Three short films by different directors-all based on stories written by novelist Huang Chun-ming and all reflecting the experience of the native Taiwanese working poor, who were left behind as the island sped on its course to industrial and economic development. Hou Hsiao-hsien's episode The Sandwich Man is the story of a young father who supports his family as a clown wearing an advertising billboard for a newly opened theater. He humiliates himself daily as progress comes to his rural town. Vicki's Hat, directed by Roy Tsang, constructs a small tragedy out of a situation in which teenagers are recruited as hawkers to create a market for foreign goods. Wan Ren's The Taste of Apples focuses on the growing class disparity and the influence of the west as one laborer is given a "lucky break" by an American driving a U.S. military vehicle: a broken leg, with a basket of expensive imported apples as his compensation. Scriptwriter Wu Nien-jen is a key figure in the new Taiwanese cinema and in 1994 directed A Borrowed Life.