UNPREDICTABLE

As predictable as the Chinese (and Korean) TV series are with characters and plot...goofy sidekicks, scheming or wise parents, the secrets of heritage and revenge, historical context...I completely mispredicted the outcome of Land of Wealth.

In fact there does come an heir, the long-awaited son, legitimately through the patriarch's daughter, not the Mongolian servant, but practically everyone dies and the rest move on to a new era of the Republic and innovations in banking, with western suits, spectacles and automobiles. Traditions are carried on, but not necessarily by the people you expect to move them forward. And true love remains, if not exactly unrequited, unfulfilled in the end.

This wasn't my favorite of the TVB productions I've seen over the past couple years, but not bad, and I liked it better when it was finished. I learned some period history through reference and research, (always Googling with the iPad or poking around my own library), but Cantonese is still more or less opaque to my ear (but less so than Korean).

During and after Land of Wealth, I indulged in several Netflix-provided film features (The Heroic Trio, Chinese Ghost Story 2 and The Eagle Shooting Heroes), only one of which I will ever watch again or add to my collection.

And that's The Eagle Shooting Heroes, a completely hilarious wuxia parody shot at the same time as Ashes of Time with the same incredible cast. Ashes of Time was the film that opened up the world of wuxia and martial arts film for me. (Not Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.) I had been at Blockbuster a few years ago looking for the film in a quest to see the entire ouvre of the amazing Tony Leung Chiu Wai, (here, in AOT.)

"That's in the martial arts section," the clerk said directing me to a whole 'nother genre of "foreign."

Since then I have devoured this world, particularly the wuxia films and TV series (including Korean sa geuk), another world opened to me by a nice vendor in Chinatown and a friend who lent me the first 18 episodes of Jumong to download to my iPad which I enjoyed while traveling in China. (But I must say, that was like a free sample of a highly addictive drug.)

Which brings me to The Eagle Shooting Heroes, loosely based on Louis Cha's wuxia story, which was also the non-parody plot of Legend of the Condor Heros.

TESH is a parody of wuxia, in the way Airplane* was a parody of disaster (and pretty much all other) movies. And ironically, made concurrently with the extremely serious, fine Ashes of Time, with the same actors in an SNL-style joke. But you have to have some deeper knowledge of the genre, and even the story, to fully appreciate it. And not being remotely fluent in Cantonese, I'm sure there are lots of things I'm missing. But what a hilarious ride. Who knew Tiny Tony could be so funny and silly, and that Tall Tony could play drag as well as Patrick Swayze in To Wong Foo (etc.).

Why do I watch so much Asian cinema and TV? Because it's unpredictable.

And next up...Sweetness in the Salt, another HK TVB series about salt-smuggling, also with Steven-not-Steve Ma, here, from Land of Wealth. I just started; don't know what to expect, except that I'll learn something about the economics of salt in the Qing dynasty.

*A little nod of gratitude to the marvelous Leslie Nielsen who died this past November.