General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

A Taiwanese Tale of Two Cities (双城故事)

A Taiwanese Tale of Two Cities (双城故事) is a 2018 Taiwanese television drama directed by Yeh Tien-lun (叶天伦) in which a Taipei doctor and a San Francisco-born Taiwanese American engineer swap homes and, in doing so, swap lives. It was the first Taiwanese original series supported by Netflix, which pre-purchased broadcast rights for Taiwan-external territories covering 190 countries and regions before filming began, and it aired in Taiwan on Public Television Service (PTS) and other channels from September 1, 2018.¹^•²^•³

Key fact	Detail
Original title	双城故事 (A Taiwanese Tale of Two Cities)
Director	Yeh Tien-lun (叶天伦); screenplay by Yeh Dan-ching and Yeh Tien-lun with four additional writers⁴
Format	20 episodes, urban drama, produced in Taiwan with filming in Taipei and San Francisco¹
Budget	Nearly NT$150 million, a high-specification production for Taiwanese drama at the time²
First broadcast	September 1, 2018, 9 pm on PTS; also FTV, GTV, and the myVideo platform, with Netflix release in over 190 countries³
Main cast	Tammy Chen (陈怡蓉), James Wen (温升豪), Peggy Tseng (曾珮瑜), Denny Huang (黄柏钧), Lung Shao-hua (龙劭华)⁵
Awards	Six Golden Bell Award nominations, including drama series, director, screenplay, lead actor, lead actress, and supporting actor⁶

Spoilers

Premise and characters

The series follows two women who meet in Taipei after both sign up for a fraudulent "best job in the world" contest. Li Nien-Nien (李念念), played by Tammy Chen, grew up in her family's Chinese medicine shop in the Dadaocheng district of Taipei; her birth mother left for San Francisco years earlier, and her boyfriend of ten years has also moved there. Jo (黄台美), played by Peggy Tseng, is an independent, blunt computer engineer born and raised in San Francisco to Taiwanese parents, who travels to Taipei against her mother's wishes to understand the homeland her late father kept thinking about.⁷^•⁸

Within ten minutes of meeting, the two agree to exchange homes: Nien-Nien flies to San Francisco to pursue her boyfriend, while Jo stays in the family's Taipei townhouse to trace her father's Taiwan. Around them stand Teng Tien-ming (邓天明), played by James Wen, the owner of a Dadaocheng corner store called Ming-tian Kambodian (明天柑仔店) and Nien-Nien's childhood friend, and Ryan, played by Denny Huang, a San Francisco executive chef with a restaurant of his own.⁵^•⁷ The supporting and guest cast included Lung Shao-hua, Yen Yi-wen, Mei Fang, Yang Li-yin, Lo Mei-ling, and the singer Wanfang, who also narrated the series.⁹

The drama uses the two cities to contrast two ways of seeing: a Taiwanese woman who has never left the island chasing an American dream, and an American-born Taiwanese woman discovering a place her family left. Reviewers noted that the most sustained emotional thread is family and self-discovery rather than the romantic plots.¹⁰

Production and filming

A cross-Pacific shoot. Yeh Tien-lun spent three years preparing the series, which began production after a launch event in December 2017. The crew filmed in San Francisco for about a month in March 2018, using more than 20 locations there including City Hall, a winery, and a disused station, and finished shooting at the end of April 2018.¹¹^•³ The Taipei Film Commission and San Francisco Film Commission coordinated location applications and union permits on both sides; the first episode alone presented close to 200 locations across the two cities.⁹ In Taiwan, Yeh worked with the aerial team "Taiwan Is Different," using a six-axis Hollywood-specification aerial stabilization system to record the island from the air.⁹

The total production cost was reported at nearly NT$150 million, described as a rare high-specification investment for a Taiwanese drama. Netflix pre-purchased the distribution rights for all territories outside Taiwan two years before filming, a first for a self-produced Taiwanese series.² Yeh said the aim was to tell Taiwan's story to the world, and the English title deliberately marks the series as a Taiwanese story.¹

Setting and cultural texture

The series is built around Dadaocheng, the historic western Taipei district where Nien-Nien's family pharmacy and Tien-ming's store stand, and around San Francisco. PTS's production notes describe the pairing as deliberate: both are immigrant cities with bridges and harbors, and the show brings out Dadaocheng's traditional architecture, temples, and food alongside its emerging creative culture, while the American scenes show cable cars, the Golden Gate Bridge, and the city's pluralistic values.¹² Specific Taipei settings include the historic Xia-Hai City God Temple, where characters pray for love, and the night markets Tien-ming takes Jo to visit.¹³^•¹⁴

Music

The music was coordinated by KKFARM, a cultural and entertainment investment company under KKBOX Group, which assembled 20 soundtrack songs to match the two cities' distinct tones. Wanfang, who also narrates, sings the English-language opening theme "Love Yourself"; the dual closing themes are performed by the band The Empire and Rowena Liu (刘明湘). The soundtrack album was released on November 9, 2018.¹⁵^•¹⁶

Reception

The first two episodes on Formosa Television averaged a 1.0 rating with a one-minute peak of 2.54, first in the timeslot, and viewers praised the production values, music, and locations as a step beyond previous Taiwanese drama standards.¹⁷ The series drew six Golden Bell Award nominations in 2019, in the drama series, directing, screenwriting, lead actor, lead actress, and supporting actor categories; James Wen was the lead actor nominee.⁶^•¹⁸ After the finale, Yeh said he had received responses from viewers in the United States, Britain, Argentina, and elsewhere, an experience he contrasted with hearing only from Taiwanese audiences on earlier projects.¹⁹ Aggregated viewer ratings have been moderate: IMDb lists 6.4/10, and the series remains available on Netflix in the United States as of late 2026.²⁰

Significance for Taiwanese drama

The series is cited as an early example of an international streaming platform participating directly in Taiwanese production. Yeh argued that platforms such as Netflix and HBO Asia differ from traditional Taiwanese commercial broadcasters by focusing on what a series wants to say at the script and creative stage, with detailed professional divisions of labor in creative work, financing, and promotion, a system he said the Taiwanese industry needed.⁶ The Taipei Film Commission's annual report lists the Netflix-backed series, set in San Francisco and Taipei, as an instance of local cultural distinctiveness reaching an international platform.²¹

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026