/ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT/CHINA: Despite Ban, Youngsters Rave over Taiwanese TV Series

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Antoaneta Bezlova

BEIJING, May 14 2002 (IPS) - Shivering from the damp and chilly air in the Beijing underway crossing, Xiao Mei shyly promotes her stock of pirated books displayed on a piece of cloth in front of her.

“Buy a copy of ‘Meteor Garden’ the script of Taiwanese TV series that were banned the other month. I have also the sequel – ‘Meteor Rain’ both books just for 35 yuan (4.2 U.S. dollars),” she says.

Passers-by coming in from the rain outside promptly pay and walk away with their books, wary of being spotted by the occasional policeman.

Not only the books are illegally printed — their content has been deemed offensive enough by Chinese censors to ban the show from being aired on Chinese television.

The topsy-turvy love stories of Taiwanese youngsters in an elite high-school, where the girls flash Gucci bags while the boys drive gleaming BMWs, have provoked a storm of angry letters from parents throughout mainland China.

That forced the communist censors to step in and ban the programme.

‘Meteor Garden’, introduced by Harbin Television Station, is prohibited from broadcast because of “its tendency to mislead teenagers”, read the order issued by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television and quoted by the ‘Beijing Youth Daily’ in mid-March.

Nevertheless, just weeks after the ban, the script of the television series has been printed into a paperback in China’s depressed North and has quickly become a hot property in the capital.

Not as hot though as the pirated VCDs that are being sold secretly under the counter or on the street corners in Beijing — a glaring proof of how defiant of state propaganda popular tastes here have become.

Even the state-sanctioned media has joined in the spontaneous gesture of defiance. Despite the ban, ‘The Southern Weekend’ weekly — one of China’s most daring newspapers — commissioned a poll of public opinion on the television series and bravely published the results.

Some 78 percent of those surveyed in China’s three biggest cities — Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, disagreed with the assertion that the television series promoted “decadently luxurious life” and advocated “money worship”.

More than 40 percent thought the ban was “unnecessary” and another 30 percent of the interviewed said the ban on the show has made them even “more willing” to watch it.

“We’ve sold more than 50 sets of the series just in a week after the ban,” says Li Xia, a 23-year old salesperson in a small VCD shop downtown. “I myself have watched it three times.”

Throngs of young and longing for romantic love girls have done exactly the same thing.

The four slick boys from the television series, the F 4 (short for ‘Flower Four’, alluding to their pretty-boy looks) have shot to instant fame among the mainland youth. Indeed, a genre has been born.

While ‘Meteor Garden’ is not the first popular drama of the genre described by Chinese critics as an “idol opera” to be shown in the country, it is by far the one that has caused most controversy.

When it opened in China in March, ‘Meteor Garden’ had already become a hit throughout Southeast Asia, transforming its four male actors from total unknowns to super idols.

Their debut album, called ‘Meteor Rain’ released in August last year, has already gone platinum, selling more than 200,000 copies in Taiwan alone.

But while the mere name of ‘Flower Four’ can drive teenage girls ecstatic, their parents find ‘Meteor Garden’ characters too rich, too spoiled and void of spiritual values to be regarded as real “idols”.

The opulence of life of Taiwanese high class depicted in the series has only added salt to the injury.

“I found the series horrific like some electronic Halloween,” complains one mother whose 16-year-old daughter has been losing sleep over the show.

“After watching them, my daughter said it was more than normal for a girl to have one partner and one lover at the same time. Isn’t that incredible?” she asks.

“Meteor Garden’ is a beautiful garden filled with temptations that are hard to resist. It’s just too nice to be true. Longing for nice things is the nature of human beings. But we cannot live in a world of fantasy,” explains a visitor to www.sina.com, one of China’s most popular web sites.

The story itself makes little effort to be something more that just a modern version of Cinderella. A poor but lovely girl wins over her prince, who first strikes her as being impudent and spoiled but is later revealed to be warm-hearted and intense.

Adapted from ‘manga’ or Japanese comics, ‘Hana Yori Dango’ (meaning ‘Boys Prettier Than Flowers’) and made in Taiwan, ‘Meteor Garden’ is also disliked by some educators for the “cultural imperialism” it brings to China.

“It is enough that our children watch Japanese cartoons all day long, but now even the teenagers are mad about Japanese pop culture,” says a teacher of Chinese language at the Beijing Economics and Trade University, who gave her name as Liu.

Some 45 percent of the young viewers surveyed by ‘Southern Weekend’ said their parents prevented them from watching the series, fearing that the excessive lifestyle of Taiwanese youth might build up unrealistic expectations with youngsters in mainland China.

“Life without longing is tedious,” Ming Leifu, a researcher from the Beijing Education Institute, told the English-language ‘China Daily’ newspaper. “But it’s impractical to live all the time in dreams which cannot come true.”