Stage: Successful businesswoman and localization through home-making

While Chang’e’s Monthly Visit reflects women’s predicaments arising from cross-Strait migration, A Wife’s Stage offers an alternative understanding of Taiwanese women’s localization by way of them exercising their agency within the structure of capitalism. A Wife’s Stage, directed by the PRC director Wang Jun, was produced and supported by the local government of Jiangsu Province in China, and came in second in the Chinese Documentary Academic Awards and won the Golden Phoenix Award organized by Jiangsu TV. ²⁶ Since the film was funded by the government, it is to a certain extent infused with political ideology and marketing agenda. Unlike the interwoven narrative of the four segments in Chang’e’s Monthly Visit, A Wife’s Stage addresses a single case of a Taiwanese wife in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province. The main person interviewed in the documentary is Sha Manying, a Taiwanese migrant in Suzhou. Her husband, a pioneer Taiwanese businessman in China, works for Phillips. The film opens with a gathering of Taiwanese wives of the Association of Taiwanese Women in Suzhou, which is a branch of the Association of Taiwanese Businessmen. The sequences show them practising a Taiwanese aboriginal dance and making zongzi (rice dumplings). The narrative is built upon the director’s interview with Sha, and her family’s localization is described through a voice-over in the third person. After Sha settled down in Suzhou, she opened a design store. Scenes of her interactions with locals and acting as a tour guide for her friends from Taiwan indicate her localization in Suzhou. The film production appears to present Suzhou as an ideal home for Taiwanese migrants, and attempts to persuade viewers that China is the perfect site for Taiwanese to ‘return’ to and to identify as their motherland.

The image and the personality of the interviewee, Sha Manying, and of other Taiwanese women are presented differently from Chang’e’s Monthly Visit. I argue that the director intentionally selected an interviewee who is representative of a successful businesswoman with a strong personality, in order to underline the theme of the film. In the film, unlike the dramatic and distressing tone of Chang’e’s Monthly Visit, Sha is portrayed as a brave, tough and independent woman. She is actively involved with the association and welcomes other Taiwanese wives into her home. In addition to Sha, the president of the association is also filmed, and the latter shows a positive example because she takes care of these Taiwanese women and makes the association one big family. As the film shows, Sha, the president, and other Taiwanese women are not confined to the domestic sphere as traditional housewives, but are actively participating in public activities and creating a space for themselves. The filmed subjects’ positive reaction to Suzhou in the interview can be read as performativity, advertising Suzhou on the government’s behalf as the place to do business and to lead a more comfortable life.

In cross-Strait migration, Sha’s role and identity have been transformed in ways similar to other Taiwanese wives. From the interview with Sha, we learn that she used to be a travel agent in Taiwan, but relocated to Suzhou with her children in order to reunite with her husband. After settling in Suzhou, she ‘decided to be a full-time housewife and hopefully find a good arrangement for my family’. Sha thus takes over the domestic sphere and contributes to the housework and her children’s upbringing. Interestingly, the interview between the filmmaker and Sha takes place in her house, located in Jiangfeng Garden, Suzhou. Sha’s husband Mr Li is also filmed. As opposed to the absence of husbands in Chang’e’s Monthly Visit, the husband–wife relationship in this film is shown to be harmonious, and suggests intimacy – a long shot captures Sha and her husband’s amiable banter. The film seeks to document the story of a happy taishang family in China. In the documentary, migrant Taiwanese wives are not victims, but enjoy their husband’s support. While the circumstances of capitalism are similar to Chang’e’s Monthly Visit, the film shows the audience another version of cross-Strait migration, in which the wife is supported by her successful capitalist husband.

After the sequence of the interview shot in Sha’s home, the camera shifts to Angel’s Design store, owned by Sha. With her husband’s financial and emotional support, Sha starts her own business and opens a store selling cheongsam (a close-fitting silk dress traditionally worn by Chinese women), which Sha jointly designs with a local professional designer, featuring Suzhou silk fabrics. The observational shot at the store portrays Sha as an independent and successful businesswoman, and captures her interaction with local customers in a positive light. A close-up of her response to a customer reflects her confidence as a designer and owner of the store. In this regard, the sequence filmed at the store not only reveals the shifting of geographical locales from private to public, but also demonstrates the triple transformation of Sha’s role, from a career woman in Taiwan to a housewife and successful businesswoman in China: women’s subjectivity is reconstructed through the filmic representation of spatial practice in the domestic and professional sphere, in which women’s identity and space are redefined. Sha is a responsible wife and mother within her household, while publically she is the owner of a design store.

