It Came From the Sinosphere

It Came From the Sinosphere: The City and the Drama (part two)

September 25, 2012 by Sara K. 3 Comments

So last week, I introduced Black & White, one of the few idol dramas set in southern Taiwan, and the idol drama most closely associated with the city of Kaohsiung. This is a continuation of that discussion … starting with certain personal observations.

The Taiwanese Pride/Shame Complex

You all probably know this about the culture of the United States, but I’m going to spell it out to make the contrast with Taiwanese culture clearer.

The society of the United States is very proud. Proud to the point that it is unwilling to accept criticism, especially from outsiders. The United States is #1, regardless of objective evidence. It is difficult for the United States to pick up lessons from other societies. In other words, the United States goes beyond pride into the territory of arrogance.

Even in pockets of the United States such as, oh, San Francisco and Berkeley, which openly criticize “mainstream” American culture, getting people to accept criticism aimed at them is pretty tough. People in San Francisco and Berkeley are just as assured that they are #1 as anyone else in the United States, and I say that as someone born in Berkeley and raised in San Francisco.

Taiwan is different. In this respect, Taiwan is very different.

Taiwanese people are certainly proud of some parts of their society. They are generally proud of the local tea, for example. Many are also proud of how they have preserved “Chinese” culture (though how they define “Chinese” varies from person to person—some are proud of the continued use of traditional characters, whereas others are proud of the preservation of, say, Hakka culture, so one also has to be careful of what someone means when they say “Chinese”). Many are also proud of the beautiful local scenery, such as Yushan, the highest mountain in East Asia.

However, the two things which are most apparently successful to a casual outsider—the technology industry, and the development of democracy —tend to elicit more mixed feelings from the Taiwanese. It’s not that they aren’t proud of their achievements in technology and democracy (they are) but their awareness of the continuing problems in both tempers their attitude. Perhaps this is wise.

But when I bring up many aspects of their society—education, comics (manhua), child care, fashion, once in a while even the food (which mystifies me, as someone who prefers Taiwanese food to “mainstream” American food), Taiwanese people tell me that Taiwan is not [as good] as [some other society, particularly Japan, the United States, western Europe and, sometimes, South Korea or even China].

I think some of this is just being polite. In Taiwan, being boastful is considered rude, and the proper way to respond to praise is to claim that one does not deserve such praise.

On the other hand, Taiwanese often seem to feel they have been abandoned by the world. They aren’t a part of the UN; many people don’t know the difference between Taiwan and Thailand; and when they see media from the outside world (and they see a lot—the movies come from United States, the comics come from Japan, the TV dramas come from South Korea, etc.) they rarely see/hear Taiwan being mentioned. So when some Taiwanese people claim that Taiwan is not such a good place, I think I sometimes do perceive a lack of confidence which goes a bit deeper than common etiquette.

I think that this humility has its positive side. Taiwan the most gender-equal, queer-friendly, and religiously tolerant society in Asia, as well as having one of the lowest levels of inter-ethnic strife among multi-ethnic Asian societies. I think this can largely be attributed to the Taiwanese people’s willingness to admit that their society has problems (I don’t think it can be explained by democracy, since South Korea and Japan are also democracies yet are further behind Taiwan when it comes to gender equality and the treatment of queer people).

But just as having low self-esteem in oneself takes a psychological toll, having low esteem in one’s own society also takes its toll.

And for Taiwanese people who come from less privileged regions (in simplistic terms, anywhere outside of Taipei), the sense of shame seems to go just a little deeper.

Which Kaohsiung Is In the Drama?

The Kaohsiung featured in Black & White is the newly cleaned-up Kaohsiung, beautified by international designers, with trendy cafes, contemporary art, good public transit, and plenty of space for recreation. As the story progresses, the drama also addresses some of the less glamorous aspects of the city, such as homelessness and corruption. ‘

But what I found particularly striking was what was not shown in the drama.

In The Outsiders 2, there is a character from Kaohsiung, and the way they rub in that the character is from Kaohsiung is that all of his dialogue is in Taiwanese. It is part of idol drama logic that everyone from the south speaks Taiwanese. And when I ask (northern) Taiwanese people to describe southern Taiwan, one of the most common things they say is ‘everyone speaks Taiwanese’ or ‘Taiwanese is the main language’ or something along those lines.

Yet, in all of Black & White I don’t recall a single dialogue in Taiwanese.

I’m not saying there was zero Taiwanese in Black & White—most Taiwanese people put some Taiwanese words in their Mandarin speech—and there could have been some dialogue in Taiwanese which I simply missed. But I am confident that more English than Taiwanese was spoken in the drama.

And for a TV series which so prominently features southern Taiwan, that seems wrong.

Or is it?

I was just a visitor in Kaohsiung, so I didn’t get to observe the city in a deep way. I did notice that people in my age group would usually talk to each other in Mandarin—even if they had spent their entire lives in Kaohsiung, and they weren’t talking to me (I don’t speak Taiwanese). I needed interpretation into Taiwanese only once during my entire trip … and generally, I heard a lot more Mandarin than Taiwanese spoken (this may reflect the fact that I was mostly hanging around people in my own age group. When observing older people, I heard a lot more Taiwanese).

some people are playing some game on a table

This is a picture I took in Kaohsiung. I don’t remember what language they were speaking in, but they look like the kind of people who would speak in Taiwanese.

This drama is clearly aimed at the younger generation, as opposed to dramas such as Fated to Love You which are made for a wider age range. As such, I have to say that the choice of using Mandarin almost exclusively was appropriate.

Yet there is a broader issue at hand.

Sure, in Kaohsiung, I saw the shiny new stuff, including the cleaned-up Love river, the MRT system, the renewed harbor-side area, the parks, other recreation areas, etc. But I also saw some of the interesting old stuff. I stayed in Fengshan, an older area, and visited Cijin Island, a historic district, and the Zuoying district, which, aside from the shiny new HSR station, has the highest number of temples per squre kilometer of anywhere in Taiwan. These are all tourist draws (even Fengshan gets some tourist action because of the night market) … yet I don’t recall seeing any of it reflected in Black & White.

This is a picture I took in the Cijin district.

Indeed, it seems that Black & White doesn’t show any aspect of Kaohsiung which is older than the Tuntex Sky Tower (completed in 1997). No historic districts, no Taiwanese language, no sign of heavy industry (Kaohsiung was once the center of heavy industry in Taiwan).

This is a picture I took in the Zuoying district.

Again, I must stress that I was just a visitor in Kaohsiung, I am not deeply familiar with the city, and that my thoughts are based on what I saw and heard. I’m sure I missed a lot.

To me, Black & White‘s depiction of Kaohsiung seems shallow. While it thoroughly explores the new Kaohsiung, it shows almost nothing of the old Kaohsiung. And since, as a causal visitor, I still managed to see some of the old Kaohsiung (and not necessarily on purpose), the makers of Black & White must have made an effort not to show any of that. And that absense sticks out to me.

It’s almost as if they are trying to hide the old Kaohsiung.

The Effect on the City … and the People

So far, I have been talking about how the city has influenced the drama. But how has the drama influenced the city?

Based on my observation, quite a bit.

While more people have seen Fated to Love You, I have seen Taiwanese people express much more enthusiasm for Black & White. And I think it’s because it’s helped fill in a hole in their psyche.

I don’t want to spoil the story but, so I’ll just say that, even though Pizi and Yingxiong are now star cops in the Kaohsiung police force, they had previously suffered neglect. Their confident exteriors cover up psychological wounds which haven’t fully healed. This can be interpreted as a metaphor for Taiwan as a whole, and southern Taiwan more specifically. Taiwan now has shiny tall buildings, sophisticated electronics manufacturing, and is a cultural exporter (Ang Lee is the best known cultural export in the United States, but there are many others who are well known, in one way or another, in many Asian countries). Yet in spite of all of the smartphones, DSL lines, and other high tech, many places still don’t have a modern sewer system. This kind of juxtaposition feeds into the pride/shame complex I have observed in Taiwanese people.

I think, by validating their experiences, this drama resonates with Taiwanese people who had to leave their hometowns for economic reasons, as well as the people who stayed behind and directly suffered from this neglect. In other words, it resonates with the majority of the (younger) Taiwanese population.

And the city itself has taken the drama and run with it. I could see Black & White paraphernalia all over the place, including stuff produced directly by the city government.

Availability in English

The DVD set has English subtitles, and is available for sale at YesAsia.com (among other places). It’s a bit pricey, but then again, it is cheaper than a round-trip full-fare high-speed train ticket between Taipei and Zuoying.

Conclusion

I travelled to Kaohsiung with friends who live in Taipei, but who have family ties to Kaohsiung. When they got their Kaohsiung transit cards, they were excited to see that all transit cards had a Black & White theme. They visited some places specifically because some scene from Black & White had been filmed there (whereas I generally had to see the interesting old traditional stuff on my own). Being with them shaped the way I viewed the city … and the way I view this drama.

Indeed, I think the fact that, not only was their city featured in an idol drama, but in one of the highest-quality idol dramas every made, means more to the people of Kaohsiung than all of trendy cafes and public art spaces.

This drama has helped lower the shame and increase the pride Taiwanese people feel towards their society and, by extension, themselves. And that is why it is important.

Next Week: Fluffy Fluff Fluff

This was the hardest post yet for this column. Sara K. simply must write something very fluffy for next week (otherwise, she would have to go on hiatus). She is also afraid that she has grossly misinterpreted Taiwanese culture, and that this post will haunt her forever. On the other hand, if she never said anything at all due to fear of exposing her misinterpretations, she would never blog. On a completely different note, she saw monkeys today. Wild monkeys. In the wild. That happens once in a while in Taiwan.

It Came From the Sinosphere: The City and the Drama (part one)

September 18, 2012 by Sara K. 2 Comments

If you asked me what the most important idol dramas ever made are, I would answer Meteor Garden (adapted from Hana Yori Dango) and Black & White. Meteor Garden, of course, as the first idol drama ever made, defined the entire genre, and was extremely influential not only in Taiwan, but also Japan, South Korea, China, the Philipines, Thailand, and beyond. However, while Black & White has not had Meteor Garden‘s international reach, its effect on Taiwan itself, based on my subjective observation, has been deeper. Most of this post is about this effect, rather than reviewing the drama itself.

Quick Story Overview

Kaohsiung Police Department’s top two crime solvers are Chen Zaitian (nicknamed Pǐzi – “Ruffian”) and Wu Yingxiong (Yīngxióng means “Hero”). Pizi goes around wearing snazzy white suits, hanging out at trendy cafes, sleeping with women, and working the sleaze circuit in ordet to ferret out clues. On the other hand, Yingxiong, who usually is wearing black, is brave, has a very strong sense of justice, personally sets out to right wrongs and, well, he generally acts like a hero. Unfortunately, he’s not very patient or subtle.

The Kaohsiung Police Department assigns these two to work on a case together. Oh dear.

Actually, this description makes this story sound a bit like something else I’ve discussed in this column. I guess there are no new plots.

About the Main Actors

The main actors, of course, are Vic Chou as Chen Zaitian, and Mark Chao as Wu Yingxiong.

Vic Chou as Chen Zaitian (Pizi) and Mark Chao as Wu Yingxiong

Vic Chou is one of the top idol drama actors ever. He debuted in Meteor Garden as Huazelei (Hanazawa Rui). However, he didn’t really show his full potential until he was cast as Ling (Rei) in Mars. I think his popularity is justified, and I have a lot of respect for him as an actor. While he needs a good script to show his talent (most actors do), his performances in both Mars and Black & White are excellent.

Mark Chao, on the other hand, is better known as a singer than as an actor. This is the only time he has ever appeared in a TV drama … yet he won the Golden Bell Award (the Taiwanese equivalent of the Emmy Award) for Best Leading Actor. His other notable acting performance is as Wenzi (the main character) in the blockbuster film Monga. When I say Monga was a blockbuster, I mean that it was the #1 film in the Taiwanese box office during its run in theaters … and it ran in theaters at the same time as James Cameron’s Avatar. Mark Chao also sings the opening song for Black & White.

But, while Vic Chou and Mark Chao are both celebrities and play the main characters, neither is the true star of the drama. The true star, of course, is Kaohsiung.

The City

Kaohsiung is Taiwan’s second-largest city, Taiwan’s largest port, and the largest city in southern Taiwan. Over the last ten years, Kaohsiung has gone through a great transformation.

In older accounts, Kaohsiung is called an ugly, highly-polluted, boring hellhole where the tap water is laced with heavy metals (including lead and arsenic), and which should be avoided unless one must be there for economic reasons. However, nowadays people are always telling me about how nice Kaohsiung is.

What changed? Mostly, government policy.

For a long time, Kaohsiung, aside from some key business interests, had been neglected by the government, which is one reasons why the city had such severe problems.

Then a funny thing called democracy appeared in Taiwan. In fact, most historians say that the ‘Kaohsiung Incident’ was a turning point for the Taiwanese democracy movement. It is worth noting that Kaohsiung suffered more under authoritarian rule than Taipei did, so it was not a coincidence the human rights activists were organizing there.

Of course, governmental reform took decades – Taiwan didn’t have its first free and fair presidential election until 1996. And even then, it took time to shift policies. But shift they did (to what extent, of course, is a subject of heated debate).

The major changes to Kaohsiung happened under the leadership of Mayor Frank Hsieh, and continued under Kaohsiung’s current mayor, Chen Chu (Chen Chu was one of the “Kaohsiung Eight,” and is the only woman to have ever been mayor of a major Taiwanese city). The government reduced pollution, improved the sewage system, built an MRT system, created many parks and recreation areas, hired international designers to beautify the city, and otherwise turned Kaohsiung into a much more livable place.

Of course, it wasn’t only the government that was neglecting Kaohsiung. It was also the cultural media. The vast majority of Mandarin-language dramas are filmed in northern Taiwan – either in Taipei itself, or, if they want to have a more rustic feel and/or reduce filming costs, neighboring areas such as Taoyuan or Yilan county (I do not know enough about Taiwanese (Hokkien) language dramas to comment on them, but most younger people in Taiwan don’t watch them anyway). I think this type of cultural neglect has a psychological effect on people.

North vs. South

Like almost every inhabited place on Earth, Taiwan has regional divisions, and the big one is north vs. south. In Taiwan, the north is definitely richer, more powerful, more economically robust, better infrastructure, etc. It is telling that when many people think of Taiwan, they think of Taipei, Taiwan’s northernmost major city. And Taipei also happens to be the capital (political power).

Northern Taiwan is also the center of ‘Chinese’ culture in Taiwan. When I say “Chinese,” I mean the culture of the people who moved from China to Taiwan in the middle of the 20th century. For example, Mandarin is spoken more in northern Taiwan (ex-Yilan) than anywhere else in Taiwan. Likewise, Taiwanese/Hokkien is less spoken in northern Taiwan (again, ex-Yilan) than anywhere else in Taiwan.

However, southern Taiwan is the center of Taiwanese/Hoklo culture (note: some people prefer to refer to it as “Taiwanese” culture because they consider it to be the true heritage of Taiwanese society, whereas other people prefer to refer to it as “Hoklo” to emphasize that it is only one of Taiwan’s traditions, and that the other cultural traditions are just as ‘Taiwanese’ as the Hoklo one – I am trying to be neutral, so I will use both terms). In particular, Tainan, Taiwan’s oldest city and former capital, is considered the heart of traditional Taiwanese/Hoklo culture.

A further wrinkle is that many residents of nothern Taiwan are originally from southern Taiwan. Due to the better economic and educational opportunities, many people from other regions of Taiwan move to the north, but still have family and cultural connections to their native region. And many have moved from Kaohsiung to the north (especially Taipei). The reverse is a lot less common. Thus many people in northern Taiwan actually identify with the south on some level.

While Kaohsiung does not carry the historical and cultural weight of Tainan, it is also a symbol of the south, and for many Taiwanese people, arguably a majority of Taiwanese people, the south is their ‘native’ land.

Kaohsiung’s Own Idol Drama

Black & White is not the first idol drama set in Kaohsiung. For example, Prince Turns into Frog, another popular idol drama, is also set in Kaohsiung. However, in Prince Turns into Frog, the setting seemed incidentle – though they occasionally included shots of Kaohsiung’s landmarks, it could have just as easily been filmed in northern Taiwan.

