Reasons why I started to watch Chinese TV series again
I was 11 years old when I first saw novel-based TV series “Romance of three kingdoms.” Fully adopted from its original novel, the series were contained in a vast number of VHS video tapes. Because studying Chinese in Korea wasn’t as common as what is now today, those video tapes were my first and only tool for studying Mandarin at the time. It was fun at first, but watching 30+ video tapes full of political debates and ancient poetry weren’t as much as fun as watching “Pokemon.” Soon I switch studying Japanese instead of Chinese. It was also year 2000, just when Korea (sort of) lifted its “Law for Punishing Anti-National Deeds”; the law that restricted the broadcast and distribution of animations, films, TV series and video games from Japan. Slowly my interest towards China faded away, and in 2006 I fully stopped watching Chinese mainland & Taiwanese TV series — until today.
10 years have passed and I began to watch Chinese TV series again. Five reasons:
1. Enhanced editing and staging quality.
2. Increased number of good directors and executive producers. (Once you get to know some of their names and portfolios, you pretty much can find a number of TV series that match with your interest level.)
3. Increased number of good looking actors. (Oh yeah)
4. Amazing background research based on recordings of ancient Chinese clothing, decorations, constructions and codes of manners.
5. With little bit of bypass applications, you can watch basically every Chinese TV series on web — for free.
Bad CGs and some poorly staged fantasy-based martial arts dramas are still up in the air, but I’m pretty sure Chinese film makers will get through this in the near future. Besides, China is a country with enormous ancient records and facing its rapid growth of internet novel market — full of stories that are still waiting to be shown on screen.