In addition to the transformation of Sha’s role within the household, the film sheds light on her interaction with locals, which is traced through her everyday life in Suzhou. In the film, it is noteworthy that the voice-over dominates the narrative, presenting Suzhou as an ideal destination for Taiwanese migrants. The setting up of Sha’s design store marks the start of her localization. As the voice-over tells us, ‘Because of Suzhou’s cultural resources, the place offers a perfect environment for her.’ It suggests that Sha’s success is attributable to her design and business potential as well as Suzhou’s distinctive cultural environment. Suzhou is presented as an appealing place with its gorgeous landscape and abundant cultural resources. Moreover, the tracking shots of Sha’s everyday life illustrate her interactions with locals, while shopping in the market. In these sequences, Sha praises the vegetables produced locally, and exclaims that they are much cheaper and of better quality than in Taiwan. She also invites other Taiwanese wives to her home and teaches them how to cook Taiwanese cuisine using local produce. The appropriation of local knowledge in her cooking demonstrates how she has become accustomed to local life in Suzhou. Meanwhile, according to one of Sha’s interview sequences, ‘If you want to love this place, you have to become acquainted with local people. Otherwise, you will be an outsider forever. I feel like I’m a local Suzhou now.’ In this regard, her local knowledge of Suzhou as well as her self-identification helps Sha to make a home locally, and thus her conception of homeness is constructed through her accumulation of local knowledge and interaction with local people. Accordingly, these selective sequences not only reveal Sha’s localization, but imply the purpose of this film: to convey a political ideology of the co-option of Taiwanese migrants into Chinese life. Suzhou is a perfect home for them, especially for the filmed subject, Sha Manying.

More significantly, the construction of the ideal home is reinforced by the dominant voice-over. The film, which was funded by the local government and passed official censorship, carries a specific political ideology, which is to represent Suzhou as an ideal home for Taiwanese investment and migrants. Seen in light of the strategies the director adopts, the dominant voice-over recorded after filming commands a major position in the narrative (apart from the director’s interviews with Sha). At the beginning, the voice-over suggests that ‘Taiwanese wives gradually discover their own space in Suzhou’. Additionally, along with the tracking shots on the setting up of Sha’s design store, the voice-over reveals that ‘Sha would like to become an “indigenous” Suzhou local’. We see that not only is Sha’s self-identification established through the interpretative narrative of the voice-over, but also a hegemonic imposition of identity is accomplished. As the film concludes, the voice-over announces that ‘Mrs Li [Sha] says that she has been settling down in Suzhou, and regards Suzhou as her home’.

In comparing Chang’e’s Monthly Visit and A Wife’s Stage, not only does the latter create a space for Taiwanese wives but it also presents Suzhou as an ideal home for their local homemaking. On the one hand, the transformation of women’s roles is presented positively, in that they exercise agency in creating their own space, through the association and the design store. On the other hand, homeness in connection with Taiwanese wives’ localization is redefined through the lens of Taiwanese wives, as well as the documentary film. The film appears to present a win-win situation, which benefits both local people and Taiwanese migrants. The film thus mediates between political ideology and Taiwanese wives’ everyday lives, portraying a positive outcome of cross-Strait migration.

Conclusion

Chang’e’s Monthly Visit and A Wife’s Stage both signal a renewed focus on cross-Strait migration, driven by capitalism and patriarchy. Unlike the seemingly fetish representation of male dominance and masculinity in magazines, newspapers and television programmes, documentary films carve out a special space for Taiwanese migrant wives who are experiencing a dramatic transformation of gender roles and lived experience engendered by migration to China. Both films document women’s migratory trajectories and everyday lives, and they examine how their roles are being transformed, and how they are redefining homeness in this economic-oriented migration. However, since the films were made by different directors, one Taiwanese and one from the PRC, they contain different ideologies and representational politics, and follow different filmic strategies. I argue that the two films can be read in terms of the directors’ positions, the selection of filmed subjects, and the choice of purposes and themes to represent two typical groups of Taiwanese wives in China who have both experienced a transformation of their roles: successful and unsuccessful.

In terms of women’s roles and voices, Chang’e’s Monthly Visit addresses Taiwanese wives’ predicaments in four personal stories. The director illustrates women’s lived experiences within the domestic sphere, which symbolizes the confinement of women as well as the dominance of men. Aligning Taiwanese wives’ personal stories, the film shows how cross-Strait migration has influenced women’s roles and resulted in exploitation by their capitalist husbands. In contrast, A Wife’s Stage sheds light on a single case to celebrate the success of a Taiwanese businessman and the localization of his family. Backed by economic capital, the main protagonist establishes her local business. Although she experiences the transformation of her gender role in the process of migration, as do the Taiwanese wives in Chang’e’s Monthly Visit, this wife – supported by her husband – obtains more social and economic capital, and the freedom to exercise her agency, by acquiring local knowledge and through her home-making. The representation of Taiwanese wives in both films unveils women’s lived experience and creates a space that includes women’s voices in the transformation of their roles within the domestic sphere in the new host country.

The reconstruction of homeness is another crucial element addressed in both films. Chang’e’s Monthly Visit reveals the commodification of familial intimacy sustained by the taishang’s economic investment. Homeness in this film is presented as unstable and challenged at every step of migration and localization. Taiwanese wives in Chang’e’s Monthly Visit face difficulties adjusting to the new locale. They are thus confined to the domestic sphere, concentrating their effort on and being responsible for their family. A Wife’s Stage, on the other hand, portrays an ideal relocation for the taishang and their families. The Taiwanese migrant’s home is harmonious. Homeness in both films is reinvented in response to representational politics. Chang’e’s Monthly Visit challenges prosperous and successful stories of cross-Strait migration through representing Taiwanese women’s unsteady trajectories, whereas A Wife’s Stage provides an impression of a harmonious home, which appeals to a broad base of Taiwanese migrants. The production of the films is closely associated with physical migration, political ideology and patriarchal capitalism. Economic-oriented migration which is taking place on an increasing scale has without doubt influenced and transformed women’s lived experience.