One of the Best K-Drama Songs...

Unlike low-quality American dramas, Asian drama series put a lot of money and resources into their production, including the official sound track (OST).

This song is from the Korean drama, "Kingdom of the Wind."

The singer is the great Wheesung.

Zhang Yimou Did It Again!

 Chinese actor Shawn Dou who co-stars in Under the Hawthorn Tree

Cute boy meets pretty girl.  They fall in love.  Cute boy dies of a deadly disease.  Everyone is sad.  That's the plot of the Chinese film Under the Hawthorn Tree (2010).  Except in the hands of legendary film maestro Zhang Yimou, the prosaic, soap-operatic plot is turned into an artistic, evocative and beautiful love story.

Set in the politically turbulent years of the Cultural Revolution, the story, adapted from an Internet novel by Ai Mi, is poetically unraveled layer by layer.  Zhang's uses of simple natural settings and symbolism tug at the viewer's heart.  The director's employment of the narrator's written remarks gives the film a patina of a biopic.  Perhaps it is since there are Internet rumors suggesting that the story is based on the reclusive author's personal experiences during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.  And to add to the sense of realism, San Ge's (Third Brother) ashes are buried under the hawthorn tree in the Yangzi River Valley, where, in 2006, the world's largest hydropower dam was built.  At the end of the film, we are told that the tree and every thing around it were submerged in water because of the Three Gorges Dam.  A not-so-opaque jab at Communist China's ambitious but controversial project.

Four Stars and a box of Kleenex tissues.

Silence -- A Drama Worth (re)Watching

As a recent reconvert to Asian dramas and movies, I am always looking out for new, and in the case of this review, older titles.

Silence (aired in Taiwan in 2006) is a Taiwanese drama starring the island’s most popular male entertainer, Vic Chou (of the pop band F4 fame), and Korean singer/actress Park Eun-hye (of a recent sex scandal infamy). While I am always leery about singers becoming actors and vice versa, Chou (playing the role of Qi Weiyi) and Park (playing the role of Zhao Shenshen) perform their starring roles movingly and almost flawlessly. Since she does not speak Chinese, Park plays a mute girl who falls in love with Chou's character when the pair, then 12, spent a week together in a hospital ward.

Thirteen years later in 2006, the two young adults become intertwined in a series of interesting coincidences. Not knowing each other’s identity, Shenshen and Weiyi develop a budding romance that becomes even more intense as they painstakingly find out their true identities.

For me, the power of Silence is this unique plotline: Two lonely adolescents meet for one week and become instantly and passionately bonded. One is mute, and they communicate via written notes and hand gestures. Indeed, silence is golden, and in this case, passionately romantic. And even after a separation of 13 years (which is more than a lifetime in an adolescent’s life), both Shenshen and Weiyi would not and cannot love anyone else. There’s something mystically innocent and pure about an adolescent love that is carried into adulthood. How many moving obituaries have we read about so-and-so who returned to marry his high school sweetheart and lived happily for 60 years? In the case of Shenshen and Weiyi, they do not have 60 years as the drama ends with Weiyi’s most “beautiful” death.

The rest of the story is the generic stuff of soap opera. After all, the producers have to come up with 19 hours’ worth of content. What makes the generic branches and twigs of Silence interesting and worth watching is the charisma of Chou and Park.

Certainly, there are parts in the drama where Chou’s acting is a bit weak. He sometimes comes across as stiff and lethargic. But Chou is a talent not to be underestimated. His “singing” scene (singing Cai Qin's forlorn 恰似你的温柔 ["Just like your tenderness"]) as Shenshen is about to (yet) leave him (again) is gut-wrenchingly moving and effective. Let me admit it: I cried.

Some reviewers have said that the ending is particularly sad. Quite to the contrary. Silence’s last episode is one of hope – perhaps too hopeful and idyllic. Qi Weiyi’s mother finds hope in Ah Han and adopts him. Even his hate-filled half-sister experiences a change of heart. And Shenshen accepts Weiyi’s pending death as he dies in her embrace. The stylistic death scene here is particularly evocative and artistically beautiful.

The weakness in the concluding episode lies in the immediacy of Shenshen’s acceptance of Weiyi’s pending death. Throughout the last four or five episodes, everyone, except for Shenshen, knows of Weiyi’s terminal illness. And each goes through a grieving process. Yet, Shenshen discovers Weiyi’s death sentence only a few hours before he succumbs to it. And are we, then, to believe that she instantly accepts the loss of this great love without immense anguish? Perhaps an alternative 19th episode is needed for Shenshen to undergo a grieving process before the “beautiful” death scene in an additional 20th episode.

Silence is a rare gem among Taiwanese dramatic series. I watched this entire drama (19 hours) over the course of two and a half days. If Silence is a precursor of more great Taiwanese dramas to come, then we’re in for a treat!