Reopening of “Small Three Links”: “Little Red Book” Users Plan to Visit Taiwan to Watch Mainland Banned Films

In a recent development, Chinese netizens from Fujian province organized a trip to Kinmen, Taiwan through the social media platform “Xiaohongshu” to watch movies together. The itinerary included viewing “An Unfinished Film,” a sensitive movie directed by mainland independent filmmaker Luo Ye, which just won the Best Drama Award at the Golden Horse Awards – a film that is considered a “forbidden zone” by the Chinese Communist Party.

BBC published an article on January 27 titled “Freedom Ten Kilometers Away: Kinmen becomes a movie-watching paradise for Chinese ‘sensitive films’.” The article mentioned that before 2018, many Chinese film enthusiasts would fly to Taiwan specifically to watch movies and attend film festivals. However, with the mainland’s ban on independent travel to Taiwan, such interactions came to a halt.

The article pointed out that Hong Kong used to be a popular destination for mainland film fans, but after the implementation of the “National Security Law” in 2020, many documentaries and films were withdrawn and banned. This situation led mainland movie buffs to take advantage of the reopening of the “Little Three Links” to travel to Kinmen by boat to watch banned mainland films, becoming a new privilege for Fujian netizens.

Since 2001, small-scale trade, navigation, and mail services known as the “Little Three Links” have connected Taiwan’s Kinmen and Matsu Islands with the coastal areas of Fujian Province, China. Due to political tensions in the Taiwan Strait and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, China restricted travel to Taiwan for tourists until mid-2024, when residents of Fujian Province were finally allowed to travel freely to Kinmen and Matsu Islands.

With the reopening of the “Little Three Links,” the streets of Kinmen are now filled with young Chinese queuing up to buy bubble tea and riding electric scooters for transportation. According to statistics from Taiwan’s Ministry of the Interior’s National Immigration Agency, more than 40,000 visitors from Fujian have entered Kinmen through the “Little Three Links.” On Xiaohongshu, many young people from Fujian can be seen going to Kinmen cinemas to watch sensitive mainland films that are unavailable in China, such as “An Unfinished Film” directed by Chinese filmmaker Luo Ye.

“An Unfinished Film” was directed by Luo Ye, who co-wrote the screenplay with his wife, Ma Yingli. The movie features mainland actors Qin Hao, Liang Ming, Mao Xiaorui, Qi Xi, Huang Xuan, and Zhang Songwen. The story revolves around a film crew restarting production of a movie in Wuhan, China after a ten-year hiatus to be disrupted by the sudden outbreak of the COVID-19 virus that resulted in the city’s lockdown.

Apart from referencing Luo Ye’s film “Nights of Spring Wind Drunken,” the movie also touches on significant events that occurred during the pandemic, such as the whistleblower Dr. Li Wenliang and a residential fire in Urumqi. Due to crossing the Chinese Communist Party’s so-called “red line,” the film was denied a screening permit and banned from mainland cinemas. Despite the interest shown by tens of thousands of users on China’s largest film community platform “Douban,” discussions related to the movie were heavily censored on platforms like Douban and Weibo.

The Chinese government has long maintained a strict censorship mechanism for movies, and films by independent directors like Luo Ye often face obstacles in passing the scrutiny of the State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television due to their themes, content, and style. As a result, Chinese movie buffs often resort to pirated resources on the internet or “climbing over the wall” to watch these “forbidden films.”