METEOR GARDEN (2018)
流星花园
Starring: Shen Yue, Dylan Wang, Caesar Wu, Darren Chen, Connor Leong
Seen: September 2018
The first drama I ever watch turned out to be Chinese and not Korean! At the time I was living in Manchester, UK and had for the first time gotten myself a Netflix subscription. I had no idea there were so many asian shows available, and ever the curious child I had to take a peek. I didn't actually mean to watch it, I'd only opened the preview to read the description but like fate had something to do with it I accidentally pressed play.
Storyline summary:
Meteor Garden is a 2018 remake of an Taiwanese show from 2001 with the same name. It follows Dong Shancai as she begans studying at the most prestige university in China. There, she meets F4 - a group of rich boys who just so happen to be most popular and drooled over boys at the school. Dong Shancai clashes extremely with these boys, but one of these four rich kids, Daoming Si, falls head over heels for her at the same time as she falls for another of the four - Huaze Lei. Eventually a friendship between F4 and Dong Shancai blooms and a romance evolved between Daoming Si and Dong Shancai. The only issue is his not-so-dear mother who disapproves of their difference in social class and does all she can to keep them apart.
First impression:
As a girl from a very humble background myself, I have little tolarance for arrogant people who believes they're the best, brightest and most beautiful person to ever walk the earth. Daoming Si is exactly that and I wanted to kick him on the shin for his macho masculinity play around. Dong Shancai both entertained me and annoyed me greatly. I liked her because she stood up for herself (at least in the beginning) and didn't fall for Daoming Si's playboy acting. She treated him like the jerk he acted like. She even karate kicks Daoming Si in the face. Badass. 10 points. But at the same time, as the show went on a little and she started falling for Daoming Si too, I felt like she started letting him push her around, drag her, trap her et cetera however he pleased. I'm a very independant person with a lot of attitude and just thinking of a struck up pineapple head like him trying to dominate me like that awakes the little devil in me and I wanted to put him in his place. Yes, I told him off to the screen - multiple times. I'm a typical "talks to the characters on the screen" kind of person. The show progressed quite quickly though, with 49 episodes á 45 minutes ish and you can catch on to the feelings of interest already in episode two-three. That kept me interested - how were they going to play this out?
And this had me confused. She is a shy girl who doesn't really stands up for herself verbally and lets a brat do what he pleases with her, but she'll kick him in the face? Hm. Also, unless a show is immediately really bad, you need to always watch at least two episodes to get the hand of what it's about, and even though at first impression the main characters got on my nerves, their reletionship quickly evolved into something quite interesting. Somehow they ended up being really cute, and really open with each other. I think that's what got me to continue watching. I can't deny that as I continued watching I really liked Daoming Si. He always tried to encourage Shangcai, help her when and how he could even if in his solution a lot of times it involved money. Yes, he's a snobby, spoild brat but he has a big heart - just like his sister tells Shangcai. And speaking of the sister, DANG GURL SLAY I love her!! She carried so much in this drama, and yet she is the perfect side character completely right square in the middle. She looks out for Shangcai, teaches her how to cook for the competition and is definitely a big reason why Shangcai finally gives in to her feelings for Daoming Si. I love how she says that her brother likes her so she has to acknowledge her too<3<3<3
I smiled all throught out the scene where Si tries to keep her from leaving his house and giving up on the competition, so he plays cards with her all night. Then he runs backstage to motivate Shangcai for her final dish and she creates a whole new dish thanks to his hairstyle. I'm always attracted to the misunderstood people, in real life or in TV and at first glance I wanted to push him in a mud puddle, but I waited for that little spark. He showed a whole firework. He is a very supporting boyfriend and though their differences, they are a perfect fit. Maybe even beacuse of their differences - they balance each other out. I love their constant bickering, and you can see so clearly how the smile behind it gets bigger and bigger the further into the serie you get. Ahhhhhhhhh love. Nothing more, and especially nothing less.
