It is highly acclaimed for Hou Hsiao-hsien's nostalgic depiction of Taiwan's rural past, when trains were the main transportation in the 1970s.

Their fathers work as coal miners, and the two grow up inseparable, traveling to school together daily by train and walking home along the railway and winding uphill roads.

At home, he finds his mother peacefully asleep and listens to his grandfather’s familiar grumbles about the typhoon ruining the sweet potato harvest.

Wang Chien-wen, who played Ah Yuan, joined the production when he was about to  graduate from the Department of Theatre Arts of Chinese Culture University in 1985.

[1] Dust in the Wind portrays the urbanization of Taiwan in the 1970s, when more and more youngsters left their hometowns to find jobs in the city.

Central Motion Picture Corporation also submitted the script and applied for military support to go to Kinmen for on-site shooting.

Jiufen, once a popular town for gold mining, became one of the most well known tourist attractions in Taiwan because of this film and City of Sadness (1989), whose story is also set here.

Hou even regretted that he ever made City of Sadness and caused the ruin of the quiet small town, which was captured in Dust in the Wind.