That most certainly is not the case of Black & White. It has Kaohsiung all over it. The opening song features Kaohsiung prominently; the ending song also features the city prominently. The first episode features Formosa Boulevard Station, Kaohsiung’s most notable MRT station. There are some scenes in the Yuansu Yujhu fashion area, which is Kaohsiung’s equivalent of Taipei’s Ximending and Tokyo’s Harajuku. The climax of the story takes place in the middle of Kaohsiung’s most famous feature, it’s harbor. The city is clearly featured in every single episode. I have seen no other idol drama which puts as much emphasis on place as Black & White.

In fact, I wonder if the MRT system was featured so prominently in the drama to encourage people to ride it. I know that it has been a disappointment due to the low ridership. People (both Taiwanese and foreign) have told me that the Kaohsiung MRT ‘sucks’, but I found it very useful. If I had spent more time in Kaohsiung, I might have figured out why it ‘sucks’, but for now it seems to me that the problem lies in people’s attitudes rather than the MRT system itself (granted, there are also claims of corruption in the construction of the MRT system, which is a totally different issue).

This has very high production values for a idol drama. I don’t just mean the special effects and cinematography; the producers pulled in top acting talent (see above), got really good writers on the project, and had a very clear commitment to quality across the board.

It’s as if Black & White tried to compensate for decades of media neglect in one fell swoop.

So, What’s Next

This is one of those posts which ended up being a bit long, so I’ve broken it into two parts. Normally, I try to post two-parters in the same week … but this week I’m really busy, so part two will be posted next week. In part two, I discuss, among other things, how the drama depicts the city, how the city depicts the drama, how to get this drama in English (hint: it can be done legally), and some personal observations.

See you next week…

Sara K. spend a couple years living in Oakland, California. When she thinks of Oakland, she thinks of the majestic cranes at the port (when she was a kid, she thought they were dinosaurs). So when she sees the cranes of any port city, she always feels a tinge of childhood wonder, as will as a light, wispy, fleeting sense of home.

It Came from the Sinosphere: The One

September 11, 2012 by Sara K. 3 Comments

I have a recipe for you.

Ingredient List:

1/2 cup of Paradise Kiss by Ai Yazawa
1/2 cup of a BL comic (the more cliched and/or melodramatic, the better)
1/2 cup of Mars by Fuyumi Soryo
1 cup of a shoujo manga so trashy you are a little embarrassed to admit that you like it
1 tablespoon of Taiwanese culture

1. Put all ingredients in a food processor.
2. Set the machine to “Chinese language”
3. Blend thoroughly.

Voila! You have The One, a manhua by Nicky Lee.

I think there isn’t much point to trying to describe the plot, since it’s mostly ridiculous, but I’ll try anyway.

The Story

Lele’s parents were both fashion models, but they died when she was young, so she was raised by her grandmother and aunt. Her aunt, a modeling agent, is keen to get Lele into the business as soon as she is old enough, but Lele hates the idea of becoming a model. Then she sees photos featuring Angus Lanson, the Chinese-European-American model who is taking the world by storm. Lele then recognizes that modeling can be an art form. Oh, and Angus has a twin brother, Eros Lanson (you read that right, his name is “Eros”).

I don’t think that’s enough to convey the true ridiculousness of the story, so here’s what happened in volume 14 (spoiler warning). Another model, Feidna, had taken Lele’s place in the modeling world to get revenge for Lele taking Eros from her. Eros says he will break up with Lele if she doesn’t take her place in the modeling world back, so Lele goes to Paris. In order to get back her position. she has to work with a very feminine male model, and she has to become very masculine in order to accompany him. Oh, and they have to spend a couple of weeks together as “girlfriend and boyfriend” (he is the girlfriend, she is the boyfriend).

Background

The One is a Star Girls title (I have discussed Star Girls previously). Specifically, it’s currently the best selling Star Girls title. In fact, it currently the best-selling Taiwanese manhua aimed specifically at a female audience, period.

Nicky Lee has been making manhua for about 20 years. Aside from The One, her best-known work is Youth Gone Wild, which is 14 volumes long.

The Surfacing of Taiwanese Culture

I’ve said before that Star Girls manhua tends to follow Japanese shoujo very closely, but Taiwanese culture can surface in interesting ways.

For example, the super-gorgeous twins have both Chinese and European ancestry. In Taiwan, people of mixed Chinese and European ancestry are considered to be more beautiful than people of purely Chinese or purely European ancestry.

Also, though I can’t find it right now, there’s a reference to how scary Taiwan is due to all the stray dogs (something that is also noted in Pinoy Sunday). It is true that Taiwan has lots of stray dogs, and they used to scare me a lot before I got used to them. Supposedly the only place with even more stray dogs is Thailand (at least, that seems to be the only place with more complaints about stray dogs than Taiwan).

There are enough Taiwanisms in this manhua that I don’t think anyone who hadn’t lived in Taiwan could have written it.

And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that a manhua with a bunch of subtle Taiwanisms is also one of the best-selling manhua in Taiwan. In the Taiwan market, being able to feature Taiwanese culture is one of the clearest advantages local manhua artists have over Japanese artists.

Art

I think Nicky Lee has read something by Ai Yazawa.

However, the Ai Yazawa influence is most apparent in the early volumes, and less apparent later on. In fact, in the most recent volumes, the Fuyumi Soryo influence is much more apparent, at least to me.

Some pages from volume 14, the most recent volume

My favorite parts, art-wise, are the cinematic sections without dialogue. They really show that Nicky Lee can tell a story visually. For example, there is a beautiful sequence (which, due to technical difficulties, I cannot get pictures of – sorry!) in which Lele leaves Eros. In the rain. In the heart of New York City. And not a word is said. Both the composition and the way the characters’ expressions are drawn in that scene are exquisite.

On Queerness

The way queerness is depicted in this story is a mixed bag.

On the one hand, there are queer characters. And, unlike some BL, homosexual identity is acknowledged – some characters actually do identify as gay.

On the other hand, pansexual/bisexual identity is NOT acknowledged. There are some characters who, to me, are clearly behaving in a bisexual/pansexual way … but nobody identifies as pansexual or bisexual. Instead, they are straight, or gay, or a gay going straight, or a straight going gay. Argh.

One of my favorite characters, Leo, actually identifies as gay. He is a bit of a stereotypical gay man … on the other hand he is also black (in my experience of mainstream American media, the vast majority of gay men depicted are white). He is also one of the most likeable characters in the entire story.

What bugs me most, however, is a story arc in which a woman woos away a man from his boyfriend. As far as I could tell, these two guys were not in an open relationship, therefore I think trying to woo one of them away is, at best, extremely questionable behavior. But Nicky Lee tells the story as if there is nothing questionable about this. I cannot imagine Nicky Lee telling this story the same way if the relationship involved were a heterosexual one. The only explanation I can think of is that Nicky Lee thinks that homosexual relationships are not as worthy of respect as heterosexual ones. And I strongly disagree with that.

My Take on the Story

I think the story is too ridiculous to take seriously. Okay, occasionally I can take it seriously but … not often.

Nonetheless, I have read all 14 volumes, and I enjoyed it. What gives?

Well, first of all, the story is not boring. The breezy style keeps things moving along.

In spite of all the cliches, I don’t know what is going to happen next, because the cliches are deployed in an unpredictable way.

The Lanson twins—they are so over the top it’s funny. For example (spoiler warning), in order to rescue Eros, who basically being kept prisoner by their father in Europe, Angus sells himself to another male model, agreeing to be his sex slave for two years. Months later the male model complains that Angus hasn’t given himself to him, and Angus answers that he’s fulfilled his every request and had lots of sex with him, and the male model replies that what he really wants is Angus’ heart. Just thinking about that arc makes me giggle.

There are also some moments which are just plain fun. For example, at one point during a shoot, Lele imagines tormenting Eros Lanson in a BDSM fashion (whip included) … and her feelings come out in the way that she touches the other models in the shoot. The director of the shoot finds Lele’s attitude incredibly hot.

And, as someone who has read more than a few shoujo manga, I am actually impressed by Nicky Lee’s ability to use so many melodramatic shoujo/BL tropes while keeping the story comprehensible.

Availability

This manhua has never been licensed in English, or any other European language.

Conclusion

Since I figured the most popular Taiwanese manhua aimed at a female audience couldn’t be the worst place to start, this was actually the first manhua I ever read. So it will always have some nostalgic value for me.

I think it’s a pity it hasn’t been licensed in English because, even though it’s not a masterpiece, I think hard-core shoujo fans might appreciate something like this. It’s strangely appealing in its own way.

Next Time: Black & White (idol drama)

Sara K. is going to be quite busy in the next month, so her posts might become fluffier than usual (though the next post will definitely not be fluffy). Nonetheless, she hope readers will enjoy them.

It Came from the Sinosphere: Pinoy Sunday

September 4, 2012 by Sara K. 5 Comments

Before reading this review, maybe you should watch the trailer. Or maybe you shouldn’t – the trailer gives the impression that a lot of this movie is about Manuel acting creepily towards women, whereas in the actual movie that is just a minor theme.

So what is a Tagalog-language film, produced by a Japanese company (NHK), doing in a column dedicated to Chinese-language pop culture?

Fair question. Here is my answer:

– The director, Wi Ding Ho, is an ethnically-Chinese Malaysian
– The film is set and filmed in Taiwan, which is clearly a part of the Chinese-speaking world
– There are some scenes in Mandarin, as well as a little Taiwanese (English and Ilocano are also used in the film)
– My local DVD rental shop placed this film in the ‘Mandarin’ section, not the ‘Foreign Languages’ section

I picked to feature this film because one can learn a lot about a culture by observing how it interacts with outside cultures.

The Filipino Experience in Taiwan

I currently live only a block away from a Filipino enclave. Nonetheless I don’t know much about the Filipino experience in Taiwan, and I can’t evaluate whether this movie reflects it accurately. This what I do know.

There are a lot of Southeast Asians, including Filipinos, in Taiwan. Taoyuan City in particular has a large Southeast Asian population. I live not to far from a major Southeast Asian neighborhood, and it’s common for me to see signs written in 5+ languages. I often hear various Southeast Asian languages being spoken, and I also see a lot of older people accompanied by Southeast Asian caregivers. Aside from the caregivers, many of the Southeast Asians work in the various factories of Taoyuan county.

However, caregiver and factory worker are not the only experiences for Filipinos in Taiwan. I have also met a Filipino who studies Chinese at a Taiwanese university, a Filipina who owns and runs a pita bar in Taipei, and a Filipina waitress in a teahouse in Jiufen.

I have some things in common with the Filipinos in Taiwan, the most obvious being that we’re all foreigners. We have to work with the same immigration bureaucracy (when I go to the immigration office, I often wait alongside Filipinos and other Southeast Asians). We have to interact with Taiwanese people who make certain assumptions about us just because we’re foreigners. We have our own escapes to our native cultures.

At the same time, I recognize that I am more privileged than the vast majority of Filipinos in Taiwan. I have more education and make more money than the vast majority. I have a United States passport. Most importantly, I am in Taiwan because I chose to be in Taiwan, not because I need to make money to support my family (in fact, I don’t support my family, only myself). While it would suck to have to leave Taiwan due to immigration issues, it would not be a disaster.

I remember one time, while riding the train, I saw a Filipina have a mental breakdown, tears streaming down her face, while talking on a cellphone. Since she was speaking in a Filipino language, I didn’t understand most of what she was saying – but I did understand the words ‘passport’, ‘work permit’ and ‘visa’.

Maybe I Should Start Talking About The Movie…

The story of this movie is quite simple. Two Filipinos who work in a Taiwanese factory, Dado and Manuel, discover a nice sofa on their day off. They decide to bring the sofa back to their dorm so that they sit down and relax on it every day after work.

The sofa, of course, is a metaphor. Just as Dado and Manuel struggle to bring the sofa back to the workers’ dorm in the hope of having a slightly more comfortable life at the factory, they left the Phillipines in the hope of making enough money to eventually have a more comfortable life in the future.

The Actors

The lead actors, Bayani Agbayani and Epy Quizon, are both celebrities in the Phillipines. I’m sure Manga Bookshelf readers based in the Phillipines know a lot more about them than I do. I think they both performed quite well in this movie.

If you’ve seen Autumn’s Concerto, you’ll find a familiar face (Akio Chen) in this movie.

Epy Quizon and Akio Chen

Idol Taiwan vs. Ordinary Taiwan

I know this will come as a shock to you all, but the lifestyle shown in Taiwanese idol dramas is usually quite different from the way most people in Taiwan actually live. This movie gives a much more accurate impression of what the ordinary Taiwan is like (for everybody, not just Filipinos).

The Director from Malaysia

When I found out that the director is from Malaysia, not Taiwan, I thought ‘that makes so much sense!’

According to my observations, most Taiwanese people don’t really pay much attention to the Southeast Asians, at least not beyond a utilitarian sense. On the one hand, this means that they are not delivering zillions of hate-filled speeches about how the Southeast Asians are ruining Taiwan. On the other hand, this means that a Taiwanese person could spend years living just outside a Southeast Asian neighborhood and still know almost nothing about, say, Indonesian culture.

Foreigners (of all kinds) are much more likely to note and express curiosity about the Southeast Asian community. I know I was very curious when I first came to Taiwan, and I wish I had more time to satisfy that curiosity. Foreigners of all kinds also tend to end up in the same neighborhoods (my first residence in Taiwan had an Indonesian business in the same building, and as I have already noted, I am still physically close to Southeast Asian areas).

I am not, by the way, blaming the Taiwanese. I grew up in a mixed neighborhood with many Chinese-Americans, yet it is only now that I am discovering just how ignorant I was of that culture which had been sitting under my nose for most of my life. People visiting San Francisco are often more curious about the Chinese-American community than the non-Chinese people who grew up in San Francisco. I think the mere act of entering a new setting makes one aware of one’s surroundings in a more conscious way.

Wi Ding Ho himself is a foreigner in Taiwan. Moreover, he is from Malaysia. In Taiwan, about 98% of the population identify as huárén (ethnic Chinese), whereas in Malaysia only about 26% of the population identifies as huárén. Thus, Wi Ding Ho would have grown up being conscious of ethnicity in a very different way that most Taiwanese people.

A Global Experience (and Privilege)

Of course, this movie is not just the experience of Filipino people in Taiwan. It’s about the experience of people around the world who have left their homelands to sell their labor to the affluent in the hope of attaining a better life.

My family hired a Nepalese woman to take care of my grandmother. She left a husband and young child in Nepal. I know that her husband and child have asked her to return to Nepal, yet she has, so far, stayed with my grandmother. When her husband got injured, my family feared that she might return to Nepal to care for her … but it turned out that because her husband’s surgery required quite a bit of money, she had to keep on working for my family.

I am privileged. I presume the director, who graduated from the Tisch School of the Arts, is also privileged. I don’t know how this movie would have been different if it had been made by somebody less privileged, nor do I know what somebody less privileged would think of this movie.

So, Is This a Good Movie?

The answer is yes. I enjoy watching this movie a great deal. It speaks to me. I think it represents something truthful about the experience of being a foreigner in general, and a foreigner in Taiwan specifically. However I think I would also like this movie very much even if I had never left the United States. Even though I did not analyze the movie that much, the fact that it drew this much discussion from me demonstrates how much it made me think.

It is a human movie.

Availability

This film is available on DVD with English subtitles. It also gets screened at various film festivals.

Conclusion

I’m just going to quote the director, Wi Ding Ho:

For two decades, I’ve lived as an outsider, first in North America where I studied, then in Singapore, and now Taiwan where I work. Like most, I always thought I could go back to a place of belonging. However on a recent trip home to Malaysia, I found myself alienated when I expected to feel most at peace. My long absence has rendered me a foreigner no matter where I go.

All over the world, more and more people are working in other countries. Some do it for survive and some do it for inspiration. Simple facts of life become more challenging and rewarding in a foreign country. Emotional needs become clearer, and sometimes that much harder to attain. For expatriate artists as well as migrant laborers, the sensation of living is more vivid in places that are home and far from home at the same time. Pinoy Sunday is an attempt to celebrate this dichotomy.

