The Sand Pebbles - Steve McQueen (1966) - Lin Family Mansion, Banqiao, Taipei

In the last The Sand Pebbles Taiwan post we visit the Lin Family Mansion in Banqiao. This is location of the elephant statue that McQueen and a local boy are throwing stones onto for good luck. I'm still not sure if the elephant was a prop or actually part of the garden, but suffice to say it hasn't survived the years so perhaps it was just a prop after all. The garden itself and the traditional Chinese style house at the other end are still very much intact though and I went there a couple of weeks ago.

Seeing some of the behind-the-scenes pictures online, it's astonishing to think that at the time of filming the surrounding area was basically just open fields (with the exception of a nearby Catholic Church), but when I visited I can tell you the whole place is as bustling as any other part of the city with the development to match.

Getting here is straightforward enough, I just caught the MRT to Fuzhong on the blue Bannan Line and walked for about 10 minutes. The garden is NT$80 to enter and consists of two parts: a large Chinese style garden with various traditional buildings and pavilions, bridges, ponds etc and the second part is the privately owned Lin family mansion and the open garden that extends to its front (i.e. the filming location).

Here lies the problem for budding film fans. In order to get into the mansion side you need to grab a (free) ticket for the next available tour (tour of the Lin mansion that is, not the tour of the Chinese garden). The tour is in Chinese only and you will not get in without a ticket because the entrance is small (through a door in the wall) and you are stopped for your ticket as you go in i.e. no way to sneak in.

The second problem is that the tour is only of the mansion and not the surrounding grounds and each group is chaperoned by at least 3 assistants who make it their mission to stop you from straying away from the tour path. So, with that in mind I can only say that I was very close to the filming spot by about 20 metres, but was forbidden from going any closer. I don't know why that section is off limits.

In the picture above, the filming spot is beyond the "minder" just in front of the balustrade wall. It's a large courtyard area with an ornamental pond on the other side of the wall. This was the closest I could get, sadly. The elephant statue was placed slap bang centre screen at the end of the path.

Two minders to ensure no one wandered to the back.

Actually, in terms of getting closer to the location, walking around the outside of the garden is almost as good as going inside and I took these following photos from the public pavement by the main road. The location is just the other side of the wall.

The Sand Pebbles - Steve McQueen (1966) - Longshan Temple, Taipei

One of the locations featured on the day out with McQueen and Bergen was the famous Longshan Temple. It's basically the Taipei equivalent of Wong Tai Sin Temple (i.e. quite touristy). The temple complex is quite large with the main temple building occupying the centre of the site, however, the filming was done behind the main building in the rear courtyard.

Sadly, I couldn't get the shot I wanted because of a large metal roof structure that has been erected to protect worshippers from the harsh Taiwanese sun. As a result, the current view is obscured - which is a shame because the roof, like most Taiwanese temples, is quite colourful and ornate and certainly a bit more spectacular than can be seen back in 1966.

The Sand Pebbles - Steve McQueen (1966) - Dihua Street, Taipei

Not too far away from the former Penglai Pavilion site is Dihua Street. This is the location used to march the sailors back to the ship as they are being harangued and bombarded with all sorts of nasty stuff. In general, most of modern Taipei only really appeared after the 1960s and lacs the look needed for 1920's Changsha. Dihua Street is one of those older streets that has been around for much longer and has been able to maintain much of its antique look and feel. There are the odd clumps of modern development (especially in the southern section of the road) but many old (and stylish) buildings are still extent in the middle and northern sections and it looks as though that was where filming took place.

There are so many old buildings along here it boggles the mind, but if you walk far enough north you'll find some red brick ones that are similar to the ones seen on screen. What makes identification a bit more difficult is that these buildings have had some excellent renovations done, making them look almost new, and I think it might be complicated by the fact that there are also a few newer additions that have been built in a style sympathetic to the area. So some look old but aren't simply because of their architecture. It's very hard to determine.

 
 However, there is one spot that I know was featured and it is in the picture immediately above. I've cropped and highlighted the name on the building and you will see that it is the same one seen in one of the screen grabs above. I've re posted below.

Note that in the film the row of buildings continues to the right, but today the building marks the end of the terrace and a new block of flats has been built where the old buildings once were. So it looks like not everything was saved.

Actually, if you are eagle-eyed enough you can see this building in the screen shot below, courtesy of the two signs hanging outside the windows.You can see them directly above the position of the sailors in the top centre of the image. Unfortunately then, it looks like all the buildings to the right were demolished to make way for new development. You will see what I mean if you click on the GoogleEarth link here. In that modern link you will see the gap on the right where the old houses were demolished and a new building has been built set back from the roadside.

