Chen Yi-hua, known to his friends as Ah Hua, narrowly wins the 888 Night Market union leader election despite the dirty tricks of rival Tsai Hung-kuei. But the stall holders of the night market are anything but united, competing for customers in a war that pits the tastiness of juicy steaks against the flavor of jumbo chicken fillets.
Ah Hua falls for reporter Yi-nan, setting her up to win the night market’s beauty contest that she has only come to photograph. In shock, she unwittingly disrupts the market’s power supply and must serve her community service at the market, helping out at different stalls. When she’s dumped by her boyfriend Chris, she begins to recognise Ah Hua’s qualities.
Meanwhile, property developers are planning a fifteen-storey building atop the market with shopping malls, gyms and a hotel, and are paying off local councillor Chang Chin-liang with a multi-million dollar bribe. When gangsters trash the market, Ah Hua decides to unite the stallholders to fight for their livelihoods while Yi-nan employs the power of the media.
Night Market Hero is the third highest grossing local film in Taiwan in recent decades, following the success of Cape No. 7 (FEFF 2009) and Monga (FEFF 2010). In Taipei, the film made NT$51.28 million (US$1.8 million) on release over Chinese New Year and is estimated by its distributor to have made NT$125 million (US$4.3 million) nationwide.
Like Cape No. 7 and Monga, the film is decidedly local in flavor. In fact, of the three it is the most tuned to local audience’s tastes and is the least likely to travel. Two of the film’s key stars, middle-aged comedians Chu Ko-liang and Lotus Wang, have no market outside Taiwan, but their presence assured local movie-goers that the film would entertain.
The stories behind the making of the film are probably more interesting than the narrative of the film itself, which is essentially a community comedy in the spirit (and plot dynamics) of The House of 72 Tenants (also remade in Hong Kong for local audiences at Chinese New Year 2010, and arguably remade again as I Love Hong Kong for this year’s holidays).
Director Yeh Tien-lun comes from a filmmaking family. His father, Yeh Chin-sheng, directed 1985’s Sayonara Goodbye starring Cherie Chung based on Huang Chun-ming’s 1973 novella. Yeh Senior returned to the film business as a producer with Lin Cheng-sheng’s March of Happiness (1999), investing and losing NT$25 million ($865,000) on the art house flop.
36-year-old Yeh Junior has spoken of his memories of a dark period in his family’s history following the incident in which his father had to sell off many of the family’s assets including their family home to pay off the debt. The Yeh family turned away from filmmaking to focus again on local television drama series that were the bread-and-butter of the company.
Key actor Chu Ko-liang is a popular comedian who has spent much of the last two decades on the run from gambling debts. His last film was The New Legend of Shaolin (1994) starring Jet Li but when the film was released Chu was already in hiding. He was persuaded to return to the entertainment world in 2009, repaying his debts with a percentage of his income.
The success of Night Market Hero represents what is potentially a worrying trend for Taiwan cinema. With most films fully invested locally (from the public and private sector), filmmakers are turning to local themes that are essentially alien to audiences in neighboring Hong Kong or China whose greater stability could be tapped to expand the range of Taiwan cinema.
Stephen Cremin