Next Time: The One (manhua)

Sara K. saw a really weird kind of mushroom today. She is too tired right now to say anything wittier than that. Thank goodness the draft of this post was already almost ready.

It Came from the Sinosphere: Xuanji Tu

August 28, 2012 by Sara K. Leave a Comment

I realize that I’ve been writing a column on Chinese-language pop culture for months … without featuring a single creative work from mainland China. This was not on purpose.

More than anything else, it reflects that Taiwan is my vantage point. I have better access to Taiwanese media than other Chinese-language media and, knowing a few things about Taiwan, I’m also more comfortable commenting on Taiwanese media. If I were writing this column from San Francisco, it would probably be really different.

Taiwan, in some ways, has deeper cultural ties with the Chinese-speaking communities in south-east Asia than with China itself, and from the conclusion of the Chinese civil war up until about 15 years ago, contact between mainland China and Taiwan was limited.

Things are changing now, but they are changing slowly. Change is happening fastest in TV. Since Mandarin is understood in both China and Taiwan, many TV shows are based on stories popular in both China and Taiwan, and Chinese TV shows sometimes cast Taiwanese actors in order to get their fans’ attention. Change is happening slowest in print media, because there is the traditional characters/simplified characters barrier. Since many Taiwanese people do not want to learn to read simplified characters, it means that to bring Chinese literature over to Taiwan, a publisher has to produce a traditional-character edition. It’s not easy to persuade a publisher that this is worth the risk.

Nonetheless, a publisher decided to publish Wu Way’s novels in traditional characters, and a lot of Taiwanese bookstores decided to put her novels on their shelves.

Wu Way

Wu Way (吳蔚) is a writer of historical novels and has contributed to historical TV shows as well. She is originally from Hubei Province, China. She says that she finds her life in old piles of paper—in other words, digging through historical materials is her passion.

Recently, her novels have been published in Taiwan in traditional Chinese characters, and that’s how I got a copy of this novel.

Brief Story Overview

This novel is set towards the end of the reign of Wu Zetian, China’s only female empress regnant.

It is about five friends, all members of the upper class: Di Xiao, Wang Zhihuan, Wang Han, Li Meng, and Xin Jian. One night, Wang Han disappears … and then right after he comes back, he’s arrested for a brutal rape-and-murder. In order to clear his name, his friends investigate the crime to find the true culprit. There are more murders and even more mysteries, which all seem to revolve around the “Xuanji Tu.” The more they investigate, the more they become involved in intrigue right at the heart of the Tang court.

The Xuanji Tu

The Xuanji Tu is a famous and complex palindrome poem by Su Hui. For more details, read the wikipedia entry for Su Hui (note: normally I would not cite Wikipedia as a source, but I really cannot find any other website in English which describes the Xuanji Tu, and this is not an academic paper). I had no idea that the Xuanji Tu existed before reading this novel.

In addition to pursuing the Xuanji Tu, some of the characters are also trying to get an original copy of one of Wang Xizhi’s works. I can attest that Wang Xizhi is the calligrapher whom I hear of or read references to the most often.

Historical Background

I’ll be honest. My understanding of Chinese history is quite basic, and even that might be an overstatement. I get that the Ming dynasty ruled China more than a thousand years after the Han dynasty, but if you asked me how China under the Ming dynasty was different from China under the Han dynasty, you would get a blank stare from me.

Thanks to this novel, I know a heck of a lot more about the reign of Wu Zetian. Before, I just had a vague notion that she liked to collect attractive men to satisfy her desires—the truth about Wu Zetian’s sexual relationships is a bit more nuanced than that, and she did even more interesting things outside the bedroom.

And boy does this novel go into historical detail. Wu Way claims that 95% of the characters (including all of the main characters) are genuine historical figures. And the life of the upper class under the Tang dynasty is described in exhaustive detail. There are a lot of endnotes, which I eventually stopped reading.

I’m afraid much of the historical detail was lost on me.

On The Genre

Detective fiction happen to be one of my least favorite genres. Unless I can be convinced that it’s the most awesome detective story ever, these days it is almost impossible to entice me to read detective fiction that is not crossed with some other genre (science fiction, for example).

This book, of course, does cross genres. It bills itself as a “historical wuxia detective novel.” I’ve see it in both the historical fiction and wuxia sections (though some bookstores combine the wuxia and historical fiction section, I consider them to be as distinct as science fiction and fantasy). The “historical” part is definitely justified (see above). The “detective” part is also justified, since the first half or so of the novel is about finding out who the criminal is. The “wuxia” part … okay, yes, the characters often have to use their martial arts skills to climb over a wall or something. But there is precious little combat, and most of the characters don’t seem terribly concerned with martial arts, or with acting in a xia manner (they’re upperclass-types, not peasants seeking justice in an unjust society). So I don’t think labeling this novel as “wuxia” is justified.

As it so happens, I liked the story more after they found out who the true criminal is, because then it became less of a detective novel and more about intrigue in the Tang court, which is more interesting to me.

Brutality

While this novel is only gory once in a while, when it gets gory, it really gets gory. This is an example (which you should skip if you are not sure you can stomach it).

“On the steps before the gate there was a man hanging, dripping with blood, naked, his entire body covered with every kind whip lash, burns from hot irons … his hands and feet had already been cut off, his face had been reduced to a pulp, his eyes had been dug out, his ears, nose, and tongue had all been cut off. He looked, not like a human, but a demon that had risen from the depths of hell.”

I picked this example because it is relatively brief, not because it is the most horrifying (at least, not to me).

As readers may have noticed, I have a tendency to enjoy fiction with a lot of violence, but this novel managed to shock even me.

My Personal Reaction

I had to try reading this novel twice. The first time, I was overwhelmed because it wasn’t what I was expecting (I wanted a wuxia novel and got a detective story instead) and the language in this novel is particularly difficult (definitely a couple notches more difficult than a Jin Yong novel). The second time, I came in with a better attitude, and actually enjoyed it.

I rather like history, so while a lot of the historical stuff did go over my head, I did learn a lot, and found it quite interesting. When I have time, I really do need to do my homework on Chinese history.

And eventually, I did get caught up in the characters. I appreciate the development of the relationship between the five friends, and the various people they encounter. And the brutality is most shocking, not when it’s based on pure gore, but when it’s tied into personal relationships. For example, there is a husband who does something astonishingly cruel to his own wife. That particular plot line definitely got my attention, in a jaw-dropping way. And finally, while I can’t judge how historically accurate it is, I think Wu Way did a good job of personifying Wu Zetian and her family, and I got caught up in their side of the story.

Availability

Availability in English … ha ha ha.

It is, of course, available in both simplified and traditional Chinese characters.

Conclusion

This is one of those novels which I would not expect to like, but nonetheless I ended up being glad that I read it. It’s not to be taken lightly, due to the difficulty of the language and the copious historical details, but there are definitely things in the novel which have stayed with me. I don’t know if I’ll ever try Wu Way’s other novels, but if there’s a convenient opportunity, I probably will.

Next time: Pinoy Sunday (movie)

Sara K. loves history in general, but really getting to know history takes time, and she’s already spending a lot of time improving her Chinese. Her favorite way to learn history is travel—whether it’s walking the streets of San Francisco with a knowledgeable guide, or walking through an interesting corner of Taiwan and reading all of the signs explaining the local history.

Fated to Love You (Special Post)

August 24, 2012 by Sara K. 7 Comments

So, on Tuesday I made the case for why people should watch Fated to Love You. In this post, I assume you are already in bed … er … on board with the idea that this show is worth watching, so instead I am going to explain things which would not be apparent to viewers who are not familiar with the Chinese language and/or Taiwan.

Let’s start with that pun, in bed vs. on board.

Fun with Language

Fated to Love You is very playful with its language. The most commonly used pun on the show is shàng chuán (board a boat / on a boat) vs. shàng chuáng (get in bed / in bed). Some of the significant events in the story happens on boats (and in beds). I don’t think you need to know anything about Taiwanese culture to appreciate the comedic value.

There’s also a pun on Paris vs. Bali. In Mandarin, “Paris” is pronounced as “Bālí,” and “Bālǐ” is a district of New Taipei City (I talk more about “Bālǐ” below).

Fun with language can be difficult to translate. Take this scene for example:

Pinyin:

Anson: Wǒ dǒng le.
Cunxi: Dǒng shénme a!
Anson: Zhè jiù shì jiānghú shàng liúchuán yĭjiŭ de “mŭzhū sài Diāo Chán.”
Cunxi: “Mŭzhū sài Diāo Chán?”
Anson: Hĕn jiăndān de luóji, jiăndān de dàolĭ ma.

Translation:

Anson: I understand.
Cunxi: Understand what?
Anson: This is [a saying] that has been passed down for a long time in jianghu “the female pig overtakes Diao Chan.”
Cunxi: “The female pig overtakes Diao Chan”?
Anson: The logic is simple, the reasoning is quite simple.

Anson then goes on to explain that “the female pig overtakes Diao Chan” means that when a man hasn’t been around beautiful women for a long time, but he is around a plain-looking woman, he will start finding the plain-looking woman more attractive than the beautiful women he saw a long time ago.

First of all, what is jianghu? It is usually used to refer to the world where wuxia stories take place, but it also sometimes used to refer to the gangster underworld (for example, The Outsiders 1 & 2 are set in “jianghu”). It is a bit like the concept of “the wild west” in American culture—a place of adventure where laws aren’t exactly obeyed and people must struggle for their personal honor.

Now, who is Diao Chan? She’s is one of the Four Great Beauties of ancient China (yes, there is an official list of the great beauties of ancient China).

Now, for those who are not familiar with Chinese, the language is full of chengyu—sayings (usually of four characters) often based on allusions to classical Chinese literature. If you’ve ever seen the Star Trek: Next Generation episode “Darmok,” think of Chinese as being a bit like that language. Good and frequent usage of chengyu demonstrates that one is well-educated, so some Chinese-speakers (both native and non-native) put a lot of effort into mastering them. What Anson is doing is that he is making up his own chengyu (at least I think it’s made up—I was not able to find it in any of my references), and since Cunxi doesn’t know it, he’s asking for an explanation.

So yes, this show has lots of fun with words. But so far I have been dealing with pure Mandarin (or Mandarin peppered with Classical Chinese). This show also uses quite a bit of Taiwanese, as well as a little English, and even a teensy bit of Cantonese.

Mandarin vs. Taiwanese

I think it would be fair to call Taiwan the “island of Babel.” Nonetheless, there are two dominant languages: Mandarin and Taiwanese. While there is a significant portion of the population that is not fluent in Mandarin and there is a significant portion of the population that is not fluent in Taiwanese, the vast majority of Taiwanese are fluent in at least one of those two languages. The choice of which language is used has serious social and political implications (high-profile Taiwanese politicians generally have to know both languages lest they offend voters) which I cannot explain here.

Most characters in Fated to Love You speak Mandarin. The most significant Taiwanese-speaking character is Chen-Lin Xishi.

Chen-Lin Xishi and one of her daughters.

The fact that most of her dialogue is in Taiwanese communicates that she is an older, rural woman. In Taiwan, Taiwanese tends to be the language of older people, and Mandarin tends to be the language of younger people. Furthermore, Mandarin tends to be an urban language, whereas Taiwanese tends to be a rural language. Mandarin is also associated with the elite, whereas Taiwanese is associated with the working class. There are significant exceptions, of course.

Chen-Lin Xishi also occasionally speaks in Mandarin. She speaks Mandarin with a heavy accent (coming from me, that’s the lump of coal calling the kettle black), but doesn’t seem to have any problem with conversational Mandarin. However, there’s one scene where she tries to speak in very formal Mandarin, and she trips over words so much that she needs her daughter’s help to complete sentences. It’s quite funny.

And then there’s Ji-Wang Zhenzhu, who happens to be one of my favorite characters.

It’s obvious from the way Ji-Wang Zhenzhu speaks that she grew up in China, not Taiwan. The biggest giveaway is that she speaks with an “erhua.” “Erhua” is a certain style of speaking Mandarin in which it seems that every other word ends with an “r” sound. “Erhua” is strongly associated with the Beijing area. In Taiwan, if someone speaks with an “erhua” it’s generally assumed that they came from China.

Now, as someone who grew up in a region of China where people speak with an “erhua,” Ji-Wang Zhenzhu would not be expected to speak Taiwanese (Taiwanese is actually a dialect of Hokkien, and Hokkien is spoken in Fujian province, but Fujianese people generally do not speak with an “erhua”). However, when talking to Chen-Lin Xishi, who was failing at formal Mandarin, Ji-Wang Zhenzhu does sometimes use some Taiwanese. I know very little Taiwanese … but the way Ji-Wang Zhenzhu uses Taiwanese seems a bit awkward to me. It was clearly a move to save Chen-Lin Xishi’s face, as well as to show respect to her.

In a later scene, Chen-Lin Xishi tries to show her respect for Ji-Wang Zhenzhu … by speaking with an “erhua.” Even to me, Chen-Lin Xishi’s “erhua” sounds really artificial (Ji-Wang Zhenzhu’s “erhua,” on the other hand, sounds quite natural). And it’s funny because Chen-Lin Xishi is the last person in the drama who would have a genuine “erhua.”

Indeed, one of the many wonderful things about the drama is subtle development of the relationship between Chen-Lin Xishi and Ji-Wang Zhenzhu, two older women who come from very different walks of life. I’m afraid there’s no way to prevent a little of that from being lost in translation.

Music

The characters will occasionally burst into song spontaneously. No, Fated to Love You is not a musical. Instead, the characters burst into song the same way that people might start singing the George Harrison song “Something” if someone said “I don’t know why I like her, there’s something about her.”

I admit, I don’t recognize all of the songs. But I recognize some. For example, one song that gets referenced a couple times is “Ní Wáwa” (“Clay Baby”), which is a traditional children’s song that has been covered by many artists. It’s basically a child singing about their own clay doll, saying that since it’s not a real baby and doesn’t have a mommy or daddy, the child will have to be the mommy and daddy. Here is a really slow version of the song on YouTube.

Does Jiangmu Dao (Ginger Island) Exist?

Much of this drama is set in a place called Jiangmu Dao (Ginger Island). Does Jiangmu Dao exist?

The answer is: yes and no.

Some of the Jiangmu Dao scenes were filmed at Zhentoushan. Zhentoushan is a peninsula (not an island) in Shimen resevoir in … Taoyuan county. I live in Taoyuan county, and my tap water comes from Shimen resevoir.

Hey dude, get out of my drinking water!

Even though it is technically a peninsula, there is no road to Zhentoushan, so the only way to get there is by boat (in other words, it practically is an island). About 50 households live in Zhentoushan.

Zhentoushan has an interesting place in Taiwanese history. If I remember correctly, it was a site of Atayal resistance against the Japanese (actually, that might have been Jiaobanshan, but Jiaobanshan is really close to Zhentoushan). Later, Chiang Kai-Shek (who was at the time the de-facto dictator of Taiwan) decided to build a villa in the area with views over Zhentoushan. The villa no longer exists, but I have visited the site and have verified that the view of Zhentoushan is indeed spectacular.

After the success of the drama, the residents of Zhentoushan have even gone so far as to rename their home “Jiangmu Dao” in order to draw in tourists. And the drama has increased tourism in this specific area a lot. There are tours from Amuping (another settlement next to Shimen resevoir) to Zhentoushan which have the name of the drama written on the boats. While riding the boat, they even show clips from the drama.

However, the thing is, most of the scenes supposedly set on “Jiangmu Dao” were not filmed in Zhentoushan.

First of all, some of the scenes which were supposed to be “Jiangmu Dao” were actually filmed in Amuping. If you actually know the area, the drama can sometimes be confusing, because the characters will say that they are leaving Jiangmu Dao, when in fact they are clearly leaving Amuping and going towards Zhentoushan.

Also, I don’t know where this boat terminal is, but it’s not in Amuping or Zhentoushan.

This is the dock at Amuping.

The dock at Amuping

And there is no factory in Zhentoushan (the place has no road access, no one would put a factory there).

This temple is not in Zhentoushan (there is only one temple in Zhentoushan, which is really a shrine and not a temple, and it’s much smaller).

There is no school in Zhentoushan (I’ve been told that the children have to take the boat to get to school).

