General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Café Waiting Love

Café Waiting Love (等一個人咖啡) is a 2014 Taiwanese romantic comedy film directed by Chiang Chin-lin (江金霖), based on the 2004 novel of the same name by the Taiwanese writer Giddens Ko (九把刀), who also wrote the screenplay.¹^•² It was released in Taiwan on 15 August 2014 and became one of the year's highest-grossing Taiwanese films, earning over NT$260 million at the box office.¹^•³

Key fact	Detail
Original title	等一個人咖啡 (Deng yi ge ren ka fei)²
Release	15 August 2014, Taiwan; 118–119 minutes (sources differ by one minute)¹^•²
Director / writer	Chiang Chin-lin (director); Giddens Ko (screenplay, based on his novel)¹
Producers	Giddens and Angie Chai⁴
Main cast	Vivian Sung (Siying), Bruce (A-Tuo), Megan Lai (Abusi), Marcus Chang (Zeyu), Vivian Chow (café owner)²^•⁵
Box office	Taipei gross of NT$75.72 million as of 17 October 2014; over NT$260 million island-wide¹^•³
Source novel	Cafe Waiting Love by Giddens Ko, first published 1 May 2004, 404 pages⁶

Spoilers

Plot

Siying (Vivian Sung), a college freshman, takes a part-time job at the "Café Waiting Love" coffee shop. There she meets Abusi (Megan Lai), a tomboyish barista who can make any coffee a customer requests, and the beautiful, mysterious café owner (Vivian Chow), who seems idle every day. Siying develops an instant crush on Zeyu (Marcus Chang), a regular customer who always sits in the same spot and appears to have a stream of girlfriends.⁵^•⁷

A-Tuo (Bruce), a college senior surrounded by outlandish campus legends, comes to the café with friends and runs into Abusi, who he says stole his ex-girlfriend. When his friends mock him, the strong-willed Siying defends him, and the two become close friends. Through A-Tuo she meets Brother Bao (Lee Luo), a hot-pot restaurant owner who was once a film director, and Auntie Jindao (Pauline Lan), the owner of a laundry who is a superb cook and has been estranged from Brother Bao for 16 years.¹^•²

The story carries a supernatural thread. A-Tuo claims a childhood friend's spirit granted him the power to conjure grilled sausages from a girl he likes and hot douhua (sweet tofu pudding) from a girl who likes him. Abusi keeps trying and failing to brew the "owner's special blend" for the owner, who cannot drink coffee. The café's backstory is revealed late: on the rainy night the shop was completed, the owner's boyfriend, the store manager, was killed by a car, and she has waited ever since for a man who would take a bullet for her. Zeyu, it turns out, is the ghost of that manager, who has lingered in the café waiting for someone who can see him; it was he who arranged Siying's repeated encounters with A-Tuo, and A-Tuo who pulled her out of the path of a bus. Siying realizes the person she has been waiting for is A-Tuo, and after Zeyu's unfinished wish is fulfilled with a cup of the special blend and a letter, he departs.²

Production and background

The film came three years after You Are the Apple of My Eye, Giddens Ko's record-breaking debut as a writer-director; this time Ko wrote and produced while Chiang Chin-lin took the director's seat.⁸ It was produced by Amazing Film Studio, Star Ritz Productions Co., and Edko Films.⁹ Vivian Chow, a Hong Kong singer and actress making a rare screen appearance after years away from public life, plays the café owner; although she is on screen for less than five minutes, her character runs through the whole film.¹^•⁸ Katie Chen and Lin Mei-hsiu also make cameo appearances.¹

Ko has described the story's origin as a stray idea that came to him one night while waiting for laundry to dry: what if the laundry's upstairs landlady cooked wonderful food in a hidden shop that never opened? The story grew from that image into a comedy about waiting for love to arrive rather than hunting for it.¹⁰

Reception and box office

The film was a commercial success. The Taipei Culture Foundation's 2014 annual report credited it, as a Giddens Ko adaptation directed by the newcomer Chiang Chin-lin, with a box office exceeding NT$260 million New Taiwan dollars, and noted that the coffee shop used as the main set became a new tourist landmark.³ The @movies database records a Taipei gross of NT$75.72 million as of 17 October 2014.¹ In South Korea, where it opened on 11 May 2017, it drew 7,288 admissions.¹¹

Critical responses varied in emphasis. Reviewers praised the chemistry between Vivian Sung and Bruce and the film's energetic, gag-driven comedy; the lovehkfilm review found the same attention to romantic detail that made You Are the Apple of My Eye a hit, but judged its magical devices and melodrama a matter of taste, warning that viewers who cannot accept a character conjuring tofu and sausages from thin air may not be the audience for it.⁸^•⁴ Netflix categorizes it as quirky, bittersweet, and critically acclaimed.⁷

Legacy

The café set from the film was preserved intact and reopened as a real business under the same name, "等一個人咖啡 Cafe. Waiting. Love", which became a topic of online discussion for its unconventional menu and a tourist attraction for fans of the film.¹²^•¹³ The Taipei travel guide describes the shop's white sign reading "等一個人咖啡" with the English text "Cafe Waiting Love".¹⁴ The film also circulated internationally on streaming platforms, including Netflix, where it was listed with a 13+ rating and Mandarin audio.⁷

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Comedy and romantic films (individual works) › Comedies of 2013 to 2014 › Titles symbols to I

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

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