General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Taipei Exchanges

Taipei Exchanges (Chinese: 第36個故事; also released in Japan as 台北カフェ・ストーリー) is a 2010 Taiwanese drama film directed and written by Hsiao Ya-chuan about two sisters who turn their new Taipei café into a bartering house where objects, stories, songs, and favors are traded instead of sold. It was executive produced by Hou Hsiao-hsien and stars Gwei Lun-mei, Chang Han, Zaizai Lin, and the Japanese singer Atari Kousuke¹. The film was the first city-marketing concept film funded by the Taipei City Government, selected through an open proposal process at the end of 2008².

Key fact	Detail
Original title / year	第36個故事 (Di 36 ge gu shi), Taiwan, 2010¹
Director and writer	Hsiao Ya-chuan, his second feature, ten years after his debut Mirror Image (2000)¹^•³
Release	14 May 2010 in Taiwan; 82 minutes; Mandarin; color, shot on 35mm¹
Cast	Gwei Lun-mei (Doris), Lin Chen-hsi / Zaizai Lin (Josie), Chang Han, Atari Kousuke (special appearance)¹
Production	Brick Image Team (積木影像製作有限公司); executive producer Hou Hsiao-hsien; music by Summer Lei and Chris Hou¹^•⁴
Box office	NT$6,252,743 in Taiwan, distributor Atom Films (原子映象)⁵
Award	Best Original Film Song at the 47th Golden Horse Awards (2010)¹
Festivals	Busan (14th), BFI London (54th), Hawaii (30th), and Tokyo (23rd, "Asian Wind") festivals; Best Audience Award at the 12th Taipei Film Festival³

Spoilers

Plot

Doris (Duo'er, played by Gwei Lun-mei), a former advertising professional, fulfills her dream of opening an elegant, simple, coffee-scented café in Taipei, hoping it will reflect her own personality¹^•². Her more impulsive younger sister Josie (Qiang'er, played by Lin Chen-hsi) begins a game of barter in the shop: instead of selling the miscellaneous items that have piled up there, everything can only be exchanged, never bought¹^•³.

The barter scheme becomes the café's signature attraction. Objects circulate from one owner to the next along with the episodes attached to them, and customers trade not only goods but stories, songs, and services; in one example, Josie trades a Thai-Chinese cookbook for a customer's promise to clean storm drains³^•⁶. A turning point comes when a traveler arrives carrying 35 soaps collected from 35 cities around the world, each with a story, hoping to exchange them for something special. Doris finds herself drawn to the exotic tales he tells on each visit, and through the exchanges the two sisters' values begin to change³.

Production and city marketing

A government-commissioned film. After the 2008 boom of Cape No. 7 prompted local governments to think about marketing their cities through cinema, the Taipei City Government's Department of Information and Tourism ran an open call for film proposals. At the end of 2008 it confirmed Taipei Exchanges, with the internationally known Hou Hsiao-hsien as executive producer, Hsiao Ya-chuan directing, Summer Lei and Chris Hou composing the score, and Gwei Lun-mei, Chang Han, and Lin Chen-hsi in the lead roles, making it the first city-marketing concept film shot with government funding².

Hsiao had won attention at international festivals with his debut feature Mirror Image (命帶追逐, 2000), which screened in the Directors' Fortnight at Cannes and won a newcomer award at the Turin Film Festival; in the decade between the two features he worked mainly on commercials³^•². He described approaching the commission by analyzing Taipei's "product qualities" like an advertising planner. After listing tourist sites and cultural traits, he decided the film had to be driven by an emotional story, and he settled on "exchange" as its theme. He saw Taipei as a city of coexisting, sometimes contradictory cultural values, and the film as one expression of that diversity².

During shooting Hsiao wanted to take the barter idea beyond the set and persuade neighborhood leaders and residents around Fujin Street to trade services of equal time, a "time bank" in which two hours of piano lessons might swap for two hours of cleaning or gardening, but the demands of production forced him to abandon the plan².

Cast and music

Gwei Lun-mei, discovered in Taipei's Ximending district while a high school student and known for Blue Gate Crossing and Secret, plays Doris; Lin Chen-hsi makes her film debut as Josie, having been cast after appearing in a television commercial Hsiao directed³. Chang Han, brother of actor Chang Chen, plays the traveler whose exchanges influence Doris most¹^•⁶. Atari Kousuke, the Amami Oshima shima-uta singer who appeared as himself in Cape No. 7, has a cameo as a customer who barters through song³^•⁶. The score, described by one reviewer as jazzy piano, was composed by Summer Lei and Chris Hou; the film's Golden Horse Award for Best Original Film Song went to that music¹^•⁶.

Release and reception

The film opened in Taiwan on 14 May 2010 and earned NT$6,252,743 at the box office¹^•⁵. It later screened in Hong Kong (October 2010, Asian Film Festival) and South Korea (July 2011)⁴. On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes it holds a Tomatometer score of 69% from two reviews⁷.

Critical response. Reviews praised the film's atmosphere and craft while faulting its light dramatic substance. Anton Bitel of Little White Lies wrote that Hsiao "traces the many moods of change and exchange with a breezy elegance that offsets his film's underlying philosophical and spiritual preoccupations"⁷. Time Out awarded credit for the production design and "ultra-clean shooting style" but found the script thin, calling the film a "sickly sweet capitalist allegory that severely lacks substance" and objecting that even at 82 minutes it felt overlong⁸. LoveHKFilm called it "insubstantial but charming," singling out Zaizai Lin's performance as the film's standout against Gwei Lun-mei's more familiar screen presence⁶. WhatCulture's reviewer scored it 3 out of 5, noting the film's fourth-wall-breaking device in which members of the public are quizzed about the dilemmas the sisters face, and describing its theme as the idea that possessions do not define people but connect them to life events and memories⁹.

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 2009 to 2010 › Released in 2010

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

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