BWhouse

Synopsis of The Strait Story

The year is 1943, and Taiwan is under Japanese colonization. After finishing his studies in Japan, famed Taiwanese sculptor and painter Ching-Cheng Huang receives an offer to teach in Beiping Art School. He decides to visit friends and family back home before leaving for China. He boards the passenger liner Takachiho Maru in Kobe, Japan, with his girlfriend, a piano player.Tragically, the luxurious liner is torpedoed by an American submarine and sinks off the coast of Keelung, Taiwan.

More than 1000 lives were claimed, and only a few survivors were rescued from two lifeboats. This, the third most disastrous shipwreck in world history, should have been remembered as important episode in Taiwanese history. However, instead of commemorating the tragedy, discussions and inquiries about the incident were forbidden by the island's Japanese colonial governor. As a result, the story of Takachiho Maru sunk with the liner and its passengers. Ching-Cheng Huang, perhaps one of the most talented artists Taiwan had ever produced, was forgotten as well.

Many years later, Shou-shou, a fine art restorer with a crippling illness, finds one of Huang's paintings in an exhibition. In order to restore the painting, Shou-shou learns about the artist, the stories behind his work, and his death at sea. She recreates the story of the painting's "Woman in Black", and romantically imagines the ways the artist painted his girlfriend. The more she studies, the more inspired she becomes. Restoring Huang's painting thus becomes Shou-shou's way of restoring herself.