Seemingly both comparing and contrasting the religious ceremony and the kitsch showgirl performance (they're aesthetic opposites, yet both involve performers sacrificing something of themselves), as well as contrasting nature and the city (one of the rare times nature appears in Tsai's films, and once again though the two things are different aesthetically Tsai highlights that nature can be just as harsh as the city is in his tales of urban alienation).

Rather blah short from Tsai. I liked the individual elements... the fish, the tunnels, the stripper, the vaguely religious performers(?). But the combination of them is deliberately oblique in a way that Tsai rarely engages in. I'd expect this kind of thing from him earlier in his career, not sandwiched between two of his best films.