A man with a shaved head wearing a Buddhist monk’s robe is seen slowly leaving a building. His slow steps contrast with the open door behind him, which shows the world moving in real time. The film redirects audience attention to the urban commotion on the other side of the door: a cyclist, a bus, a man in a purple jacket. This is the first scene in Walker (2012), a 25-minute short film that is a philosophical reminder to slow down in the fast-paced city of Hong Kong. The 2-minute opening shot lasts long enough for the viewer’s gaze and mind to wander to the background, at which point it is no longer possible to tell whether the monk is really moving or has been standing still the entire time.

Walker is one of the instalments in a larger project with the same title by Tsai Ming-liang, also known as the ‘Slow Walk, Long March’ series. This collection includes other experimental short films such as Walking on Water (2013), which is Tsai’s contribution to the anthology film Letters from the South (2013), produced by a Malaysian woman director, Tan Chui Mui. The anthology comprises vignettes from a total of six Chinese diaspora filmmakers from Southeast Asia, including Myanmar-born director Midi Z. (Midi Z’s contribution, Burial Clothes, was later extended into the feature-length version Ice Poison (2014), discussed in Chapter 5.) The films of the Slow Walk series feature Tsai’s long-time muse Lee Kang-sheng walking unbelievably slowly as the character of Xuanzang – a real Buddhist monk known for his pilgrimage from China to India in the seventh century – through the streets of international cities and countries such as Tokyo, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and France. Throughout his career as a film director and auteur, Tsai Mingliang has specialised in making films that emphasise duration and the passage of time. The Walker series, on the other hand, has no action, no story, no performance, no emotions; the viewer is simply invited to observe bodily movement across the screen. These works are almost entirely constituted by repetition, making this more a staging of the labour of walking (Lim 2017, 180–96) than a linear narrative experience.