Search - Moment In Peking on DVD

Soap Opera collides with Great Literature--many casualties r

F. J. Powell | Chester, SC United States | 03/16/2008

(3 out of 5 stars)

"This miniseries is OK. But I have some pretty strong feelings about it after having begun to watch the episodes. The things I like about this series: 1) it's a great way to practice listening to Chinese; they speak slowly and distinctly, and the vocab is easy to understand for beginners/intermediate learners. 2) it's highly dramatic 3) the twists and turns do keep you wondering what will happen next.

The things I disliked about this series 1) the writers turned Lin Yu Tang's masterpiece (Moment in Peking a Novel of Contemporary Chinese Life) into confetti, scooped out the subtle and nuanced characters and events, and left finger puppets in their place; they completely ignored the first quarter of the book about the childhood adventures of the main characters and how their lives were woven together from across the length and breadth of China. 2) they've dropped main characters, conflated characters, even transposed events 20/30 years forward or backward, it's very much a soap opera, not a loving, detailed look at imperial/pre WWII Chinese family life, history and culture. 3) the costuming for the main characters is sort of distracting and not correct-- Mulan, Mochow and Mannia wear revealing Shanghai cheongsam through the streets of 1910 Beijing that would have made hookers blush. 4) It obvious that the writers/producers had no concept of what China was like before the Cultural Revolution. They should've read Lin Yutang's book for some ideas...

Still, the sheer amount of running time of this series is great (something like 44 hour long episodes)! Pull out your fan and set out tea cups, the pistachios and candied haws...you could have a Summer long Chinese (soap) opera marathon without traipsing to a teahouse, nor yet ever leaving your home!"