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