My recent craze is spending an absurd amount of time watching Chinese dramas -- specifically Taiwanese dramas since they are particularly good at producing teenybopper fairytale romances. In lieu of having an actual life of my own, I immerse myself into another world filled with girly fantasies and the oh-so-perfect man. I must say it makes going into work in the morning a total drag.
I've had my fair share of Chinese drama exposure growing up. The love probably sprouted from late night sessions with my family watching 80's TVB period/wuxia series (worthy of its own blog post in the future). So this recent surge was caused by stumbling upon a drama post that named a drama that broke Meteor Garden's record of highest viewership in Taiwan. I was a definite fan of Meteor Garden so I felt that this new series was a must-watch. I went off to eBay, bought a horribly English-subbed version, and literally spent a whole weekend watching episodes back to back. In English, it's called
The Prince Who Turns into a Frog. I'm happy to say I was not disappointed. The lead couple was so charming, in fact, I went searching for their most recent drama together,
Ying Ye 3 + 1.
Joe Chen Qiao En + Matthew Lin/Ming Dao: Qiao En is part of the girl group
7 Flowers while Ming Dao is part of the boy group
183 Club...both under the same label. They are both talented actors and have really nice chemistry together, but I have to admit I'm mostly a big fan because Ming Dao is quite dreamy :)
The Prince Who Turns into a FrogGirl runs over rich boy. Boy loses his memory and falls in love with girl. Boy regains memory then...uh oh. This story gives hope to all materialistic girls who dream of nabbing a ridiculously rich man that sees past her materialism, but it doesn't really matter because he is still ridiculously rich.
Ying Ye 3 + 1A group of kids who grew up together, fight together, and fall in love. There are two distinct stories. Part 1: The girl's father is a policeman who loses his gun. The four friends work together (using their kung-fu skills) to solve the mystery, fight off bullies, and uncover their feelings for one another. Part 2: A mysterious guy shows up from their past to cause more drama and tear the couple apart. Note: If you've ever thought of having a TV show where lovers fling themselves off of an eight story structure to prove their love, you're apparently too late.
If you don't want to actually buy the DVDs, you can watch both of these series for free with ok quality and English subs at
mysoju.com and/or
crunchyroll.com -- so glad I found these sites.
