Hou Hsiao-hsien's second film continues in the star-driven romance genre popular in Taiwan, but finds the director slowly beginning to assert his own style. Hong Kong singer Kenny Bee and Taiwanese pop diva Feng Fei-fei return from Hou's debut Cute Girl, this time as a blind man and a married photographer who falls for him amid an assortment of the island's more scenic locales (many of which Hou revisits in later films). Doe-eyed romancing and tuneful pop crooning follow, yet Hou finds the time to experiment within the genre's framework, adding touches-a focus on children and nonactors, an attention to the natural world, a concern for the rural/urban divide-that would blossom in his later works. “I asked you to write slogans, not paint on walls,” notes a stern headmistress to Feng's character; Cheerful Wind is Hou learning to write the slogans, while coloring in his own portraits. Soon, the slogans would be gone entirely.