Books By C. LItka

Books By C. LItka

Friday, April 10, 2020

Remarks and Observations Directed at the Clouds – Asian TV (Part 1)

Image credit:https://ninja-reflection.com/2018/09/24/rise-phoenixes-novel-ending/


After trashing the TV sf show, Vagrant Queen, in the last post, I’m going to tell the clouds about something positive this time around. I’m going to talk about how much I enjoy Asian TV shows, mainly Chinese and Korean TV shows – and why.

But first, a little background on how I came to discover them. I can draw a direct line back sixty years to grade school, and to the fact that I can not memorize by rote. I could not, and still can not, spell words, because spelling, in English, anyway, makes no sense. Rules have been broken at will, (though you dare not try it yourself) and a word’s spelling is not necessarily connected to its modern, or its regional pronunciation. Correct spelling can only be achieved by rote memorization. See Dr Gerard Nolste Trenite’s poem “The Chaos” here: https://the-digital-reader.com/2020/03/03/if-you-can-correctly-pronounce-every-word-in-this-poem-actually-most-people-can/

But enough of that, I’m trying to remain positive in this post. However, I must also mention that to pass a language class in high school, rote memorization was also necessary, at least back in my day. I failed freshman year Spanish in high school, and so I had to take five semesters of a foreign language in college. Given that I could not spell English, it seemed unlikely that I would be able to correctly spell French or German words correctly, (Spanish was a non-starter after my high school experience.) even if I had managed to memorize enough of the grammar to have a chance of passing any test. Faced with this reality, I signed up for Chinese.

Spelling was not a problem in Chinese. True, I had to rote memorize characters, but they, at least, appealed to my artistic side, and how they were constructed was interesting as well. (And since our professors were Taiwanese, we were learning the original characters, not the simplified ones from Mao’s mainland China.) However, I found, as I went along, that Chinese grammar is nice and simple. There are no tenses in Chinese. You simply say when the action occurred without changing the word, i.e. “I yesterday go, I today go, I tomorrow go.” Plus, there is no male or female words, or different social caste conventions, and other such nonsense. The spoken language did depend on how one said the word – it could have four different meanings depending on how it was pronounced – so one has to train one’s ears to catch the subtle differences in the four tones. Still, all in all, it had, for me, a lot of advantages over most other languages. Not, mind you that I was any good at it, for I wasn’t. But, it had one other advantage in 1968 – China was still under Mao and was not playing the large role in the world as it now plays – so that the East Asian department at the University of Wisconsin, wanted students, and was reluctant to flunk them out. Where the French or German departments would’ve had me out on my ear, I managed to get my five semesters in, more or less on the basis that at least I was trying… So I was able to earn a BA in international relations, in which I took all the course I could on China and East Asia, because I knew then, as I know today, that China would be the central power of the 21st century. I did not pursue a career in the foreign service – I didn’t have the right connections, wasn’t motivated enough, and well, it was 1972 and I was not in agreement on how America conducted its foreign policy – and probably will never be.

So, fast forward 40 some years and I discovered some Mandarin language TV shows on Netflix, and decided to give one a try –if only to hear the spoken language to pick out the six words I remembered from two and a half years of college Chinese. And I discovered that I liked the way the Chinese told their stories on TV for a number of reasons.

One of the major reasons is, to put it in a nutshell; they take their time telling stories. One of the first shows I watched was set in Shanghai in the late 1930’s and early 1940’s when the Japanese occupied the city. It was a story of Chinese collaboration and resistance to the Japanese occupation, and was based on a novel. The TV show from this novel probably had a running time of around 35 hours. I liked that they took the time to establish characters and motivations, and allow those characters and their motivations play out over time. The Chinese shows generally have about 40+ episodes of 45 minutes to an hour each. I could watch one a day for a month and a half, allowing it to play out like a soap opera. I doubt that this pace is for everyone, but it is for me – in most cases. I have found that some shows do seem to drag things out and run too long to fill in their time slot, especially the romantic comedies, but still, I’d rather them err on the side of longer than shorter. The Korean shows, on the other hand, run 16 episodes of an hour or more, which is a little more manageable.

The second major reason I enjoy Asian shows is that they portray a different society. Stories set in an exotic world was, and is one, of the major draws of science fiction for me. Stories set in China, and Korea, be it ancient or modern, are set in an exotic world. Neither country scrimps on sets or costumes when they shot a historical show, and their modern settings are both familiar and different at the same time. Chinese cities look like 21st century cities – cities of the future – because they are. And the Korean shows show a lot of different cityscapes, from ultra modern to picturesque neighborhoods with houses seeming piled one on top of the other.

But of course, the differences don’t stop with architecture. I find it fascinating to observe all the little cultural differences as well, from the food they eat, and how they eat it, how they dress and the various social customs these shows display.

For example, one thing all the Chinese shows seem to have in common, is that when one of the characters gets hurt, say a skinned knee, another character will show how much they care for them, by treating their injury, be it only dressing it and putting on the bandage. You can count on someone getting injured and treated by their romantic opposite in every Chinese show. Another way of showing kindness and affection, is giving a person a piece of food. The Chinese each have a bowl of rice, with all the main course of the meal set in the middle of the table. Everyone uses their chopstick to pick out pieces of these dishes to eat, or to place in the rice bowl of the person they wish to show their regard or affection for. It is also, apparently, not considered impolite to speak with your mouth full, and both the Chinese and Korean shows often have characters talking as they eat. And eating very eagerly apparently shows one’s appreciation for the food and hospitality. In short, there are plenty of these little cultural differences to make the shows just that much more interesting. Another surprising thing is how often an English word or phrase is used on conversation, often to emphasis a point – illustrating how common English language in school must be. Americans, at any rate, rarely, if at all, insert a foreign word into their conversations, unless it is that German word one uses when someone sneezes. Which I can’t spell.

Another thing I like about Asian shows is that they take their time to develop their romances. Romance is almost always a very slow burn. Kissing is very rare in Chinese shows. When people are jumping into bed in western shows, the Chinese may be experiencing their first kiss, if that. I’m a fan of the chase in romances, and the chase in these Asian shows is a long, sometimes rocky, sometimes sweet one.

Oh, well, I guess I’ve gone on long enough, talking to the clouds. So to sum up this installment; I like Asian TV shows because they take their time to develop characters and tell a story, I like that they are set in exotic lands, and that, after several hundred hours of watching Chinese shows, I sometimes don’t need the subtitles…

In my next episode of this series, I will tell the clouds about the shows that I've watched, really liked or loved and can recommend.

Image credit: https://www.thailandtatler.com/style/chopard-steals-the-show-in-crash-landing-on-you 






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