A Foggy Tale (大濛), the epic historical film directed by Golden Horse Award-winning filmmaker Chen Yu-hsun (陳玉勳), is now streaming globally on Netflix. The film swept five prizes at this year's Golden Horse Awards, was produced at a budget of approximately NT$100 million (around US$3.1 million), and is set against the backdrop of Taiwan's White Terror period in the 1950s. It topped Taiwan's Netflix chart within a single day of its release.
What Does the Ending of A Foggy Tale Actually Mean?
The story centers on A-Yue (方郁婷, played by Fang Yu -ting), a young farm girl from Chiayi who travels north alone after learning that her brother Yu-Yun (曾敬驊, played by Tseng Ching-hua) has been executed by the state. Along the way she meets Zhao Gong-dao, a mainlander rickshaw driver played by Hong Kong actor Ke Wei-lin (柯煒林). The two form an unlikely partnership, scrambling to raise enough money to reclaim the brother's body. Director Chen — known previously for the lighthearted romantic comedy *My Missing Valentine* — shifts register here entirely, filtering the era's absurdity and cruelty through an intimate, ground-level perspective.
Early in the film, Yu-Yun tells his sister that whenever life becomes unbearable, she should imagine the hands of a clock spinning forward: "Think about next year, the year after, ten years from now, and what you're feeling now won't seem like much." That quiet instruction becomes the film's most emotionally resonant through-line.
In the climax, A-Yue locates her brother's skeletal remains at the National Defense Medical Center (國防醫學院), where they had been sent for use in anatomical instruction. In a breathless final sequence, a rapid scroll of Republic of China (ROC) calendar years flashes across the screen: Year 53, 59, 62, 65, 67, 69, 73, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82.
What Do Those ROC Years Scrolling Across the Screen Represent?
Many viewers have asked what the sequence of years signifies. The film appears to layer A-Yue's personal journey to recover her brother over Taiwan's collective arc from authoritarian repression to democratic transition. Each year that flashes by corresponds to a documented turning point in Taiwan's modern political history — from the suffocating height of martial-law-era suppression, through the emergence of organized civic opposition, to the eventual dismantling of one-party rule.
The Real Taiwan History A Foggy Tale Does Not Show
Below is a breakdown of the historical events that correspond to each ROC year spoken or shown in the film's final sequence, tracing the documented milestones of Taiwan's transition from authoritarian rule to democracy.
ROC Year 53 (1964)
Key Event: Peng Ming-min (彭明敏), Hsieh Tsung-min (謝聰敏), and Wei Ting-chao (魏廷朝) draft and print the Declaration of Formosan Self-Salvation.
At the height of White Terror repression, the three men declared that a military reconquest of mainland China was impossible and called for a new constitution. They were arrested before the document could be distributed, making this one of the era's most significant acts of political dissent.
ROC Year 59 (1970)
Key Event: The Taiyuan Incident (泰源事件).
In February 1970, political prisoners at Taiyuan Prison staged an attempted armed uprising. The attempt failed; Chiang Ping-hsing (江炳興) and several others were subsequently executed.
ROC Years 61–64 (1972–1975)
Key Event: The National Taiwan University Philosophy Department Incident (台大哲學系事件).
Kuomintang (國民黨) political officers intervened in the NTU Philosophy Department, forcing out multiple faculty members. The case became a landmark example of political interference in academic freedom and university autonomy.
ROC Year 64 (1975)
Key Event: Suspension of Taiwan Political Review (臺灣政論).
Taiwan Political Review, a non-party opposition magazine, was shut down after publishing only five issues. The closure illustrated the continuing suppression of press and speech freedoms under martial law.
ROC Year 67 (1978)
Key Event: Suspension of elections and the Qiaotou Incident (橋頭事件).
Facing a major diplomatic crisis, the government suspended scheduled supplementary elections for national representative bodies. Non-party opposition figures began organizing cross-regional coalitions. In January the following year, the Qiaotou Incident became the first political street demonstration since martial law had been imposed nearly three decades earlier.
