Afterword

Abstract

Chapter 6 concludes with a striking image in What Time Is It There? The character Xiao Kang is morbidly obsessed with the time difference between Taipei and Paris, roaming all over the city and changing the time on any timepieces he can get his hands on. In a daring move, he climbs atop a high-rise office building and changes the time of the clock tower from local to Paris time. An extreme high-angle and extreme long shot captures Xiao Kang’s lone figure against the cityscape of Taipei, leaning over the railing and moving the clock’s hands with a TV antenna. In the foreground there is an oversize advertisement banner, in the background a distinctive sign for Far-Eastern Department Stores, and on the lower right-hand corner a conspicuously empty lot freshly razed for future construction. Xiao Kang stands on the roof of a stock brokerage firm with its sign right above the clock with which he is tampering. The loud hum from the streets, the quintessential music of the city, rises from below as the moving traffic is reflected on the darkened windows of the office building.