Taiwan, an island too small to carry such pain. Director Cheng Wen-Tang tells the sad story of the natives, long hidden in the shadows of Taiwan′s modern history. He comes to understand the natives′ pain through the social activism of the 1980s, and eventually translates this into a film. The film centers on an aboriginal youth of the Paiwan tribe, construction worker Ahmak and his encounter with a prostitute. Ahmak and the prostitute talk to the camera or to themselves, perhaps representing a sincere attempt to hear these voices deprived of an echo in a Han clan dominated society. Uprooted and on the road, their monologues sometimes resonate like sad music, and sometimes as anguish. Their problems are not simply a matter of city and the country, or the conflict between the traditional and the modern, but rather an incurable issue of Taiwanese identity.Who is actually Taiwanese and who is the aboriginal, who is Outer Province People and who is Local Province People? For Ahmak, it is almost impossible to have a normal conversation with city folk His good intentions to help others are distorted, and like his father, he meets a worthless death. Cheng Wen-Tang seemingly suggests that external legitimacy may be in the hands of the Han clan, yet moral legitimacy is the property of the aboriginals. (Kim Ji-Seok)