About 18 months ago I was introduced to a colourful, corny and highly addictive form of popular entertainment: the Taiwanese television drama. V had seen a few episodes of one of these romantic soaps on a school trip to China, and upon her return she insisted we buy a copy. It was called Tianguo De Jiayi, or Heaven’s Wedding Gown.
At first I hated it. The opening theme song was irritatingly girlie, as was the heroine. The supposed hero was rude and arrogant.The English subtitles were hilariousy unidiomatic. ‘What a sublimated couple!’ gushed the heroine upon catching sight of a fashion desiger and his model girlfriend. It took about four episodes before the story took hold, and its world began to invade my waking hours like the Bronte sibings’ Glasstown.
Tianguo is a take on the Cinderella story with some sideswipes at Heidi. In it Tao Ai Qing, a poor but honest farm girl who lives alone with her hardworking grandfather, receives some money for her 18th birthday. With Taipei apparently not being adequate as the city of love, she sets off for Paris.
Cyndi Wang and Leon Jay Williams in Tianguo De Jiayi
There Ai Qing heads at once to Notre Dame Cathedral and prays to meet Mr Right. She soon gets more than she bargained for: she becomes trapped in a love triangle between a dashing fashion designer (whom she at first hates) and a boyish but eccentric motocycle racer (whom she is drawn to). The fashion designer, Lu Zihao, is of course the only son and heir to a vast transnational corporation. Through a series of coincidences essential to romantic melodrama (and which are not after all unheard of in real life), Lu winds up buying the family farm out from under the Taos. Soon, however, he sees the sense of hiring Ai Qing and her Ye Ye back to keep the farm running and do chores around his new design studio, D-zire [sic]. Meanwhile, a pair of ganster brothers prey upon the protagonists’ interconnected social circles. Irrestible.
Ming Dao stars as Chen Hainuo in Tianguo De Jiayi