ROC Year 69 (1980)
Key Event: The Formosa Incident trials and the Lin Family Murders (林宅血案).
Following the 1979 Formosa Incident (美麗島事件), military prosecutors tried prominent opposition figures including Huang Hsin-chieh (黃信介) and Shih Ming-teh (施明德) in public hearings in 1980. On February 28 of the same year, family members of opposition figure Lin Yi-hsiung (林義雄) were killed in their home. Both the trials and the murders drew intense domestic and international scrutiny of Taiwan's human rights record.
ROC Year 73 (1984)
Key Event: The Henry Liu Assassination (江南案).
The Defense Intelligence Bureau (國防部情報局) collaborated with organized crime figures to assassinate author Henry Liu (江南) on US soil, triggering a severe diplomatic crisis between Taiwan and the United States. The case damaged the Chiang family's authoritarian image; Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) subsequently declared that no member of the Chiang family would succeed him.
ROC Year 77 (1988)
Key Event: Death of Chiang Ching-kuo and the May 20th Farmers' Protest (520農民運動).
Chiang Ching-kuo died in January 1988. That May, thousands of farmers marched to Taipei to demand agricultural policy reforms. The protest escalated into the most intense confrontation between demonstrators and police since martial law had been lifted the previous year, marking a new and more assertive phase in Taiwan's civic movement.
ROC Year 78 (1989)
Key Event: Self-immolation of Cheng Nan-jung (鄭南榕).
Magazine publisher Cheng Nan-jung set himself on fire in defense of what he called "one hundred percent freedom of speech," becoming an enduring symbol of the struggle for civil liberties in Taiwan.
ROC Year 79 (1990)
Key Event: The Wild Lily Student Movement (野百合學運).
Thousands of university students staged a sit-in at Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall (中正紀念堂), calling for parliamentary reform and the abolition of the Temporary Provisions Effective During the Period of Communist Rebellion (動員戡亂時期臨時條款). President Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) subsequently promised a National Affairs Conference, moving Taiwan's constitutional reform into a decisive phase.
ROC Year 80 (1991)
Key Event: End of the Mobilization Period and dissolution of the "Eternal Parliament."
The Temporary Provisions were formally repealed, ending the Period of Communist Rebellion. All first-term national representatives — some of whom had held seats since 1947 — were required to retire, dissolving what critics called the "Eternal Parliament." The same year, the Independent Taiwan Society Incident (獨台會案) prompted protests among students and intellectuals; the Statute for the Punishment of Rebellion (懲治叛亂條例) was also repealed.
ROC Year 81 (1992)
Key Event: Amendment of Criminal Code Article 100 (刑法第100條) and the first full Legislative Yuan elections.
Amendments to Article 100 required that charges of insurrection be grounded in actual acts of violence or coercion, substantially narrowing the legal basis for prosecuting individuals on account of thought or speech alone. In December of the same year, Taiwan held its first fully competitive Legislative Yuan (立法院) elections since the government relocated to Taiwan.
ROC Year 82 (1993)
Key Event: Discovery of White Terror victims' graves at Liuzhangli (六張犁).
Tseng Mei-lan (曾梅蘭), searching for the grave of her executed brother Hsu Ching-lan (徐慶蘭), located his tombstone and burial site at the Liuzhangli cemetery in Taipei and identified more than 200 graves in surrounding plots, the majority linked to victims of the White Terror. The discovery returned the posthumous fate of political victims to public awareness and spurred subsequent investigation and preservation efforts.
The years that flash across the screen in A Foggy Tale's final sequence are not mere stylistic flourish. They mark the incremental — and often violent — steps by which Taiwan's civil society pushed back against authoritarian rule. Within the film, A-Yue carries the weight of her brother's death through the long passage of time; beyond it, the history those years represent stands as a record of the cost at which the freedoms of contemporary Taiwanese life were secured. （Related： 1% Profile | From Michelin Stars to Taipei: How Fumio Yonezawa Is Redefining Fine Dining at No Code ｜ Latest ）