There are no rice fields in Zhentoushan (Zhentoushan doesn’t have much flat ground, though there are some rice fields on a terrace on the other side of Shimen resevoir.

Zhentoushan does have running water and electricity (the electric wires cross the water), but it’s not much more developed than that (again, there is no road access). It’s certainly not as developed at the Jiangmu Dao depicted in Fated to Love You.

In fact, most of the Jiangmu Dao scenes look like they were filmed in a lowland town (albeit spiffed up—this is an idol drama after all). It seems they used Amuping / Zhentoushan mainly because a) so they should show the characters travelling by boat to and from an “island” and b) because the scenery is nice. Otherwise, they are depicting a lowland town, not the backwaters of Taoyuan county.

It’s worth noting that this is not the only idol drama filmed in the rural areas of Taoyuan county. In fact Ethan Ruan, who is the male lead in Fated to Love You, also acted in an idol drama Green Forest, My Home which it set even deeper in the backwoods of Taoyuan County.

Environmental Injustice for Profit

One of the themes in Fated to Love You is a greedy businessperson trying to take over a rural area against the inhabitants’ will so his company can poison the environment with impunity. This is also a theme in Autumn’s Concerto. In fact, it’s a common theme in idol dramas.

Unfortunately, this is a reflection of reality. There are many examples of this kind of thing happening in Taiwan. Some examples: the naphtha cracker plant in Yunlin (that naphtha cracker plant was originally supposed to be built in a small town in Yilan—I know someone from that small town, and she says she’s very grateful that the government in Yilan rejected the plant), the destruction of the Alangyi trail, and the nuclear waste in Lanyu.

Then again, considering how much water is being poisoned by fracking, not to mention countless other examples, this is an issue in the United States too…

Star Cruises

Star Cruises, which is featured in the first episode, is *the* cruise line in East Asia. In addition to their Taiwan-Hong Kong cruises, they also offer cruises from Taiwan to the Yaeyama islands. Even though the Yaeyama islands are governed by Japan, they are closer to Taipei than Tokyo. If it weren’t so astronomically expensive, I might be interested in taking a trip to the Yaeyama islands. Why? Among other reasons, part of Basara, one of my favorite manga, is set in the Yaeyama islands.

Museums!

Inside the Yingge Ceramics Museum

One of the museums featured in this drama is the Yingge Ceramics Museum. Some of Mars was also shot in the Yingge Ceramics Museum, but it makes much more sense in Fated to Love You. Yingge is one of the three or so centers of ceramics production in Taiwan, and is the most famous. After visiting the museum, my brain was crammed with more facts about pottery and ceramics than I thought I would ever know in my lifetime. Yingge is very close to Taoyuan city, where I live.

There is also a scene set at the Shihsanhang Museum of Archaeology in Bali (I told you I would mention Bali again). It is next to the Shihsanhang site, where archaeologists have found some of the earliest evidence of human habitation in Taiwan.

This shot gives a nice view of the hills of Bali.

Shanghai

I have never been to Shanghai, and quite frankly I know very little about the city. I do know there is an exhibit at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum of paintings and sculptures from Shanghai artists, so there are certainly attempts to cross the strait with fine art.

The Thirteen Levels

The Thirteen Levels, in Shuinandong, is one of the most iconic buildings on Taiwan’s north coast. There is another idol drama I plan to discuss which features Shuinandong, so for now I will just say that Shuinandong is just below Jinguashi, which is next to Jiufen, an important town in Taiwanese culture which I have mentioned previously.

Conclusion

The point of this post is not to point out every clever use of language, explain every cultural reference, and to discuss every location. First of all, I did not catch every clever use of language, understand every cultural reference, or recognize every location. And I did not discuss everything I did recognize because this post is already long enough as it is.

What I want to do is give readers the sense that, behind this drama, there stands an entire culture and society. I think it’s entirely possible to enjoy Fated to Love You without understanding any of this. I also think that being aware of these extra layers deepens one’s experience of the drama.

Sara K. likes see how various things connect together. It is one of the finest pleasures in her life. She is also happy to squeeze a Basara reference into a post about a Taiwanese idol drama.

It Came From the Sinosphere: Fated to Love You

August 21, 2012 by Sara K. 12 Comments

This drama has the distinction of having the highest TV ratings of any idol drama ever. Every Taiwanese person I have asked has seen at least part of this drama. I have gotten middle-aged Taiwanese men who claim that K-dramas are too feminine for them to admit that a) they have seen Fated to Love You and b) that it’s good.

Why is this drama so popular? Maybe this (abridged) scene will give you a clue…

Example Scene

Dylan is playing hide-and-seek with the kids at the church. He decides to hide in the confessional booth.

Chen Xinyi walks in to make a confession. She tells Dylan that she had sex with a stranger … and that it was the first time she ever had sex.

Dylan tells her to go home and tell God “sorry.”

Chen Xinyi then tells her about how she’s been throwing up a lot in the past few days.

Hearing this, Dylan urges her to go buy a pregnancy test – but to do it on the sly.

Chen Xinyi takes his suggestion to heart, and disguises herself so no one will recognize her when she buys the pregnancy test.

By sheer coincidence, there is a robber who disguises herself just like Xinyi, and appears on the news right before Xinyi walks into the store.

The store clerk tells her she doesn’t need to pay. As soon as she leaves, he calls the police.

The police corner her in the bathroom. There’s also a TV news reporter with them.

Right after Chen Xinyi has used the pregnancy test, the police open up the bathroom stall and point guns at her.

She is so startled that she loses hold of the pregnancy test-stick.

The TV news reporter picks up the pregnancy test-stick … and congratulates her. It is announced on television that Chen Xinyi in pregnant. So much for doing things on the sly.

Chen Xinyi’s mother just happens to be watching the news at that moment…

… and the stranger she had sex with notices the news on TV too.

Sara K. Loves Joe Chen

Joe Chen in my favorite actress working in Taiwanese idol dramas.

First of all, she’s versatile. For example, in Prince Turns Into Frog, she plays a girl from a poor fishing village, whereas in My Best Pals she plays a hip teenager from Ximending who jumps off buildings into cars (I am not kidding). Whereas her character in Prince Turns Into Frog dreams of gold-digging her way out of the boondocks, her character in My Best Pals would rather kick than kiss a rich guy’s ass. Joe Chen plays both roles very well.

Obviously, you can’t judge her acting based on the theme songs, but the theme songs of Prince Turns Into Frog and My Best Pals do offer a sense of how the two dramas feel different—and I assure you the characters Joe Chen plays in those dramas are just as different as the theme songs. In addition, Joe Chen has been cast as Dongfang Bubai in the new The Laughing Proud Wanderer TV series, which is a really different role from the others I have see her play (for starters, Dongfang Bubai, having been born with testicles, is not a cis female).

Her role as Chen Xinyi in Fated to Love You is quite different from all of the roles I mentioned above. Chen Xinyi is an office worker with low self-esteem. She is completely convincing in the role. She is extremely true to what Chen Xinyi is feeling, and skillfully demonstrates how Chen Xinyi changes during the course of the story. I think Fated to Love You would have moved me to tears a lot less if they had cast a lesser actress.

Messing With Idol Drama Tropes

If you have seen several other Taiwanese idol dramas, you already know what the story is because it’s the same as 90% of idol drama stories, and just when you are sure what’s going to happen next … Fated to Love You goes in the other direction.

Ha ha ha.

Sure, yes, it does follow the standard idol drama plot. It does so with irreverence. Sometimes it uses the standard tropes, but in a totally silly way. Sometimes it uses the standard tropes, but with a wink in its eye, telling the viewers “Yes, we know you have seen this in five other dramas, but we do it with more flair.” Sometimes it makes the viewers think it’s going to use the standard tropes, but pulls a fast one and does something completely different. And sometimes it uses the standard tropes in a totally straight way, so the viewer doesn’t get too used to the twists.

This is actually why, much as I love this drama, I’m not sure this should be somebody’s first Taiwanese idol drama. If you haven’t seen other Taiwanese idol dramas, you might not always notice it when Fated to Love You sticks out its tongue and makes funny faces. On the other hand, this is one of the best idol dramas ever made, so if you are only going to see one Taiwanese idol drama ever, this might be a good choice.

Let’s Get Serious

Before you get the idea that Fated to Love You is a spoof or a comedy (well, it is a comedy, yet it’s more than that…), I assure you that there is a totally serious story being told here. I probably cry as much laugh when I watch it (notice that I’m using present tense—I’ve seen this drama twice, and I am sure I will watch it again).

In particular, this is a story about Chen Xinyi, who has spent her entire life helping other people instead of herself. During the course of the story she discovers that she has her own distinctive artistic voice.

Actually, all of my favorite idol dramas are about women who are discovering their artistic voice. Maybe that’s a coincidence, or maybe that’s a reflection of my personal tastes, or maybe idol dramas about women discovering their artistic voice are inherently more awesome.

In fact, this is why I consider this idol drama to be feminist. Just as sexism says women are not as important as men, everybody (except her father, who is dead) says that Chen Xinyi is not important. After going through a lot of suffering, it is demonstrated that Chen Xinyi is just as important as every other character in the drama, and that she important purely on the basis of being herself.

Location, Location, Location

I realize that there is so much I want to say about the locations in this drama that it’s better off in a separate post.

Fun with Language

Once again, I realized there is so much I want to say about this that it’s better off in a separate post. (Read Fated to Love You -Special Post.)

Chen Xinyi Talks to Joe Chen

There are a couple scenes where Chen Xinyi talks to Joe Chen.

Wait a minute … isn’t Chen Xinyi played by Joe Chen?

In addition to being an actress, TV host, and writer, Joe Chen is also a model. In fact, right now there are ads featuring her in Taipei train station which say (in Chinese) “[brand name] loves Joe Chen”. Thus it is entirely believable that Chen Xinyi would encounter ads featuring Joe Chen in the hip Xinyi district (note: the “Xinyi” in “Xinyi district” uses different Chinese characters than the “Xinyi” in “Chen Xinyi”). However, the ads featuring Joe Chen have never talked to me.

Music

I generally don’t find the music created specifically for this drama that interesting, but the exception is the song “Wǒ de Kuàilè” (My Happiness). In particular, I appreciate when they play the piano score without the singing. The song is played so much that, even without the singing, the viewer (at least a viewer who can understand Mandarin) can hear the words of the song. It contributes to the mood of the series, and the sadness of the song often counterbalances the sillier scenes.

Availability in English

The good news:

DRAMAFEVER HAS LICENSED FATED TO LOVE YOU.

The bad news:

None of the episodes are available yet. Also, this only helps people who are in North or South America.

Conclusion

Fated to Love You is one of my favorites. Just when I’m wondering why I keep on watching idol dramas, I stumble on a drama like Fated to Love You, and my interest in idol dramas is revived. Finding these dramas makes watching the mediocre ones worth it (and I’ve noticed that even the mediocre dramas are generally improved by the presence of Joe Chen).

I love Fated to Love You so much that there is going to be a special post about it, hopefully on Friday. The purpose of this post is to convince you all (in North and South America) to watch it (when Dramafever makes it available). The purpose of the next post will be to offer commentary for people who are not too familiar with Taiwan and/or the Chinese language. In fact, I suspect one reason why Dramafever is taking so long to release episodes is that some of the things the characters say are really difficult to translate into English. Hopefully, that means that when the episodes are available, the translation will be really good.

Read Fated to Love You (Special Post).

Next regular post: Xuanji Tu (novel)

Sara K. wishes to give whoever is translating Fated to Love You for Dramafever a pat on the back. She understands how frustrating it probably is. She would also like to see Dramafever (or somebody else) legally bring out some of her other favorite idol dramas into English.

It Came From the Sinosphere: The Celestial Zone

August 14, 2012 by Sara K. 5 Comments

Example Scene

I think this page is rather beautiful.

There is Chi Shuang, standing over the pool where her twin sister, Chi Xue, is wading. Meanwhile, Chuyi is bringing Xing Ling to see what is happening with Chi Xue and Chi Shuang. Previously, Xing Ling and Chi Xue were in a nasty fight. Xing Ling’s wounds have already been treated, but Chi Xue was so badly injured that Chuyi did not think she would make it. When Xing Ling said that Chi Shuang had some special method to cure Chi Xue, Chuyi decided an intervention was urgently needed.

Chuyi and Xing Ling approach the chamber where Chi Shuang prepares to heal Chi Xue.

And they see Chi Xue. I should note that Chi Xue is usually veiled and vicious, so to see her exposed and vulnerable is quite a contrast.

This is another lovely page.

Chi Xue is reluctant to be healed by this special method. Perhaps, like Chuyi, she know this healing method’s terrible secret.

And the healing process begins.

Terrible secret or not, it’s quite lovely.

Maybe I Should Start at the Beginning of the Story…

Xing Ling is the finest sword fighter wandering around jianghu. When she’s up against 10+ rogues, it’s bad news—I mean bad news for the rogues. She uses her exceptional skills to bully the bullies and provide relief to the common people.

Xing Ling smiles at a bunch of rogues she just pwned.

One day she encounters an opponent who she can’t cream within minutes. In fact, the fight is actually a struggle for her. She doesn’t understand why her opponent is not being reduced to a pulp. The thing is, all of her previous opponents were human, whereas this opponent is … not.

By exhausting all of her strength—and sacrificing her hair—Xing Ling manages to take down this non-human opponent. Then his non-human friends show up.

Just when Xing Ling appreciates the deep shit that she is in, two young men show up—one who mows down the non-human friends in minutes.

It turns out that the non-humans—as well as these two young men—come from the celestial zone, where people and creatures develop spiritual powers than ordinary mortals can barely imagine. She is the first ordinary person they ever saw beat a denizen of the celestial zone and … they notice that she is a bit like a certain special person.

Eventually, Xing Ling enters the Celestial Zone herself, cultivates her own spiritual powers, and joins the war between the Righteous Way and the Evil Way.

Background

This manhua is by Wee Tian Beng, who is the most commercially successful manhua artist in Singapore. To the best of my knowledge, no other Singaporean manhua artist has been published in Taiwan (which means it would me much more difficult for me to acquire copies). I have previously discussed Wee Tian Beng’s adaptation of the Jing Yong novel Return of the Condor Heroes.

The Celestial Zone is his signature work. It has attracted fans in many countries and its success has led to two sequels so far.

Female Characters

In a world where gender justice was the default, it would not be remarkable if a fighting/action oriented comic book featured many female characters and consistently gave them as much substance as the male characters, where they feel like they are there for their own sake, not to accompany the male characters. We do not live in a world where gender justice is the default. Therefore it is remarkable that The Celestial Zone is a fighting/action oriented comic book with many female characters who feel like they are there for their own sake and not to accompany the male characters.

This manhua passes the Bechdel test with flying colors. There are lots of female characters, they talk to each all the time, and they talk to each other about spiritual powers, demons, medicine, friendship, battle … in fact, they rarely talk to each other about men.

The one criticism I can make—and this a fairly minor criticism—is that Wee Tian Beng sometimes sexualizes the female characters in ways he does not sexualize the male characters. Nonetheless, even in this he is a mild offender, as he never goes farther in sexualizing the characters than he does in this illustration:

It’s partially because men like Wee Tian Beng get female characters (mostly) right that I do not give male creators slack for getting female characters wrong. If Wee Tian Beng can get this right, all other male creators can get female characters right too. The question is, do they want to get female characters right?

The Artwork

As I read this manhua, I kept on wondering if Wee Tian Beng would run out of his bag of artistic tricks, and the art which I found so fresh and exciting would be reduced to tired visual tropes.

That did not happen. Right to the last volume, Wee Tian Beng kept on drawing things in new and exciting ways which titilated my visual senses. He does all this while staying true to his own distinct style.

I have found few comic book artists who can so consistently delight my imagination with their artwork.

Can I break this down a bit? Maybe.

First of all, Wee Tian Beng often juxaposes detail with simplicity, such as in the page below. It provides a rest for the eyes, and makes the page more dynamic than if there were merely detailed linework or merely simplicity.

Also, Wee Tian Beng plays a lot with shadows, in different ways. Look at the following pages.

