" Regardless of how successful the Fifth Generation and New Taiwan cinemas have been in the international film milieu, this (limited) recognition usually is based on two aspects: the formal or the exotic. Their works are praised as highly formally innovative (in other words, how well the have mastered the new-wave visual language of the West -- thus, our modernist language) or exotic (as revealing the mystery of an inscrutable Other). This may explain why in the United States, mainland, Hong Kong, and Taiwan cinemas are still perceived as a homogeneous entity called Chinese cinema, though they are products of the vastly different cultures of three geopolitically segregated regions. "

― , Confronting Modernity in the Cinemas of Taiwan and Mainland China