Anyway, at least there is at least one building that helps us place the scene properly.

The Sand Pebbles - Steve McQueen (1966) - Penglai Pavilion, Taipei

The American Consulate in Changsha was portrayed by a rather elegant looking building in Taipei called Penglai Pavilion. Sadly, it has been completely redeveloped - which is a big shame considering there are qite a few historicaol buildings in the area that have survived. Especially nearby on DiHua Street which I'll visit in the next post.

This is the scene when the Nationalist Army (led by Richard Loo) take over the Consulate and humiliate the American sailors by frogmarching them back to their ship through a gauntlet of angry Chinese who want to kick the foreigners out.

Holman later returns there to inquire about whether there is anyone in the building able to help Frenchie marry his Chinese girlfriend.

The building was built in the mid-20's and was originally a high-class restaurant/hotel. It shut down operations in 1955 and was leased to the US Govt as a club and dormitory for the military for a couple of years. In 1957 it was bought by a famous doctor (Xu Yuxing) and turned into a surgical hospital.

I can't find when it was closed but it was subsequently demolished and redeveloped and a small commercial premises (containing a cheap hotel) now stands on the site. The site, at 163 West Nanjing Road can be seen in my picture below with the glass front. It takes a fare amount of imagination to try and see that spot as the front garden of the old building.

This location is quite close (about 100 metres away) to Di Hua Street which was the real street the sailors had to walk down whilst being pelted with food by the local population.

The Sand Pebbles - Steve McQueen (1966) - Zhuzihu, Yangmingshan Country Park, Taipei

My sole contribution to the Taiwanese The Sand Pebbles filming locations hunt was this bit of rural spotting based on what turned out to be a single rice paddy terrace wall.

This location was used briefly in the film as the sailors make their way to the missionaries (including Candice Bergen) who have made their base in an old temple building out in the middle of nowhere. The top image is the first time we see this place as they make their way through the rice paddies to what looks like a distant temple.

In reality, the hill that the temple is on in that shot is only a few hundred metres away and, of course, the building is superimposed. This location is a place called Zhuzihu and is situated in a valley slap bang in the middle of the Yangmingshan Country Park. It took a while for me to find, but I did have the benefit of knowing that filming was done 'somewhere' in Yangmingshan. In the end it was the very distinct rice terracing that finally revealed the exact location and I was able to head out there a couple of weeks ago and get some modern day comparison snaps.

It's a bit difficult to see on my picture but the rice paddy sides are still evident even after all these years (it's much easier to see on Google Streetview which was obviously captured some time ago) so I have taken the liberty of using my blunt crayons and marking them below to make it clearer.

Incidentally, the hill where the temple is supposed to be is actually right next to the bus stop (I caught the S9 minibus from outside Beitou station and rode it all the way to the last stop at Fungjiakou). It takes about 10 minutes following a pathway around the paddies to get to this spot.

Anyway, later on the same scene we see the sailors walking up a set of steps to what is supposed to be the front door of the temple. This is the image below. However, if you look closely you can see the same distinctive rice paddies behind the actors, so it's obvious that this shot was made from slightly higher up than the first one.

I did go up the hill (there is a nicely landscaped path - the Bailaka Highway Pedestrian Trail - that leads you up to the road) and looked for a reasonable match to the angle on the hills and found one on a stone bridge that runs over a stream. You can see my picture taken from that location below.

The vegetation is now too overgrown to see back down to the paddy fields but I think the angles on the mountain opposite (it's called Datunshan 大屯山) are about as close as you can get. So, I believe the steps (obviously a prop) were constructed using the bridge top as an anchor. Of course the real temple set was in fact constructed over in Malibu Creek State Park (at this exact location near Las Virgenes Creek).

The Sand Pebbles - Steve McQueen (1966) - Tamsui, Taipei

The Tamsui part of the movie took up about 3 months worth of filming. It's the location featured the most because it is a stand in for Changsha, where much of the story unfolds. It's also the location where the "death by a thousand cuts" scene was filmed.

The main focus of this area was waterfront in town and there are a couple of landmarks that are on screen that can still be found today.

When I first saw this film and wasn't paying much attention, I had always thought that the red brick building on the hilltop was the famous former British Consulate Building. It's one of Tamsui's stand out structures and well worth a visit. However, on closer inspection the architecture is not quite right and we would expect to see the Fort San Domingo immediately next to it. After some investigation  it turned out to be a building known as the "Red Castle". The Red castle was built in 1899 and is still intact, functioning as a terraced restaurant called the "Red House Cafe Restaurant". Sadly, I only discovered this after the fact so neglected to visit it while I was there. One to save for my next trip.