And then there is the way that Wee Tian Beng draws movement. It it utterly graceful. I don’t know how he does it (perhaps that’s why I’m not a visual artist myself). Look at the movement in the following pictures:

He also juxtaposes the action with natural scenery. The way he draws and incorporates nature is very much in the tradition of millennia of Chinese art. See how he uses images of nature in these pages:

As I’ve noted before, he uses panels in a very cinematic way. I love this following page where you can see how the characters expressions change on the beat.

Not to mention these cinematic pages:

Notice how the above page not only demonstrates his cinematic style, it also shows a) shadow play b) the way he draws human movement and c) images of nature.

And … he manages to infuse a solemnity into his compositions. Observe these pages.

And the composition in these following pages makes me squee. Especially the second page—instead of simply have a center panel with the two opponents squaring off in the distance and the side panels showing their faces, Wee Tian Beng combines the three panels together by having the opponents stand like chess pieces on their respective close-ups. Not to mention that a) the diagonal line between the opponents is dynamic and b) the long panels set up a nice set of parallel lines.

While the characters are rarely warm and bubbly (it’s not that kind of story) when warmth and bubbles are called for, he can draw that too.

But, more than anything else, Wee Tian Beng chooses compelling subjects to draw. Such as a dragon’s head suddenly emerging from the water:

Or this special healing technique with candles:

Or one of the baddies suddenly deciding to kiss one of the goodies in mid-fight:

Chinese Culture

This comic is steeped in traditional Chinese culture, especially Taoism (note: I actually do not know much about Taoism). I’ve already mentioned the influence from traditional Chinese paintings. I also learned why the word for “thing” in Mandarin literally is “east-west” (and I am a little curious how they would try to explain that in English, since it would be very difficult to explain to somebody who doesn’t know some Chinese). It does not feel didactic; on the other hand, I can tell Wee Tian Beng cares a lot about this and wants to pass it on to the readers.

More on the Characters

It should be apparent by now that the story has a lot in common with shounen battle manga.

I rather liked the twist on training the newbie hero(ine), in which Xing Ling, who is used to pwning her enemies, has to go back to square one once she enters the Celestial Zone and trains her spirit powers. However, once she got used to the Celestial Zone, I found her character less compelling. Wee Tian Beng sensed this too, as he shifted the story away from her to Chi Xue.

While I generally support using transliterations instead of translations of Chinese names, I almost wish the English language edition had made an exception for Chi Xue since her name, which means “Scarlet Snow,” is even more beautiful in English than in Chinese. “Xue” can also mean “blood”…

Even though Chi Xue is officially with the Righteous Way, she hunts demons so ruthlessly that, on the surface, she doesn’t feel like a good guy. Of course, it turns out that she is extremely tender-hearted, and that she fights so coldly partially because she is heartbroken (her heartbreak, by the way, has nothing to do with a man).

And … Xing Ling and Chi Xue make for a good friendship. Their relationship is opposites-attract, but in a non-romantic way. Xing Ling is generally cheerful while Chi Xue is generally moody, Xing Ling is inexperienced, while Chi Xue has experienced a bit too much … and so forth.

Good stories are generally about characters suffering and growing (or not) from it. Suffering doesn’t stick very well to the upbeat Xing Ling, which is why Chi Xue ultimately ended up being a much more interesting character. Other people must have agreed, because there is a spin-off manhua called The Adventures of Chi Xue.

Availablility

This entire comic has been published in English—in fact the original edition was simultaneously published in English and Chinese. Many volumes of the English-language edition are available at Mile High Comics—unfortunately they don’t have all volumes, but the volumes they do have in stock are reasonably priced.

In Chinese, this comic book has been published in both simplified and traditional characters.

European readers might find it easier to acquire the French edition than the English-language edition.

Conclusion

I would have loved this manhua to pieces as a little girl. I enjoyed action/fighting stories, doubly so if they featured main characters, triply so if it was pretty (it’s worth noting that my gateway to anime was Sailor Moon, and my gateway to manga was Inuyasha).

And, obviously, I do love the artwork in this manhua. And, darn it, artwork is important. Liking comics for the artwork is not superficial, silly, or otherwise to be looked down upon. I didn’t actually become truly visually literate until my college years, but to the extent I was visually literate before then, I can partially thank my father—he would often remark on the artwork in the comic books we read together (or anything else that caught his eye). In the modern world, where people are constantly bombarded with images, visual literacy is important, and visual literacy also makes life more fun. One of the advantages that comic books have over certain other storytelling media is that it can nuture one’s visual literacy. This manhua, in my opinion, is excellent for that.

I am okay with the story. I am not in love with the story. I cannot pick out any major flaws. I was interested in the arcs of some of the characters, and was occasionally moved. Nonetheless, the story did not grab me. I could speculate on why it didn’t grab me … but to be honest, I don’t know why it didn’t grab me.

I do recommend this manhua to people who like fighting comics, particularly if they want fighting comics with good female characters.

Next Time: Fated to Love You (idol drama)

While the topics of Sara K.’s personal blog are mostly not related to Asian culture, Mangabookshelf readers might be interested in reading her latest post: “Language Learning and Perpetual Childhood”.

It Came From the Sinosphere: The 36th Chamber of Shaolin

August 6, 2012 by Sara K. 3 Comments

The 36th Chamber of Shaolin does not have a subtle opening. It wastes no time in telling the audience that this is a kung-fu flick.

Ah, the screenplay is by Ni Kuang. Ni Kuang is an extremely prolific writer of science fiction and wuxia, and a personal friend of Jin Yong. I am sure I will bring him up again in this column, so I’ll postpone giving him a proper introduction.

All of this has nothing to do with the plot, it’s just assuring the audience that ass will be kicked over the course of the flim.

Background

Shaw Brothers Studio was the biggest movie company ever based in Hong Kong, and the 36th Chamber of Shaolin is one of their most famous titles. Before their demise in the 1980s, the Shaw Brothers Studio produced over 1000 films. These included titles such as “Hong Kong 73,” “My Name Ain’t Suzie,” “Tropicana Interlude,” “Mr. Funny-Bone Strikes Again” (adapted from a manhua) and “Sexy Girls of Denmark”. However, the Shaw Brothers studio is now best remembered for their martial-arts flicks.

This is the move which launched its lead actor, Gordon Liu, to stardom. In addition to starring in later Chinese-language martial arts flicks, he also performed in the Kill Bill movies as well as in a Bollywood movie.

I admit I am a Shaw Brothers newbie. My explorations are just beginning, and I still don’t completely understand their system of stars and directors. However, I am sure I will review other Shaw Brothers films for this column, so I hopefully will be able to offer deeper insights then.

Story

San Te is a student while the Manchus are oppressing the people. After the Manchu government kills his family, he realizes that book-learning is useless and decides to learn martial arts so he can fight back.

San Te watches his father being assaulted.

So he travels to Shaolin temple to become a monk and learn their martial arts techniques.

San Te arrives at Shaolin Temple in a basket full of vegetables.

Hey, why is there a man in our bok choy? We’re vegetarians.

At the Shaolin temple, he spends a year sweeping leaves before his martial arts training commences. And it is a brutal training regimen. He has to pass through the 35 chambers, each taxing his physical capacities in a new way.

Monks life buckets of water to increase their strength.

This is the 34th “chamber”.

After passing through all 35 chambers, San Te requests permission to create the 36h chamber—a chamber where he can teach laypeople martial arts so they can resist the oppressive Manchus.

The Fighting

The fighting in this moving is essentially dancing. It’s choreographed, it shows off the performers’ physical capacities, it is intended to be visually impressive, and it communicates a message. And it is good dancing.

It was actually really hard to get decent screenshots of the fight scenes. It’s all about how the actors move, and the screenshots do not show that.

For example, there is a really cool fight with bamboo stakes, but it is impossible to convey the coolness in screenshots. What makes it cool is that it doesn’t just show off the actors’ ~~dance~~ stage fight skills, it’s also imaginative. It’s not a generic weapon fight. The bamboo stakes are used in unexpected ways. It builds on the training at the Shaolin temple—letting the audience recognize how elements from different fights fit together is pretty sweet.

Another imaginative fight – San Te fights a bunch of goons with lanterns:

On the second viewing, I noticed how much the movie makes use of water. Water is used in many ~~other~~ dance films too.

If you find the prospect of free tickets to the ballet more exciting than free tickets to a pop concert (me), watched MGM musicals for the dance sequences (me again), or have ever attended a dance film festival (that’s also me), you should try some of these kung-fu flicks.

Gordon Liu’s Performance

The thing which most impressed me about Gordon Liu’s performance was how he portrayed San Te’s development. It is difficult to show the passing of years in a film that is less than 2 hours long, but the way Gordon Liu showed how San Te changed made me feel that years had passed.

This is Gordon Liu as a student:

I realize you can’t tell from the screenshot, but in the beginning of the film, San Te doesn’t seem like somebody who can kick ass.

This is San Te after he has graduated from the Shaolin training regimen.

Again, you can’t tell from the screenshot, but San Te moves with such stillness (oxymoron, I know) and stands with such poise that I really felt that he had matured a great deal.

The Chambers

This, of course, is the highlight of the movie. The various chambers are even more imaginative than the fights. As a viewer, I learned to look forward to each chamber, wondering what bizarre new training technique I would see next.

This is my favorite chamber. San Te has to learn how to move his eyes without moving his head.

San Te has to keep his eyes on the candles.

If San Te moves his head, he will get burned by one of those incense sticks.

Commentary on Contemporary Buddhism

One of the points made in the film is that it’s wrong for the Shaolin temple to hoard its martial arts techniques while the common people suffer outside under the cruel Manchu dynasty. I am no expert on Buddhism, but I know there have been various calls in the past century that Buddhism became too disconnected from the problems real people suffer, and people have tried to reform it to increase the involvement of laypeople and make more concrete efforts to improve the human condition.

The example of this I am most familiar with is the Tzu Chi Buddhist Foundation in Taiwan. It was founded by a Buddhist nun, Cheng Yen, after she saw a poor woman die in childbirth. It is the largest charitable organization in Taiwan, and in addition to providing quality medical care in areas of Taiwan where medical care is otherwise difficult to get, they run recycling centers, provide relief for disasters, and run at least one organic tea plantation which is open to the public (I’ve visited that tea plantation—the views are beautiful).

I don’t know if the filmmakers were consciously putting this message into the film, but I can’t help but think that it is a reflection of modern attitudes towards the religion.

Something Else I Want to Mention

Dropping a lot of flour upon horse riders is cool.

That is all.

Availability in English

It is really easy to get a DVD with English subtitles. This movie is probably better known in the English-speaking world than anything else I have discussed in this column so far. And that observation leads me to my conclusion.

Conclusion

Chinese-language martial arts movies are far more available in English than the novels, TV shows, or manhua. For most people in the English-speaking world, almost all of what they know about Chinese-language martial arts fiction comes from these movies (this, by the way, also applied to me before I started studying Chinese).

Basing one’s knowledge of Chinese martial arts fiction solely on these movies would be like basing one’s knowledge of English-language science fiction solely on blockbuster Hollywood sci-fi movies. Sure, movies such as The Matrix, The Terminator, Forbidden Planet, and so forth certainly represent some of English-language science fiction. But individual 2-hour movies cannot support long, complex plots, nor can they employ the literary devices available to novelists. Even the Star Trek movies don’t demonstrate what makes the Star Trek TV series so outstanding. And blockbuster Hollywood sci-fi movies certainly don’t give viewers a sense of what novels like 1984, The Dispossessed, Dawn, or Diaspora or the short stories of James Tiptree Jr. offer.

This, of course, is not the movies’ fault. But in this column, I certainly hope to poke a hole through the language barrier so English-speakers can peek at just how broad Chinese-language martial arts fiction is.

As for this movie, I actually liked it even more after I saw it for the second time. This is a very good sign. Recommended.

Next time: The Celestial Zone (manhua)

Sara K. thinks it’s a pity that there is no kung-fu musical staring Gene Kelly and Gordon Liu. At least the dream sequence in The Pirate offers viewers a clue what a Gene Kelly kung-fu movie would be like.

It Came From the Sinosphere: The Fox Volant of Snow Mountain

July 31, 2012 by Sara K. 2 Comments

Brief Story Overview

A group of martial artists find and fight over a treasure chest. Then they get snowed in at a house on top of a mountain, menaced by the vicious “Fox Volant of Snow Mountain.” Having nothing better to do, they tell each other stories, which gradually reveal a long history of family feuding and provide a lot of context for what is going on.

I am not going to try to summarize the whole, complicated backstory—instead, I’m just taking out a slice.

One of the people present in the house, Miao Renfeng, unintentionally killed his good friend Hu Yidao. He does not know what happened to Hu Yidao’s infant son, Hu Fei, but he wishes he could have raised the child himself to compensate for the wrong he did to his friend. Miao Renfeng also did not teach his own daughter, Miao Ruolan (also present in the house) martial arts because he wants the feuding to end with his generation.

[Tangent: in lots of western literature and even sometimes in manga they make a big deal when a female can do well in combat—”ZOMAGOSH she can fight?!!!”—but in wuxia it is taken for granted that females can fight, so generally it’s more shocking when it is revealed that a female does not know martial arts—”ZOMAGOSH she can’t fight?!!! How come she’s still alive??!!”]

Miao Ruolan had felt sorry for Hu Fei ever since she first heard the story of what happened to Hu Yidao, and thought that if, by chance, he was still alive she would want to comfort him for all of the pain he must have endured in his wretched life. I don’t think I’m spoiling anything if I say that Hu Fei is actually still alive. In fact, he has a nickname … “Fox Volant of Snow Mountain.”

Background Information

This novel is by Jin Yong. If you read this column regularly, you already know who he is. If you don’t know who Jin Yong is, read this and this.

The novel was originally serialized in Ming Pao, one of the top newspapers in the Chinese-speaking world. In fact, the first chapter was published in the very first issue of Ming Pao.

Since I’ve discussed Ady An a couple times (The Outsiders 1&2 and Autumn’s Concerto) I feel obliged to say that she was cast as Miao Ruolan in the most recent TV adaptation of this novel. I haven’t seen the adaptation (and probably never will, based on the negative reviews I’ve read) but casting her as Miao Ruolan makes a lot of sense to me.

About the Context

This is unusual for a Jin Yong novel. Most Jin Yong novels span the course of years or decades, but thanks in part to the framing-story device with the various people telling their stories at the house, this novel just takes place within the course of a day. And while Jin Yong stories tend to have people running up and down Jianghu, this story takes place at that building and its vicinity (it’s hard to travel far within a day, especially with all that snow). Thus this story does not have the sense of adventure I associate with Jin Yong. Instead, it feels a bit more like No Exit, where a bunch of characters are stuck together and have to hash out their issues with each other. It’s one of his most “literary” stories, since instead of having characters swashbuckling around, he uses fancy narrative devices and gets nice and psychological in a way that literature professors approve of.

However, while this is unusual for a Jin Yong novel, it is not an unusual wuxia novel. Wuxia comes in many flavors. Jin Yong novels tend to be sweeping, historical, melodramatic adventures, but there are plenty of wuxia novels which emphasize mystery and atmosphere and focus more tightly on a smaller cast of characters (hello, Gu Long). Though I personally prefer epic adventures, even I like variety.

“The Lovers’ Blades” and “White Horse Riding in the West Wind”

Most Chinese-language editions of this novel come with two Jin Yong novellas, “The Lovers’ Blades” and “White Horse Riding in the West Wind.” I do not have anything to say about “The Lovers’ Blades,” but I find “White Horse Riding in the West Wind” interesting because it is the only Jin Yong story in which the main protagonist, Li Wenxiu, is female.

In some ways, Jin Yong treats Li Wenxiu just like most of his other protagonists—she undergoes childhood tragedy, trains in martial arts, and eventually overcomes and compensates for that tragedy. But he treats her differently in that, instead of granting her a (reverse) harem, she gets just one love interest, and [spoiler]she even loses him[/spoiler]. It’s more like a typical Jin Yong tale than The Fox Volant of Snow Mountain. I also happen to like the story.

The Lady, or the Tiger?

One of the most noteworthy parts of the novel (whether you love it or hate it – many people hate it) is the ending. Thus I have to discuss it. I will try to express my opinion of the ending without saying what happens, but people who are very spoiler-sensitive might still want to skip this section.

