My Recommended Chinese TV Drama End of the Beginning

My Chinese TV Drama Recommendation: End of the Beginning

 

I am studying Chinese language. I watch many Chinese TV dramas. These are easy to watch in Japan. I started to watch Chinese dramas in the 2000s. I am surprised because they are rapidly progressing.

Today, I want to introduce a Chinese TV drama I recommend, End of the Beginning. I don’t know the actual English title of the drama in your country. I don’t know if you can even watch the drama in your country.

Most good TV dramas in China are period plays. A lot of money is spent on making those. But End of the Beginning is a modern play. It is an exception among Chinese TV dramas. It is modern, but the story starts from 2000. It covers twenty-one years up to 2021 and an additional few years. The PHS (Personal Handy-phone System, an early mobile network system in Asia that was developed in the 1990s)  features prominently.

There are two leading roles.

One is An. He is a policeman with strong sense of justice. He is always fair to everyone. Even criminals start to trust him because he is an extremely honorable man. But he does not know how to get along in the world. He is not interested in promotion. He hardly ever gets promoted.

The other lead is Gao. He is a fish shop owner when the story starts. His educational background is not good. But he is a smart and brave man. One day, he is offered an illegal job. He can’t refuse. After that day, he needs to get involved in fighting between mafia groups. He always wins. He becomes a mafia boss. But he also loves his wife. And he is a henpecked husband.

This drama describes the struggles between policemen and the mafia focusing on these two guys with contrasting characters.

I was surprised when I watched this drama because it describes bribery. It describes corrupted policemen and politicians. These topics are very sensitive in China.

Ironically, a policeman’s enemy is another policeman. And a mafia member’s enemy is another mafia member. Policemen and the mafia have complex relationships.

I felt the scenarios were well thought out. The writers did a lot of research on policemen and the mafia. The drama introduces various tricks that the mafia use to corrupt ordinary people.

I heard that media regulation is very strict in China. I guess the scenario writers needed to rewrite the scenarios again and again to clear government regulations. In this case, I think it made the drama more profound.

I found some scenes of the story to be unnatural. I guess it is because of these regulations. These kinds of regulations are like taxes for making dramas in China. We should ignore them.

Policeman An and fish shop owner Gao are played by middle-aged actors. Makeup artists did a good job making them look younger and older to cover a period of more than twenty years. They are not typical good-looking guys. But they say attractive lines and act in attractive ways. Magically, I started to recognize that they are cool.

Thirty-nine episodes. It was released in 2023.

If you are looking for a good drama in Chinese, I recommend this one.

 

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Picture by Tetsuya Onoue

 

Hokattoite

Dialects are the most complex aspects of languages. My wife and I are from the same part of Japan, so usually, we can communicate easily. Even so, we still sometimes misunderstand each other’s words.

One day, we cleaned up our house. My wife put her CDs in a garbage bag. CDs once held so much meaning for our generation. When I was a high school student, I bought a CD of my favorite artist’s songs. For me, it was very expensive, so the CD was my treasure. But now, I have only a few CDs in my room. I download music or listen to it on demand.

I understood it was time for my wife to say goodbye to her CDs.

The next morning, I asked her, “Shall I dump the garbage bag with the CDs?” She thought for a while and answered me with the Japanese word “hokattoite.”

Hokattoite is a common dialect word in the western part of Japan. It has two meanings. One is “don’t touch,” while the other is “dump it.”

I assumed she meant the second meaning, so I dumped the bag. When I returned home, my wife asked me, “what did you do with the garbage bag?” I answered, “I dumped it.” She really told me off. She said, “I told you not to touch it.”

Luckily, the garbage truck had not yet arrived. My wife got to keep her CDs.

You know, language is very difficult.

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Picture by Pekamaro

Master of Karate

　The pandemic altered the restaurant landscape in my city. Japan didn’t experience a lockdown, but many restaurants closed down anyway. I felt sorry for them because I used to work for a restaurant when I was a student.

I still remember a restaurant that was open, but there were no customers. The clerks silently wiped the tables and chairs. Such sights were tragic.

Incidentally, The Karate Kid is one of my favorite American movies. In the movie, a boy wants to learn karate from a master. But the master doesn’t teach him fighting moves; instead, he makes the boy wax cars and paint walls. The boy assumes these are mere chores, but actually, they are fundamental training for karate.

It is possible to think that wiping tables and chairs could be fundamental training for karate. Every clerk who experienced the pandemic could be a master of karate. You should not fight against clerks. They might be strong.

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Picture by Mark