Cultural imput:
With this being my first drama, Korean or not, I had my first encounter with the huge difference between something so common in TV all over the world as kissing. How can a kissing scene be so different just from where it's made - culturally speaking? I obviously had a lot to learn, and I still am after years of switching my majority of series from American to Korean. I don't know how many times I sat grumbling/screaming at the screen for him/her to just kiss her/him! How can a kiss take so long when there's a clear attraction and they've already made a big thing of pushing ups against the wall/running to one another when something's happened yadi yadi yadi? A lot time. So long. Too long for my western brain where kissing is not considered a that big a deal and is also considered more a must than a big wow scene.
Let's analyze this kiss right here. First of all, I consider this lips touching rather than a kiss. I'm still getting used to it with all the dramas I watch. Whenever there's a "real kiss" (as I call it) happening, I never fail to either applause or sarcastically complement the characters in question for knowing how to kiss. Let me specify - a kiss is lips actively pressing together (call it puckering if you want) while a common drama kiss is no movement, just the lips being in contact. Awkward... and then the camera moving around them to capture all angles of the sweet moment, making the actors stay in the same position for minutes without moving (if they're not supposed to make out, which I find rare in a non R-rated drama - and that just makes it more similar to general American screening so I don't find that a big deal either). *Shudders in secondhand embaressment*. This got very detailed, but it also shows a lot about the difference in the general Western and general Asian culture. In an American show there's no shying from physical contact, it's not made a big "ooooooohhhhh" is the characters kiss or disappear under the covers (it's more or less expected).
In this show, I also got my first taste of social difference and what value it still has in the majority of Asian cultures. Daoming Si is a rich, high class boy and Dong Shancai is anything but. Her family struggles to make ends meet, she works on the side of studying to help out with money and is low on the social ladder. Just because of this fact, Doaming Si's mother doesn't want him associated with her. And that little thing righ there too, "his mother doesn't want" is also something that quickly caught my attention. It mattered. It held great value what she thought and with or without a buring love for Dong Shancai and an attitude of "I want, I take", Doaming Si had to adapt to her opinion. I found this extremely interesting and I think I deep down knew already back then that this was something I'd get stuck on. I love people and how we are different depending on our cultural mind sets, what it makes us, what it gives us and what we can learn from it. This grave difference in culture had me under a spell instintly. I wanted to know more, I wanted to learn more. I still find it so fascinating how opposite so many things are, and how well it is portrayed in TV - something I'd never thought of before experiencing it myself. They say you shouldn't believe everything you see on TV, but in this case you can really get a feeling of the Korean (but not in this specific case since it happened to be Chinese) ways, the people and set yourself into the realization that we're all the same but yet so different.
One of the scenes that had me baffled was when Dong Shancai came to London (a city I love with all my heart). While in a park, she leaves her bag on the bench to approch a street musician. While she does that, the musican's friend robbed her of her phone and wallet. I was wondering is she was honestly insane.
This is something you learn from a young age in most countries (especially London, for anyone unknowing London is a wonderful city full of pickpockets) never to do - leave sight or touch with your belongings. I recalled a story a friend of my family told us when she'd been to Japan and accidentally forgotten an expensive camera on a park bench and ran back to find it still there. Someone had told her then that of course it'd still be there, it wasn't anyone elses but hers. WOW! "It's not yours, leave it be". *appause of approval* Now I have never fallen victim of a pickpocket in London or anywhere else, but seeing this scene of the musicians taking advantage of Dong Shancai's mindset of "no one will touch it" really sets into perspective how ruthless thieves can be. On a class trip to Rome, my friend was robbed of her phone which had been in her sealed pocket. She got it back, miraculously, but that was quite literally a miracle. So, when I'd gotten past the initional irritation of "what the heck are you doing?!?!" I felt sorry for Shancai. She had never been outside of her home place, how could she have known being there all on her own? Tsk tsk. Funny though how her robbers turned out to be her friend's roommates.
I have to admit. After starting this review, I decided to rewatch it. It's so much better second time around and I did not expect to feel that~
Thank you, accientally play click. You started a journey of cultural knowledge. Thanks to you, I'm in love.
Unless it's been removed since I first saw it, Meteor Gardens should be available on Netflix for anyone interested in watching it!
Until next review~
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