I never liked the story “The Lady, or the Tiger” because I know almost nothing about the princess—how am I supposed to know what decision she would make. However, The Fox Volant of Snow Mountain is not a short story. It’s a novel, and it has a prequel (Fēihú Wàizhuàn / Tales of the Young Fox) too. Thus there is a lot more material with which to reveal how the characters would make a tough choice.

Lots of people complain about the “inconclusive” ending of The Fox Volant of Snow Mountain, and Jin Yong has received many requests to write a “fuller” ending. I actually think the ending is sufficiently conclusive. I mean, in “The Lady, or the Tiger?” the outcomes are really different—marry a beautiful woman, or get mauled by a fierce tiger. But in this novel, the choice is between [spoiler]one tragic outcome, and a completely different yet equally tragic outcome[/spoiler]. Yeah, the possible endings are really different … except they are not. No matter what choice the characters make, the general direction is pretty clear to me. And it’s pretty clear what the fallout for each outcome would be, so I don’t think it needs to be spelled out.

The final scene, however, is exquisite in just the same way as one of my favourite scenes in Shēn Diāo Xiá Lǚ. In both scenes, Character A has a very dramatic choice to make; either save Character B’s life, or kill him. Jin Yong writes the stories in such a way that Character A has really compelling reasons to kill Character B … and really compelling reasons to save him. I have rarely been more engaged in story than when I was reading that scene in Shēn Diāo Xiá Lǚ because I really did not know what was going to happen, and it is still one of my most vivid memories in Taiwan. Of course, Shēn Diāo Xiá Lǚ actually had to move on with the plot, so Character A finally does make a choice … and the moment when the choice was made was … powerful stuff. But that was the climax of the scene for me—the remainder of the scene was not special to me. So I do understand why people are frustrated by the ending of The Fox Volant of Snow Mountain—they feel cheated of the promised climactic moment. Yet The Fox Volant of Snow Mountain does not have more plot lying in wait, and is not trying to make a specific point in the same way that Shēn Diāo Xiá Lǚ is. So I think, even if the choice was revealed, it wouldn’t add anything to the novel. The point of the final scene is the charged feelings of the characters and the readers, and I think trying to “complete” the ending would just dissipate that.

In fact, the fact that so many people passionately hate the ending of The Fox Volant of Snow Mountain proves just how effective Jin Yong is at rousing the readers’ feelings.

There is something that really does frustrate me about the ending, but it’s not the finale itself. It’s the build-up to the finale. Under the circumstances, a good father would have asked his daughter how she felt. Not only did Miao Renfeng not ask Miao Ruolan how she felt, but when she tried to tell him, he told her to shut up. If he had bothered to listen to his own daughter for just two minutes [spoiler]the entire tragic dilemma would have been averted and the story would have had a nice happy ending[/spoiler]. Argh.

At least people talk about the ending of this novel. Some Jin Yong endings are not particularly memorable, and I think those endings are actually worse than this ending.

Availability in English

This novel has been published in English. A lot of people criticise the Olivia Moktranslation, but based on the brief excerpt I’ve read, it is actually not so terrible (aside from the way the characters’ names are handled, which is terrible). I don’t know whether it includes the novellas “The Lovers’ Blades” and “White Horse in the West Wind” or not.

Like every Jin Yong novel published in English, it’s not cheap, so I suggest making inquiries at a library near you.

Conclusion

You know what? This novel is recommended.

Reading this novel won’t give you a typical Jin Yong experience. On the other hand, it’s more accessible than some of his other works. This story actually gets to the point quite quickly, unlike Yǐ Tiān Tú Lóng Jì in which Jin Yong spends over 200 pages before bothering to introduce Zhang Wuji (who happens to be the main protagonist).

I would say that, after A Deadly Secret, this is my second favorite of Jin Yong’s shorter works. It’s not as fun as some of his other tales, but the structure works quite well and I got involved in the characters’ mental tangles. I’ve read it twice, and it worked better for me the second time around. I will probably eventually read it a third time.

Next time: The 36th Chamber of Shaolin (movie)

Sara K. has heard rain and fireworks while editing this post. Both sounds are very common in Taiwan.

It Came From the Sinosphere: Autumn’s Concerto

July 24, 2012 by Sara K. 3 Comments

I have no idea why this drama is called Autumn’s Concerto in English. I much prefer the Mandarin title Xiàyīzhàn, Xìngfú (Next Stop, Happiness).

Anyway, this is widely considered to be one of the best idol dramas ever filmed.

The Story

Liang Mucheng is an orphan raised by her aunt and uncle-in-law who run a lunch box business on a university campus. Her uncle-in-law tries to peek at her whenever she changes her clothes, secretly takes sexual pictures of her, and seems to be waiting for an opportunity to sexually abuse her in a more severe way. Meanwhile, Mucheng encounters one of the university’s most brilliant law students, Ren Guangxi, who is also the son of one of the univerisity’s trustees. He acts like a playboy, but has actually lost sight of the point of life. His mother wants him to marry the daughter of a business tycoon, He Yiqian, who also happens to be a brilliant medical student herself. Mucheng is also friends with another law student, Hua Tuoye, who secretly has a crush on Mucheng. Sadly for Tuoye, there is no doubt in the viewers’ minds who the main couple is going to be as soon as Mucheng and Guangxi meet each other.

It is hard to say more than that without getting into spoiler territory, but the above feels a bit too incomplete to me, so I feel the need to say [SPOILER WARNING] Ren Guangxi loses his memory. Six years later, a village hires him as a lawyer to defend them from the corporation that wants to buy them out and evict them. This happens to be the village where Tuoye grew up, and Mucheng also happens to live there with her son, Liang Xiaole. The mayor asks Mucheng to act as Guangxi’s host while he stays in the village. He has instant rapport with Xiaole, but he is unaware that he had previously met Mucheng and finds her behavior really strange. Little does he know that he is, in fact, Xiaole’s biological father. [END SPOILER WARNING]

“I already told you, the lawyer from Taipei is not your father.”

Then Mucheng sees who the ‘lawyer from Taipei’ actually is …

Cue music.

Connections to Other Idol Dramas

First of all, there are quite a few connections between The Outsiders and Autumn’s Concerto. The most obvious is that the female leads of both dramas are played by Ady An … but it’s more than that. For one thing, in both dramas, she plays a character who knows how to play the piano. And Autumn’s Concerto recycles some of the soundtrack from The Outsiders (since The Outisders has one of the best idol drama soundtracks, it is a good source for recyclable material).

On the other hand, Vanness Wu, who plays Ren Guangxi, played one of the F4 in Meteor Garden (the Taiwanese version of Boys Over Flowers), which is the mother of all idol dramas. Meteor Garden launched the acting careers of three of the most prominent idol drama stars (Barbie Xu, Vic Chou, and Rainie Yang), but Vanness Wu rose to acting stardom relatively late for a Meteor Garden actor … in fact, he didn’t become a proper acting star in his own right until he was case as Ren Guangxi. Fun fact about Vanness Wu: he was born and raised in California and is a native English speaker who learned Mandarin as a second language, just like me.

Tiffany Hsu, who plays Ren Guangxi’s fiancee He Yiqian, also performed in It Started With A Kiss (Itazura na Kiss), where she also played the male lead’s alternative romantic interest.

Other connections to other idol drama is right in script, or cinematography. At one point, one of the villagers mentioned that they can resist the corporation just like the village that resisted the Senwell corporation, and another villager points out that they don’t have a cuckoo flower. This is, of course, a reference to the story Prince Turns Into Frog in which the Senwell coproration’s plans to buy out a village are foiled by the discovery of the endangered cuckoo flower within village limits. Prince Turns To Frog is one of the most popular idol dramas ever made. At one point in the story the Ren family gets inquiries from iFound, where My Queen’s Shan Wushuang works. Yet another My Queen connection is that, in the last episode, there is a magazine featuring He Yiqian as a star doctor … the other doctor featured is Lucas, My Queen’s male lead.

Location, Location, Location

Many of the early scenes seem to take place in the fishing villages on the north coast (probably in Shimen or Sanzhi) where Mucheng has to help her uncle-in-law at a fish market. I suppose it might be in Danshui, though it seems a bit too sparsely populated to be Danshui to me (I happened to mention Danshui’s Fort San Domingo last week).

Some scenes are also set in Minsheng Hospital which is in … Taoyuan City. Hey, I’m in Taoyuan City too! While I’ve never entered Minsheng Hospital, I have shopped at the Carrefour across the street. Minsheng Hospital is, among other things, a medical tourism hospital, and generally caters to people willing to pay a little extra money for nicer care (me, I go to Taoyuan Veterans’ Hospital for my medical needs, which is quite close to one of the locations where My Queen was shot).

Mucheng holds Xiaole in a flower field in Cihu.

This has got to be Dasi Flowering Oasis.

And at least some of the village scenes were shot in Daxi township which … is in Taoyuan county. Daxi has such an interesting history that I do not have space to discuss it in full detail, but I have to mention that Fong Fei-fei was born and raised in Daxi township. Like the village in the drama, one of Daxi’s main industries is growing ornamental flowers. The “flower fields” in Autumn Concerto look like they were filmed at the Dasi Flower Oasis, which is “the holy land of idol dramas” and a tourist trap farm. Dasi Flower Oasis is in a part of Daxi called Cihu, which has a lot of interesting history in its own right. Personally, I think the coolest thing about Cihu history is that there is a former secret military headquarters which was built in case People’s Republic of China troops ever landed in Taiwan (the headquarters was built to be difficult to detect so that military leaders could direct troops in safety).

A Few Words About the Opening

Unlike most idol dramas, Autumn’s Concerto does not have an opening per se. Right after the recap of the previous episode, it jumps straight back into the action. It has an opening song, but it’s always played in the background as the story gets moving. “I Love Him” is a beautiful, haunting song which fits the theme of the drama very well.

The Symptoms of Idol Drama Jadedness

While watching this drama, I kept on thinking “this is just like what happened in drama x.” There is ONE basic standard idol drama plot which all but a few dramas follow. Autumn’s Concerto follows it so closely that when somebody told me about some of the later events before I got that far in the drama, I could not even claim that it was a spoiler. I have seen so many idol dramas that any drama which follows this plot too closely—unless it puts a truly fresh spin on the plot or is very well suited to my tastes—will trigger Idol Drama Jadedness Syndrome in me. Autumn’s Concerto is so well-made that it maintained my interest in spite of seeming completely unoriginal to me, but my jadedness is so deep that I could only like it, not love it. It seemed more like going through a ritual drill than discovering something exciting or new. The very fact that I am spending so many words discussing the location and other meta instead of the actual story is a symptom of Idol Drama Jadedness Syndrome.

Then Xiaole appeared.

At the time I was watching the drama, Xiaole was the only thing which made the drama seem truly alive to me and not just the product of skilled story-crafters. Xiao Bin Bin is a delightful child actor, and … well, I love kids. Xiaole’s scenes are definitely the ones I enjoyed the most, and the only ones which did not make me think about other idol dramas or make me think more about the meta than the actual storyline. Well, that’s unfair, I did get involved in the story, I just did not lose myself to it.

The last story arc irritated me, mainly because Ren Guangxi turned into an asshole, but Mucheng was annoying stubborn too. If you must turn your male lead into an assole, at least make him a gloriously fun asshole (I am referring to one of my favorite idol dramas, which handles the male-lead-turns-into-asshole gambit a lot better).

But the last story arc still has Xiaole, so I shouldn’t complain too much.

Much as Xiaole was the most enjoyable part of the drama for me at the time, reflecting back on the drama, Xiaole is not what stays with me the most. It’s the theme.

The Theme

It took me a while to consciously realize it, but Autumn’s Concerto has a very consistent theme, which is: it is better to tell the painful truth than to cover it up with lies. Aside from Xiaole (who is too young to lie), pretty much every main character (and some minor characters) at some point lies in order to “protect” someone from a harsh reality. In fact, Xiaole’s simple honesty serves as a sharp contrast to the adults’ contorted thinking. Mucheng’s aunt tells herself that Mucheng seduced her husband so she won’t have to admit that she’s married to a sexual predator; Guangxi tells Mucheng that he doesn’t love her so that her heart won’t be broken when she finds out that he is going to die in a month; the corporation tells the villagers that it needs them to leave their lands so the villagers won’t find out that the corporation poisoned the water; Mucheng tells Xiaole that his father is an extrateresstial so she won’t have to tell him about what really happened with his father; and if I tried to list every lie told in the course of the drama, this list would be really long (and extremely spoilerful). And the lying … generally does not work out well. I can only think of one lie in the entire drama which has a partially positive outcome. On the other hand, when the characters choose to come clean, even though there is initial pain, things tend to improve. This is the theme which keeps the story glued together, and makes the difference between a series of soap operatic events and a memorable story.

Anyway, that’s rather serious, so here is some more Xiaole as an antidote.

Availability and Accessibility

Autumn’s Concerto is available for streaming with English subtitles in North and South America via Dramafever.

If you don’t live in North or South America, YesAsia sells the Malaysian DVD set which supposedly has English subtitles.

Also, for Chinese learners … I have to disagree with Jade and say this is actually good for Mandarin practice. I would say only 10-15% of the drama is in Taiwanese (I don’t know why Jade says half of it is in Taiwanese), and I think anybody whose Mandarin-listening ability is at B2 or higher would do just fine.

Conclusion

I favor idol dramas which are either a) mischevieously screwbally or b) seriously dark. Autumn’s Concerto does not fall into either category, therefore it is not one of my personal favorites. Still, even though I’ve only seen the drama straight-through once, I re-watched many parts in the process of preparing this post, and some scenes are more enjoyable the second time around. I have to admit that this is indeed one of the finest idol dramas out there. Even if you suffer from Idol Drama Jadedness Syndrome like me, you should watch it. Recommended.

Now I Have a Dilemma…

Ever since I started this column, I’ve really wanted to discuss [Drama A]. In fact, I planned to make it the second idol drama I reviewed after The Outsiders. [Drama A] happens to be legally available with English subtitles. But then I decided I had to discuss My Queen because it was a new addition to Dramafever, then I felt I had to discuss Autumn’s Concerto because it was another new addition to Dramafever, so my post about [Drama A] got delayed twice. Even though [Drama A] is not a personal favorite, I think [Drama A] is up there with Meteor Garden among one of the most important idol dramas ever made—certainly more important than The Outsiders, My Queen, and Autumn’s Concerto, and I really want to discuss it. It was next on the list … until I just discovered that [Drama B] one of my favorite idol dramas has JUST BEEN LICENCED!!!! I want to celebrate the licensing of [Drama B] by putting it next on the list and finally squeeing about it and getting the Manga Bookshelf community to watch it … but I am loathe to delay discussing [Drama A] yet a third time. So here is the question for you…

Do you want the next idol drama post to be about [Drama A], or [Drama B]?

Next time: The Fox Volant of Snow Mountain (novel)

Readers of this column might be under the impression that Sara K. speaks good Chinese. They can disabuse themselves of this notion by signing up at Lang-8 and reading Sara K.’s Chinese-language journal entries (even people who don’t know Chinese can see how much her Chinese needs to be corrected). To the best of her knowledge, she is the only Lang-8 user who talks about gardening in San Francisco. Manga Bookshelf readers who are brushing up their Japanese, please note that Lang-8 has many Japanese users.

It Came From the Sinosphere: Creative Comics Collection

July 17, 2012 by Sara K. 8 Comments

Pretty, isn’t it? Before you learn more about it, here’s some history for you to read!

A Brief Demographic History of Taiwan

Tens of thousands of years ago, Taiwan was not an island, and stone age people walked from Fujian to Taiwan. Then, when sea levels rose, Taiwan became an island. Thousands of years ago, Austronesian people showed up in Taiwan. It is unknown what relationship they had with the people already living in Taiwan, but the most likely scenario is that they married each other and had kids.

In the 17th century, Europeans (primarily the Dutch and Spanish) colonized Taiwan. They never arrived in sufficient numbers to have much direct impact on Taiwan’s demographics. But the era of European colonization was the first time Han Chinese (mainly from Fujian and Guangdong) arrived in Taiwan in large numbers. And since the vast majority of the Han Chinese migrants were male (at least during the early waves of migration), if they wanted to marry or have babies, pairing up with the women who already lived there was often their only option. The same applied to the few Europeans who showed up in Taiwan, of course—at all points in Taiwanese history there have been far more white males than white females present on the island (including today).

