“The set outside looks unfamiliar. By which I mean that we are used to seeing the same buildings dressed, and redressed and reused in multiple movies shot on the Shaw Brothers backlot, but this is not a film by Shaw Brothers. Where are they getting that village from? If it’s not somewhere in Hong Kong, where is it?

“Well, the answer is supplied as we ride off, because right there you can see a very distinctive gorge with a road that’s been cut into the side of it. And that is not in Hong Kong at all. That is Taroko Gorge in eastern Taiwan, now known as Taroko National Park, one of a few river valleys to be cut through marble, and the sacred territory of the Truku people.

“So really it should be called Truku Gorge, but we use the pronunciation first established internationally when the place was a Japanese colony in the early 20th century. The thing about Taroko Gorge, is it, like everywhere else in Taiwan, has been subjected to a feverish renovation and rebuilding project since 1949, as the Kuomintang, the ruling Nationalist party, try to establish that Taiwan has always been part of China.

“So if anywhere is going to get little lion statues, and intricately carved fairy tale bridges, and little pagodas, shoved up in the 20 years before the film crew showed up, it’s Taroko Gorge, which is great. Because Lo Wei wants to make a film in a place that looks like China, and here we have the KMT shovelling as much cement as they can to oblige.”

From my commentary track to Arrow Films’ forthcoming Blu-ray release of Golden Harvest’s The Hurricane, drawing on the materials I used for my Rebel Island: The Incredible History of Taiwan.