Look closely at the images above and you can also see a small church with steeple in the background on the left. This is the Tamsui Presbyterian Church and is also still around. The combination of these two landmarks gives us a fairly good indicator of whereabouts on the waterfront the main action took place. Which leads us to the final building in the foreground. This was supposed to be Changsha customs building )I think?). I have no idea what it was originally but will say it hasn't survived (despite many other similar structures in Tamsui being saved and re purposed). Unfortunately, the building that replaced it is a bit of an eyesore because it contains...a Starbucks.

The colonnaded building at the waterfront has been replaced by this...

...how wonderful :/

The other scene I mentioned was the death scene of the engine coolie, Po Han (played by the Oscar nominated Mako Iwamatsu who I first encountered as the cane wielding master in Jackie Chan's Battlecreek Brawl many moons ago). It's definitely one of the key scenes of the movie (albeit a gruesome one) and at a guess - judging by the angle on Guan Yin Mountain on the other side of the river - it was probably filmed a little bit further north somewhere near to where Section 1, Zhongzheng Road intersects with Lane 8 Zhongzheng Road i.e. about a kilometre to the north. Sadly, development means the exact location is impossible to pinpoint.

I didn't wander as far up as that, but here is a picture of Guan Yin Mountain from about halfway between the main filming location and Mako's death scene.

The Sand Pebbles - Steve McQueen (1966) - Keelung Harbour, Taiwan

In the first of my Taiwan based posts for The Sand Pebbles we are, fittingly, starting off where the film also begins. It's Keelung, the port town where McQueen's character, Jake Holman, first boards the San Pablo as the new engineer.

Most of the films scenes were filmed at the port side next to Gangxi Street, in front of the old train station. It looks more like a plaza on screen but I have no idea if this was done deliberately for the film. Either way, it is currently a fairly busy roundabout. The area where the small boat is docked in the third picture down is now a building that contains a Starbucks and Burger King. Such is life.

This last picture above shows the view looking over to what is now the Yangming Oceanic Culture and Art Museum (far left of picture) and the large building centre and right is the Keelung Customs Office. You can see them as they are now in the next picture, taken a couple of weeks ago. The Customs office is the rather grand structure centre right. It has been extended up and out a bit since the film but is still in really good shape. The museum is the smaller building behind the blue buses - you can just see its lower arches on film and in the close up view I've posted below.

Keelung Customs Office

Yangming Oceanic Culture and Art Museum

The second location in Keelung seen on film is as Holman speaks to an officer to find out where he is supposed to go. In the background is the 林開郡洋樓. It is a well know local building whose name translates into something like Lin Kai County Building. It's a really beautiful building but just sits there getting more decrepit by the year. I hope there are some plans to preserve it in some way.

As you can see the main change is that is now has a flyover directly in front of it! In the film we are led to believe it's on the same side as the just discussed customs office but it's actually at the other end of the harbour front.

In Taiwan: Sneaking into the Central Motion Picture Company Studio Lot

Apologies for the recent quiet but I have been on my now annual excursion to Taiwan for the kids' summer Mandarin camp. This is the second year we've done it and last year I also took half day lessons. However, it left me with no time so this year I opted instead to keep my time free for exploration and spent my time sweltering in the heat and generally having a nice time walking the streets and surrounding countryside.

One of my main objectives this year was to visit some of the Taiwan sites of a couple of the films I have already covered on this blog. Actually, there are only really two I was concerned with: The Sand Pebbles and The Chairman. The Taiwanese sites of The Sand Pebbles was brought to my attention earlier in the year when I was contacted by a chap about identifying the various locations for his own blog - now deleted. Sadly, I was only able to identify one location myself (the Zhuzihu site) but was still party to various emails flying around for the identification (or not) of some of the other sites. Anyway, keep an eye open here for a few posts of those sites definitively identified over the coming weeks. With regards to The Chairman there were only really two sites that I could properly identify. This latter film suffered from the political climate of the time and so the locations are a mish mash of HK, Taiwan and Wales. I've already done the few HK ones (all filmed surreptitiously) and the Taiwan locations will also follow in due time.

Anyway, to get the Taiwan theme up and running I figured a bonus post regarding a famous film studio in Taiwan would be a good start. A few weeks back I was walking back to Shilin station from the National Palace Museum and wandered past the old CMPC studio lot. The gate was open and no one was around so I sneaked in to have a look and take some pictures.

The studio lot seen from the opposite side of Zhi Shan Road

CMPC Main gate