The next time a different outsider group showed up in Taiwan was when Japan took over Taiwan in 1895. Strangely, unlike all previous migrations, the Japanese did not have lots of babies with the people already living in Taiwan, though they did of course have a few babies, which is why some Taiwanese people claim Japanese ancestry. After WWII, almost all of the Japanese people living in Taiwan left.

Then after WWII many people fled from China to Taiwan, and unlike previous waves of Han Chinese migration, these immigrants were not primarily from Fujian or Guangdong. They brought a new language, Mandarin, to Taiwan (previous Han Chinese migrants spoke Minnan or Hakka). Like most immigrants to Taiwan, they married the local people and had babies.

The most recent wave of migration to Taiwan has been coming from Southeast Asia—Phillipines, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, and Cambodia. And I recall reading somewhere that 20% of all marriages in Taiwan today are between a Taiwanese person and a Southeast Asian immigrant. It seems the Southeast Asians are carrying on the old Taiwanese tradition of immigrants having babies with locals.

It should be apparent by now that Taiwan is really different from Korea and Japan. Korea and Japan can point to centuries of unified, independent rule, whereas Taiwan has never been an independent and unified nation, not even today (at least not officially). If you ask a Korean or Japanese person what ethnicity they are, they will answer “Korean, obviously” or “Japanese, obviously.” If you ask a Taiwanese person what ethnicity they are, the answers can get really complicated.

And this raises the question … what is Taiwanese culture? Is there something unique about Taiwanese culture which cannot be found in any other culture, or is Taiwanese culture just an extension of some other culture?

I cannot tell you what Taiwanese culture is, and I have heard Taiwanese people answer this question in many different ways. But I see a lot of parallels between Taiwan today and the United States in the 18th and 19th centuries. Much of the work of artists in the United States from that era was to hash out what exactly the culture of the United States was. And today, many Taiwanese artists are hashing out the question of what Taiwanese culture is. Which finally, finally brings me to the main topic.

Creative Comic Collection

Creative Comics Collection is Taiwan’s best-selling manhua magazine-anthology. By “best-selling” I mean “it sells a lot more copies than the Taiwanese edition of Shonen Jump.” I am not sure there are any American comic book magazine-anthologies which out-sell the American edition of Shonen Jump (please correct me if I’m wrong). While I don’t have sales numbers, I heard that Creative Comic Collection even out-sells the collected volumes of some of Shonen Jump‘s flagship titles, such as Bleach (though I must note this not mean there are more Taiwanese people reading Creative Comics Collection than Bleach—the vast majority of Taiwanese manga-readers would rent, not buy, Bleach, whereas Creative Comics Collection is generally not available for rent).

And, I will say this for Creative Comics Collection—it is unlike any other comic book magazine-anthology I know about. Star Girls, which I discussed in a previous post, is clearly modeled on Japanese shojo magazine-anthologies. However, Creative Comics Collection is not modelled on anything I know of. It is an entirely different beast than the entire universe of Japanese magazine-anthologies (at least based on reading Magazine no Mori—I suppose there might be Creative-Comics-Collection–esque magazines in Japan which Erica simply has not discussed).

So what is this model? It’s very simple—presearchers at the Academy Sinica team up with young artists and illustrations, and make illustrations and manhua together.

How an Issue is Set Up

Each issue of Creative Comics Collection (which from now on I’m just calling CCC) has a theme—for example, Myths and Legends, Labor, Seasonal Festivities, and so forth. Most or all of the content of that issue uses that them.

The first section of an issue of Creative Comics Collection is dedicated to color illustrations and various articles about the theme. Often, there is a color manhua or illustrated story followed by a collection of illustrations from different artists around a theme. This is actually my favorite part of the magazine because of the color, the variety of styles, and the various ways they express the themes. For example, there was one color feature where the artists had to depict various historic sites in Taiwan as comic book characters.

This is Fort San Domingo in Danshui as a comic book character:

Fort San Domingo was used by the Spanish, Dutch, and British … in other words, it has European colonization written all over it (in fact, the two puppets the character is holding represent Holland and Spain fighting each other).

This is a residence built for the Japanese imperial family in Taichung:

The writing and the diagrams explain the drawing and which aspects of the drawing represent which aspects of of the original building.

After the comics comes the bulk of the issue—black and white comics accompanied by articles from the Academic Sinica.

The academics present some research to the artist, and then the artist bases a short manhua story on the research. The academic writes a short article to follow the short manhua. The manhua stories generally run about 30-40 pages long, and the articles run about 2 pages long. They explore various aspects of Taiwan—ecology, Austronesian heritage, Chinese heritage, Japanese heritage, and so forth. Each issue has about 8 manhua/articles.

Artwork

It is rather difficult to discuss the artwork, because even though there are some regular contributors, each issue has a different set of artists. However, there is a heavy Japanese influence everywhere. This is not surprising. Since Taiwan’s earlier manhua tradition was suffocated to death by censorship (ah, martial law), today’s manhua artists only have Japanese artists, not their Taiwanese predecessors, as their role models. Unlike the manhua found in Star Girls, which tends to track Japanese art styles so closely that I can date a Star Girls manhua by looking at the same things I would use to date a Japanese manga, the artists in CCC do not seem to be bound to following Japanese styles. Instead, they are exploring their own style.

Looking through the issues, I do notice a trend.

These are all from the first issue:

Notice that there are a variety of styles, with an experimental vibe running beneath most of them.

These are all from the most recent issue:

Not as much variety in style as in the first issue, and certainly not as much of an avant-garde atmosphere. It might be inevitable that as a magazine-anthologies matures, the art style settles down.

Overall, I prefer the art of the early issues because of the greater variety and the freshness, but I also appreciate that the magazine is building a stable of maturing artists—some of whom I like a lot—while still keeping room for more artists to come on board.

Stories

And …here is CCC‘s weak point. The stories are not terrible. They are generally just not, well, very memorable. The typical CCC story is ordinary person finds unusual thing, learns more about unusual thing, and then has an ephiphany (the unusual thing, of course, is the subject of the academic’s article). Even though I don’t particularly like Kokai’s drawing style (Kokai is one of CCC‘s regular contributors) I generally like her storytelling more than the other artists because she at least puts a little pizazz into the plot. But generally, I prefer the manhua where they throw the story to hell and just focus on drawing up Taiwanese esoterica in imaginative ways.

That said, the stories (being short) go by quite quickly and balance out the academic articles nicely. Light manhua – academic article – light manhua – academic article, and so forth, makes for a better reading experience than pure light manhua or pure academic articles.

Still, my favorite section is the still the color illustrations in the beginning because they often don’t bother with storytelling in that section, instead focusing on CCC‘s strengths—a variety of art and … Taiwanana? What am I supposed to call the Taiwanese equivalent of Americana?

Availability

Availability in English … ha ha ha.

Well, a few of the manhua stories don’t have dialogue, so I suppose somebody literate in English can read them just as well as someone literate in Chinese. Some manhua stories are “available” online at the CCC website, but the resolution is so bad that I can’t read them, so if you want to look, it does not matter what language you’re literate in (or not).

CCC is quite easy to acquire in Taiwan. I’m sure it’s harder to acquire elsewhere.

Conclusion

Like I said, this is a strange beast, so I am not going to say it should be licensed, at least not in the traditional sense. Nonetheless, I think it would be nice if they translated some of the manhua and features into English and put them online on the offical CCC website so that people outside of Taiwan could get a taste of what it’s like.

It is no secret that Japanese manga dominates the Taiwanese comic book scene, and most Taiwanese people are hardly aware of local manhua (this is partially because the most commercial Taiwanese manhua packages itself just like Japanese manga, so the casual reader may not notice the difference). However one thing Japanese manga cannot do for Taiwanese readers is reflect Taiwanese culture. While I think Star Girls manhua sometimes reflects Taiwanese culture in interesting ways, it’s generally subtle and would not satisfy somebody who really, really wants to see Taiwan embodied in comic book form.

And that is the craving that CCC fills. It is Taiwanese in your face. Taiwan practically drips from its pages.

An avant-garde depiction of a Formosa magpie in a sailor suit

Like this page, which depicts a badass Formosa magpie (the Formosa magpie is often used as a symbol of Taiwan).

It might be difficult for relatively privileged people to understand this. However, if you have had trouble finding stories which reflect people like you and the culture you live in, the craving for such stories can be quite powerful.

So, I have a question for you:

Would you like to discuss specific artists from CCC in future columns?

Next time: Autumn’s Concerto, AKA Next Stop, Happiness (idol drama)

One of the reasons Sara K. enjoys living in Taiwan is that it is the crossroads of East Asia. Japan, Korea, China, Phillipines, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand … it all comes together in Taiwan. She thinks it is not a coincidence that Taiwan is both the crossroads of such different cultures … and is the most queer-tolerant and least-sexist place in Asia (that has more to do with Asia generally being homophobic and sexist rather than Taiwan being wonderful in that regard … but Sara K. does not know of any other place in Asia where the head of state publicly attended a gay pride parade).

It Came From the Sinosphere: Cheerful Wind

July 10, 2012 by Sara K. 3 Comments

About the Title

This film has quite a few titles in English. Cheerful Wind is the title used by the IMDB, yet Play While You Play is the English title on my DVD. The Mandarin title is Fēnger Tītà Cǎi (風兒踢踏踩) which roughly means ‘The Wind Tip-Tap Steps’.

Three People

I picked this film because it brings together three of the most important people in Taiwanese pop culture: Chiung Yao, Hou Hsiao-hsien, and Fong Fei-fei.

*****

Chiung Yao

Chiung Yao is the most popular writer of Chinese-language romance novels ever. I think she’s also Taiwan’s most popular female novelist ever. Many of her works have been adapted for TV, some of which are available on DVD even though they are over 30 years old. It is rare for a 30+ year old Taiwanese TV series to be available on DVD, which demonstrates just how popular Chiung Yao is. Furthermore, the 1998-2003 Chinese TV series adapted from her novel Princess Pearl, aka My Fair Princess, is the most popular Chinese-language TV series ever.

I’ll be honest; I haven’t read any of the novels or watched any of the TV series. Yet. But Chiung Yao’s position in Chinese-language pop culture is so important that I have to read at least a few of the novels and watch a few of the TV series if this column is to have any credibility. So I assure you, I WILL read some novels / watch some of the TV shows, and write about it here.

Naturally, none of her novels are available in English, because publishers apparently think there is no commercial potential in translating the works of the most popular romance writer in the Chinese-speaking world into English.

I am not clear what Chiung Yao’s involvement with this film is. The DVD claims that she is the original creator and that she ‘supervised’ the film, but this is not adapted from any of her novels, nor did she write the screenplay. Maybe she created the plot, or maybe she just let the film use her name to sell more tickets.

*****

Hou Hsiao-hsien

Out of all of the people involved with this film, Hou Hsiao-hsien is the best known outside of Asia. He is one of Taiwan’s most famous filmmakers. His best-known work is City of Sadness, set in the town of Jiufen (Jiufen also inspired Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away, and thanks to City of Sadness and Spirited Away Jiufen is constantly packed with Taiwanese and Japanese tourists). Hou Hsiao-hsien’s films get discussed in film schools around the world, put on “films to see before you die” lists, and played at international film festivals.

This film was made very early in his career—it’s only his second feature-length film. Nonetheless, his distinctive, low-key style is already apparent.

*****

Fong Fei-fei

If you created a list of “Five Most Important Taiwanese Singers of All Time,” Fong Fei-fei would definitely make the list. Frankly, I think she would belong on the “Three Most Important Taiwanese Singers of All Time” list too. She also happens to be one of my favorite Chinese-language singers. It was a big deal in Taiwan when she died earlier this year, and I wrote my own blog post about it.

Unlike Chiung Yao and Hou Hsiao-hsien, whose families fled China after WWII, Fong Fei-fei’s family had been in Taiwan for centuries, and she herself had been born in Taoyuan county (hey, I live in Taoyuan county!). Even after becoming a star, she stayed in touch with her working-class roots, and that is part of why she is so beloved.

Even though she is best known as a singer, she got her big break in show business as an actress, not a singer. That break was being cast in the TV show A Pair of Swallows Fly (燕雙飛), for which she sang the theme song. Even after establishing her singing career, she continued to accept acting roles, including the leading role in this film.

The Story

Xinghui is a photographer. She lives with her boss/boyfriend, Luozi, a producer of TV commercials from Hong Kong. However, her feelings for him a bit … lacking. While on a trip to Penghu to shoot a commercial, Xinghui meets Jintai, a flute-playing medic who lost his eyesight in a car crash while driving an ambulance. The two establish a rapport which only deepens when they happen to run into each other in Taipei. After an operation, Jintai can see again, and follows Xinghui to the countryside when she has to act as a substitute teacher for her brother. There, Jintai asks Xinghui to marry him. Meanwhile, Luozi plans a trip to Europe with Xinghui—knowing that travelling in Europe has been Xinghui’s dream.

So, does Xinghui run off to Europe with Luozi, or does she stay with Jintai in Taiwan?

The Theme Song

I really like the theme song for this film (which, by the way, was sung by Pauline Yeung and Kenny Bee, NOT by Fong Fei-fei herself). There are several other songs in the film, but the theme song is the clear winner. In fact, I like this song so much I translated the lyrics into English:

The wind blows and blows,
The clouds float and float,
The branches climb outside the window,
The little orioles are all adorable.

The wind steps on by,
The clouds step on by,
Knocking on the doors, asking,
‘Is my friend there?’

Spring’s footsteps come leisurely,
Yet quickly will be tip-tap stepping,
Young friends are tip-tap stepping,
And the world brims with love.

Charm

This film excels at charm. The story moves quite slowly and quietly, focusing more on highlighting how playful life can be instead of driving a plot forward.

For example, in the opening scene, they are shooting a commercial at a place where it is written “TAKING PICTURES IS FORBIDDEN.”

Xinghui and some men by a wall which says 'Taking Pictures is Forbidden'

The writing on the left side of the picture says “Taking pictures is forbidden.”

This is actually quite common in Taiwan—there are many places where the use of cameras is restricted for military reasons. I imagine these places would be especially common in Penghu, where this scene is set, because it is one of the most fortified places in Taiwan.

Speaking of military locations, one of my favorite scenes is where Xinghui, Jintai, and some children are playing hide-and-seek in an abandoned fortification (I am guessing that it is from the Japanese era, but I’m not sure).

Right at the beginning of the film, there are children who are setting up a dung bomb as a prank to play on a passerby.

However, the kids get the timing wrong, so the dung bomb explodes on them instead.

This boy is a victim of his own dung bomb.

Then, it is revealed that this is actually being filmed for a laundry detergent commercial. And because there was something wrong with this shot, they have to look for a cow so they can get more cow dung for more shots.

The dung bomb scene turns out to just be a film set.

It’s all just a film in the process of being shot.

I also cannot help notice that Xinghui wears at least five different hats during the film. Fong Fei-fei is known as the “Queen of Hats,” and I am pretty sure that is why Xinghui is wearing so many stylish hats during the film.

On Blindness

I am not comfortable talking about this because a) I have been sighted my entire life and b) I do not know much about the experience of blind people in Taiwan, but I am also not comfortable ignoring this.

There are times in the film when people treat blind!Jintai as an object instead of as a person with agency. I find it plausible that some Taiwanese people treat blind people this way (there is a reason why Taiwan has disability rights activists), so I do not fault the film for showing this. However, the film depicts this as being cute … and I do not think it’s cute.

There is also, of course, the fact that Jintai regains his sight during the film. On the one hand, the film depicts Jintai being fairly content as a blind man, which is an improvement over stories where blindness is depicted as being TEH MOST TRAGIC THING EVAAAAR!!!! On the other hand, the film does not explain why Jintai decided to have the operation, since the underlying assumption is that all blind people want to be sighted. I have no objection to people having operations to restore their eyesight, or to having this happen in stories, but I do object to the underlying assumption that this is the only way to address blindness.

Speaking of blind people and movies … Tommy Edison is a good film critic.

Nostalgia

This film was made in 1981, so it gives me a chance to see how much Taiwan has (not) changed.

