（Video）In 1968, author Pai Hsien-Yung released his short story collection Taipei People, which depicted the first- and second-generation mainlanders who had crossed the Taiwan Strait and come to Taiwan. One of the short stories collected, “The Last Night of Taipan Chin,” describes a top dancer, Chin Chao-Li, formerly a dancer at Paramount, a night club and dance hall in Shanghai. It tells the story of her working at the Paris Night dance hall for one last night before she was to be married. The story was later adapted into a movie directed by Bai Jing-Ruei and released in 1984.
Chen Chih-Yuan composed the music for this film and also wrote the timeless theme song “The Last Night” for it. The lyrics were composed by the senior lyricist Shen Chih. According to the supervisor of Lifeng Studio, senior recording engineer Hsu Chong-Shian, on the day of the recording, singer Tsai Chin was depressed about problems in her personal life. After letting her emotions brew for a while, she was ready to record. They did three takes. On the third take, Tsai Chin burst into tears. In the end, the second recording was the one that made the cut, and it became a classic of that era.
In 1984, that song won the 21st Golden Horse Award for Best Original Film Song. The winner of the previous year had been “Papa, Can You Hear Me Sing?” In other words, Chen Chih-Yuan worked on several critical film scores in Taiwan.
