Wednesday, 17 March 2010

Taiwanese Dramas

As part of my ongoing Mandarin learning, I thought I would try to watch some Taiwanese drama. Get immersed in it, hear it spoken around me. I could never understand, though, why my ex would follow it like some form of addiction. Having experienced Asian drama on the periphery, I should have known.

The one I got recommended was "Fated To Love You". (Fact: This series broke all TV watching records, garnering 10% of the Taiwanese population for one of its episodes). I was hooked. I watched multiple episodes in one sitting. I had originally planned to watch each episode twice to catch the words, but that went out the window after Episode 2.

Things that I have learned from watching Taiwanese dramas:
1. What RC said in the comments from that Korean movie post: "Persistence...is a necessary part of the dating process, to push yourself past what would normally be 'comfortable' by Western dating standards." This definitely holds true.

2. There is excessive "drama for the sake of drama" in this series. Some of the scenes, though, were indeed quite touching and I would admit that I welled up a bit during the first mom-daughter chat when she was leaving the household to live with her new family.

3. When you are a director of a vast family business, you don't have many day-to-day responsibilities, and can enjoy the luxury of time to do daily ceramic classes to woo back your girl.

4. The "instant replay" mode of dramatic scenes is heavily utilised for added effect. I think I heard one phrase repeated 7 times, from seven different angles.

5. No one has the ability to say what they really want to say or feel. The true feelings are always found out in some excruciatingly roundabout way, possibly via some recording (video/voice/letter).

6. Even the "not hot underdog girl" is quite hot.

I had a great time watching this series. As they say with many things, the first time is the most memorable. I still have the theme song in my head playing on repeat.

Judging from these shows, I think my approach to women has to definitely change if I'm going to Asia!

4 comments:

diana said...

I love Fated to love you as well. You should watch Corner with Love, thats a really really good taiwanese series as well :)
Hope things are going well for you in NY. Heard you were going to singapore soon? Is that right?

Kev said...

haha, will try that one as well!
Still up in the air, it's a possibility but need more confirmation before it's locked in. Would like to be in Asia sometime this year.

Kev said...

And congrats on the wedding, by the way!

Beckster said...

Hate to say it, but told you so :) TV is the reason I can now fluently chat with my Mainland nail-salon ladies.

Second Di's comment, loved Corner with Love too. The main girl is really cute. Warning though that it's equally and excessively melodramatic. But oh-so-addictive. Enjoy.