The scenes set in Taipei in particular brought feelings out of me. The Taipei scenes are set in and around Taipei Main Station, which is the same area I lived in when I lived in Taipei. The train station itself has been completely rebuilt since the movie was filmed … yet some of the trains are still the same! Yep, some train cars from the 1980s are still in service today in Taiwan.

Taipei Train Station does not look like this AT ALL today.

I was also impressed by how little February 28 Peace Park has changed since the 1980s, even though the name of the park itself changed (in the film, it is called “New Park”).

That bridge, on the other hand, looks just the same today as it did in the 1980s.

Availability

I have this film on DVD. My DVD does not have English subtitles. I suspect there is no DVD with English subtitles. That said, this is a Hou Hsiao-hsien film, so there may very well be a film society out there which has a copy of this film with English subtitles.

Conclusion

Is it a great film? No. Is it a good film? Yes. I enjoyed watching it. Part of my pleasure came from recognizing different parts of Taiwan and Taiwanese culture, but even if I couldn’t tell Taiwan from Thailand I think I would have still enjoyed this quiet, whimsical film.

Next Time: CCC Manhua Anthology

Sara K. rather enjoys going to abandoned military sites in Taiwan. Recently she visited the coastal town of Shenao where she went to an area formerly restricted by the military—and saw cool-looking network of tunnels left by the military within the unusually-shaped rocks (she did not go inside because the entrance to the tunnels said “Danger: Do Not Enter”).

It Came From the Sinosphere: Passionate Wastrel, Infatuated Hero (Part 2)

July 6, 2012 by Sara K. 6 Comments

On Tuesday, I introduced Passionate Wastrel, Infatuated Hero. Because there is very little information about the novel available in English, I split this post into two parts. This is part two.

The Style

First of all, this is a novel that MOVES. Before the reader is five pages into the novel, an innocent girl witnesses a murder. From that point on, the story does not slow down very much, and generally only when it needs to slow down. There are a few sections where the plot loses a little momentum—particularly when focusing on Ling Haotian’s moping over Zheng Baoan—but just when I think the plot might actually drag, a new plot twist bursts in with a BAM!

One reason the novel moves so well is its accessible writing style. I would not go so far as to call it a plain writing style, but the literary flourishes are generally playful in nature. For example, there is a scene where Zhao Guan and Ling Haotian seem to be in a competition to spit out the most chengyu. However, when Zheng Feng is not having fun with words, the language is very direct and to the point.

Fighting

The most enjoyable set of fights for me was the poisoners’ tournament. It has novelty—the contestants duel by trying to out-poison each other instead of using direct combat. It has all of the classic psychological appeals—our protagonist is the underdog (Zhao Guan is the least experienced of all of the contestants) and the stakes for him are really high. And because he is the least experienced of the poisoners, he needs to rely on his wits to win, which is a lot of fun for the reader.

Fighting is a central part of Ling Haotian’s development as a character. Training is how he (tries to) take his mind off of his problems, and as a wanderer he needs to fight to defend himself. It is when he wins a tournament—not of poisoners, but of the finest fighters in the martial arts world—that everybody, including himself, finally realises that he is himself and not merely the son or brother of so-and-so.

Feminism?

One of the reasons I was so interested in reading this novel was, being written by a female, I hoped it would be less patriarchal than other wuxia novels I’ve read. Is it feminist? On the surface, no. But there are some very interesting things beneath the surface…

The two main characters are male, and they both get lots of attention from beautiful women, which makes it seem like a typical harem fantasy wuxia aimed at straight males. However, the standard wuxia-harem-fantasy-for-straight-males tends to feature a man who, while strong, is not particularly handsome, and the women who fling themselves at him tend to be young chaste maidens (please note that I use the word “tend”—of course there are exceptions). Zhao Guan, on the other hand, is so gorgeous that the novel specifically states that 80% of the young women he encounters gets a crush on him. I have come to the conclusion that he probably looks like Hu Ge.

Two pictues showing off Hu Ge's prettiness.

Hu Ge, Chinese bishonen

Even with his looks, he still has to work at getting so many women, unlike the typical wuxia hero who basically has women fall into his lap. And, much as he does not like it, he often has to refrain from pursuing certain women for pragmatic reasons. Most wuxia heroes do not put so much thought into which women to pursue or not pursue—when they do refrain, it’s usually because of sexist cultural programming, not because they actually considered what might be in his or her best interests. Of course, if they actually thought about it before entering into certain problematic relationships, there would be less dramatic conflict, whereas making decisions based on sexist programming tends to increase, not decrease, dramatic conflict.

Zhao Guan of course prefers women who a pretty and not evil, but he does not care about their prior sexual history, or even if they have other sexual or romantic relationships (well, he does care about their other relationships … but in a “I won’t let him hurt her” sense and not a “how dare she have another man” sense). This lack of double standard is rather refreshing. He even takes a woman who had kidnapped and tortured him as one of his lovers. And while he does care about looks, the most beautiful women in the story are immune to his charms for some reason (*cough* the Ling brothers *cough*). This does not look so much like a fantasy for straight males to me. This looks like a fantasy for straight fangirls who want a hot guy who won’t turn them down.

What about straight fangirls who are not physically pretty? They have Ling Haotian. The most beautiful women in the story all fall for him or one of his brothers, not Zhao Guan. Meanwhile, Zheng Baoan, while not ugly, is said to be the plainest-looking young woman in the story. Yet she is the only woman that both Ling Biyi and Ling Haotian want. Even though they can get women who are far, far more beautiful. And they are both hot dudes. This is unambiguously a fantasy aimed at straight female readers.

Speaking of Zheng Baoan, she’s a cool character herself; she’s sweet, reserved, feminine, and tough as nails. Ling Haotian says she is far braver than he (I agree). Whereas Ling Haotian generally runs away from problems, Zheng Baoan confronts them. And while he’s busy angsting over his feelings for her, Zheng Baoan is too busy saving his life to indulge in angst. I like characters like this because they illustrate that courage is just as compatible with femininity as with masculinity.

And then there’s the gender-reversal in Zhao Guan’s story. First of all, instead of being a girl who has heard her parents say they wished she were a boy, Zhao Guan hears his mother wishing she had a daughter, and the other people who take care of him as a child keep on saying it is such a pity he is not a girl. Wuxia novels have no shortage of women who, for various reasons, dress and try to pass as male. No woman does that in this novel. Instead, it is Zhao Guan who sometimes tries to pass as female. His reason is very practical—he needs to hide from his enemies, and it is sometimes safer for him to present himself as female than male. However, he feels no shame in dressing as a woman. This reflects that he really, really does think females are equal to males—he has no reason to be ashamed of being perceived as female. Now count the number of straight men in your life who would not experience any shame or embarrassment if they had to dress up and pass as women.

And speaking of gender reversal, there’s Zhao Guan’s mother herself. She basically lives the live of a male wuxia hero without being male. She overcame childhood tragedy, mastered various martial arts skills, rescues the weak and innocent, punishes wrongdoers, became the leader of a martial arts faction, drinks alcohol, and has her own (reverse) harem. It’s a pity that she has to die so early in the novel … I’d be willing to read a novel which features her as the main character.

How the Novel Made Me Feel

Back in the later years of elementary school and in middle school, I voraciously gobbled up whatever decent-or-better fantasy novels came my way. I did it because it went beyond fun. I lived the exciting adventures of those characters.

Reading this novel brought that feeling back for me. I read this novel at a steady clip of about 145 pages per day—which may not seem like that much until you realize a) I didn’t start studying Chinese until I was in my 20s and b) I often had to put the book down to savor some bit which had captured my imagination. This novel dominated my life while I was reading it, and the story is still ringing through my mindspace.

And … CURSE YOU ZHANG FENG FOR WRITING THAT ENDING! YOU MADE ME CRY!

Availability

The only part of this novel that is available in English (or any other non-Asian language) is the excerpt I translated for this review. There is not even an unfinished fan translation.

I know the handful of wuxia novels which have been published into English or French have not been best-sellers (if any wuxia novels have been published into any non-Asian languages other than English or French, please comment—I want to keep track of all wuxia novels published in non-Asian languages). However, just as contemporary manga tends to be more commercially successful in English translation than classic manga, I suspect contemporary wuxia might be more commercially successful than classic wuxia in the English-speaking world. I think a publisher could make money bringing out this novel in English if they marketed it properly. Now, once enough people in the English speaking world are hooked on wuxia, the classic novels could come out, heh heh heh…

At the very least, it is available in both simplified and traditional characters. For those learning Chinese as a foreign language, I think this novel is a good pick because it has such an accessible style. Is it the easiest novel to read on linguistic grounds? No. But it is entertaining and fast-paced, which in my opinion is more important than whether the grammar or vocabulary are easy. And compared to many other wuxia novels, the vocabulary and grammar are not hard.

Conclusion

I think it’s pretty obvious at this point that I love this novel. It is a monumental artistic work that a literature professor would approve of? No. But much as I love high-brow culture, sometimes I want a story which will just suck me in. This story did that. If you can, you should give it a chance to suck you in too.

Sara K. used to be really into fantasy novels. Looking back, she wonders how she found time to read all those novels considering that she also had to go school, do homework, sleep, and so forth. It gives her hope that she might be able to actually find time to read many of the wuxia novels on her reading list. And she definitely plans to read Zheng Feng’s other novels.

It Came From the Sinosphere: Passionate Wastrel, Infatuated Hero (Part 1)

July 3, 2012 by Sara K. 9 Comments

There is not much information available about this novel in English, so I am giving it a more thorough treatment than usual, and making this a two-parter.

First, I think it’s better to show instead of describe the feel of the novel. So, before continuing, please read this short excerpt – click here to read it in English, click here to read it in Chinese.

Now that you’ve read that, you should have some idea what the novel is like, so you are ready to read this review.

Background Information

In China, this novel is titled Duōqíng Làngzǐ Chīqíng Xiá (多情浪子痴情侠), which roughly means Passionate Wastrel, Infatuated Hero. In Taiwan it is titled (天觀雙俠) Tiān Guān Shuāng Xiá. Even though I prefer the title Tiān Guān Shuāng Xiá, it’s difficult to translate into English, so I will stick with Passionate Wastrel, Infatuated Hero.

Wuxia has historically been dominated by male writers. To this day, if you ask somebody who is familiar with wuxia to name five writers, there is a good chance that that person will name five male writers. Fortunately, times are changing. Zheng Feng (the pen name of Chen Yu-hui) is, at least in Taiwan, the most popular contemporary wuxia novelist … and she’s not male. Passionate Wastrel, Infatuated Hero is the novel which put her on the map.

To learn more about Zheng Feng, read this interview (English translation available here).

Passionate Wastrel, Infatuated Hero is a sweeping wuxia novel set in China, Korea, and Mongolia. It includes naughty children and dying elders, Tibetan monks and Japanese pirates, princesses and prostitutes, Catholic missionaries and desert bandits, doctors and assassins, decadent cities and secluded mountains, desperate fugitives and frightened leaders. As the title implies, this tale revolves around two main characters.

The Passionate Wastrel

Zhao Guan loves drinking alcohol, and he loves having sex with pretty women even more … so he’s built up a reputation as a bad boy. Much of the plot of the novel follows this pattern: Zhao Guan meets a pretty woman, the pretty woman is in trouble, Zhao Guan gets her out of trouble, something happens between them (whether it’s sex, a kiss, or merely lustful fantasies on Zhao Guan’s part), and the plot moves on.

Even though he’s promiscuous, Zhao Guan does not come across as a creep because he cares a lot about what women think and how they feel. When he gets pretty women out of trouble, he does it because he does not like seeing people in trouble, not because he is trying to get sex—nor does he think they owe him sex if he does rescue them. Of course, if they do decide to have sex with him anyway, it certainly makes him happy. Furthermore, he really gets off making women happy. Of course, because he is such a good-looking young man, he makes many women happy (at least in the short term) by letting them into his bed. He often looks to the women in his life, whether or not he’s having sex with them, for advice when he has a problem of his own. And finally, he’s honest with all of his love interests—he tells them that he sleeps around, and that he is not going to stop.

However, while he seems carefree on the outside, he is haunted by the brutal murder of his mother. Years later he can still describe the scene in gruesome detail. He was lucky to survive himself. He wishes to find the killers and get revenge … but the killers left no clues, and he knows that even if he knew who the killers were, he is not match for them. Furthermore, he is almost certain that they are pursuing him in order to “finish the job”—in fact, he has numerous close calls. Thus, he often travels incognito and goes by false names lest he suffer his mother’s fate.

The Infatuated Hero

Ling Haotian is the son of Ling Xiao and Qin Yanlong (two of the most highly respected martial artists and doctors of the era) and is the younger brother of Ling Biyi and Ling Shuangfei (twin brothers who are the most promising and respected young martial artists of the generation). Ling Haotian feels it is impossible for him to live up to such high standards. He often withdraws himself, lest he disappoint somebody by not being as awesome as the rest of his family. He is very close emotionally to Zheng Baoan, his mother’s apprentice, and eventually gets a major crush on her. However he cannot bring himself to tell her how he feels.

Then the bombshell falls. Ling Haotian’s older brother Ling Biyi—who everybody claims is the most wonderful young man in the world—confesses his love for Zheng Baoan, and asks for her hand in marriage. Everybody says that Zheng Baoan is really lucky. For example, Zhao Guan says that if he were into men he would definitely fall in love with Ling Biyi. It is inconceivable to everybody—including Ling Haotian—that Zheng Baoan would not return Ling Biyi’s love. Ling Haotian cannot stand to see his brother and Zheng Baoan together … so he runs away from home.

This, of course, is the beginning of his adventures. He wanders Jianghu without any particular goal, other than trying to forget about Zheng Baoan and his brother (he fails, of course). During the course of his travels, he has to fight a lot, and also ends up learning a lot of martial arts. Gradually, he gets better and better. He is so preoccupied with his unrequited love that he does not notice it when his abilities surpass that of his celebrated brothers. A couple of women hand Ling Haotian their hearts, yet the only woman in his heart is Zheng Baoan.

Trouble, of course, has a way of finding him. In fact, really, really, really big trouble finds him. If you can read Chinese, I do not want to spoil it, but if you cannot read Chinese, then I might as well say that …

[BIG SPOILER WARNING]

Ling Haotian watches his brother, Ling Biyi, die in his arms, murdered. This makes it seem even more impossible to Ling Haotian that he could ever be with Zheng Baoan. He feels he cannot love her without wronging his deceased brother (in traditional Chinese culture, marrying your brother’s widow is considered a major taboo). When Ling Haotian brings his brother’s body back home, his parents treat him as a monster. It turns out that his other brother, Ling Shuangfei, had accused Ling Haotian of committing the murder out of jealousy over Zheng Baoan. Furthermore, Ling Haotian is framed for many other murders, meaning there are many, many martial artists seeking to get their revenge. Ling Haotian wants to avenge his brother’s death and clear his name—until he finds out that the man who murdered Ling Biyi is none other than his other brother, Ling Shuangfei!

Does he murder Ling Shuangfei (his own brother), or leave the death of Ling Biyi (who is also his brother) unavenged? Should he tell everybody the truth about the murder? Would anybody believe him?

Of course, with almost everybody in Jianghu trying to kill him, Ling Haotian will not live long without help. It just so happens that one of the only people who believes in Ling Haotian’s innocence is Zhao Guan … and Zhao Guan knows a thing or two about hiding from people trying to kill him.

It turns out that not only is Ling Xiao not Ling Biyi and Ling Shuangfei’s biological father, but that he killed their biological father. Ling Shuangfei murdered Ling Biyi because Ling Biyi refused to work with him to get revenge for their biological father. It turns out that Ling Shuangfei and Ling Biyi’s half-sister, trying to avenge their father’s death, is the one framing Ling Haotian for so many murders … and is also responsible for the murder of Zhao Guan’s mother!

[END SPOILER WARNING]

Yep, in Ling Haotian’s life, when it rains, it pours.

So that is a basic overview of the novel. In Part II, which will appear on Friday, I will express my opinion. Until then…

What is your impression of this novel based on this overview?

UPDATE: Part II is up!

There is no question about it now … Sara K. is now officially a wuxia fan. The more she learns about wuxia, the more novels she wants to read, and her reading list is growing faster than she can actually read them. And she still wants to read other things. Maybe she will one day grow tired of wuxia novels, but she thinks that will take a while.