【Saturday Cinema】See Taiwan’s Ring Road Scenery in Places You Can’t Reach

Credit: MOOK Travel Life Network Editorial Team Compilation & Report

Adapted from the bestselling book that has won the most awards among single-volume publications in Taiwan over the past seven years — *Places I Couldn’t Reach, So I Brought Food!*

It brings together top-tier actors from Taiwanese film, TV, and theater, as well as promising newcomers. The film retraces every real location where the events occurred, shooting on-site. Filming spanned from winter to summer, from mountains to the ocean floor—a sincere production that traded time for one second of breathtaking scenery and perfect weather.

Would you go on a trip with someone you’ve only met eight times?

One is a swimming coach nicknamed “the local” (played by Eddie Peng), and the other is a young director who has just lost his father (played by Bolin Lin). The two embark on a journey together just to find a bowl of golden needle mushroom soup that the director drank with his father in Taroko Gorge as a child, and to fulfill the swimming coach’s dream of swimming in a Speedo with flying fish.

During their trip, the two accidentally stumble into a town buried by a landslide, the Plum Blossom Forest rumored to be one of Taiwan’s 36 hidden wonders, and the “Thousand-Year Suspension Bridge” known for tragic love stories... They keep meeting peculiar friends and continuously uncover deep secrets hidden in each other’s hearts...

If we had to summarize the movie *Places I Couldn’t Reach* in just three sentences:
“It’s about a director who has ‘lost everything,’ and a local who ‘wants nothing,’ taking a scooter trip around Taiwan.”
“They thought they could finally let go.”
“But what they experienced turned out to be more than anything they’d ever been through before.” — Director Li Ding

“Ten years ago, a director received a phone call asking him to listen to the sound of three types of motorcycles over the phone. One of them had a particularly low-frequency hum, with an oddly elegant tone.” Half an hour later, Director Li Ding came face-to-face with its owner, the local Xu Junhao, riding a motorcycle called the “King of Straight-Line Acceleration”—the V-MAX. “I always felt this bike had a soul. That speedometer seemed to be calling to me with a mischievous expression, or maybe I just wanted to sit on it from that angle, grip the handlebars, and speed off.”

Two days later, the local Xu Junhao and Director Li Ding actually set off on a motorcycle road trip. The director wanted to rediscover the golden needle mushroom soup he drank with his father during their first trip to Taroko Gorge as a child, while the local wanted the director to guide him to Orchid Island to swim in a Speedo with flying fish... And that’s how *Places I Couldn’t Reach* began.

“Because we wanted to find a bowl of golden needle mushroom soup I drank with my father during our first trip to Taroko Gorge as a child, we went on a motorcycle trip around the island. It turns out the taste from memory can be such a powerful motivator.”

Back then, Director Li Ding and the local were traveling with the grief of losing their fathers and the escape from failed marriages. Unexpectedly, they wandered into Xinyi Township—and that detour led them to meet a group of loyal, eccentric friends. They ended up staying and joining the Christmas Eve caroling, which moved them even more. But the two didn’t stay to see Taiwan—“Honestly, it was because we finally saw ourselves. There’s nothing more precious than seeing yourself during a journey.” Their story and lives thus began anew, and they rode across mountains, canyons, plains, and oceans, swam in Speedos with flying fish in Orchid Island, and changed each other.

【Info】
*Places I Couldn’t Reach*
Anywhere,Somewhere,Nowhere
Release Date: 2014-05-23
Duration: 2 hours 10 minutes
Director: Li Ding
Cast: Bolin Lin, Eddie Peng, Bolin Chen, Tuo Zonghua, Ben YU

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