It's nice to enjoy the incarnations of Journey to the West in both TV and film. I was thinking of a couple of times that Hong Kong and Taiwanese films and series end up hiring foreign actors to play in their scripts. I could remember having Korean actors and half-Chinese, half-something actors play the parts. One particular character comes to mind namely Mother Avalokitesvara (Sanskrit name) or Gayatri (Hindi name) in the Journey to the West. In Chinese, she is known as Guan Shi Yin Pusa or Guan Yin Pusa for short.
I could talk of some actresses I wish played the said character.
The Singaporean actress Michelle Zheng Saram is half-Indian and half-Chinese. I remembered her appearance in Meteor Garden as a runaway princess from Bhutan known as Yesha. Speaking of which some legends say that Guan Yin Ma was actually an Indian princess who became a Boddhisatva. If she could play as a runaway princess in Meteor Garden then I don't see any problem with her playing as a runaway Indian princess who went her own way to enlightenment. It's said that the Boddhisatva abandoned the Indian royalty and forsook her father's call to marriage to pursue the convent. I don't see any reason why she can't play as the said character.
Another actress who could play Avalokitesvara in any Hong Kong film based on Journey to the West is Malika Sherawat. She appeared with Jackie Chan in The Myth. That alone made me wish she played Guan Yin Ma instead of Kelly Chen in the Monkey King movie starring Donnie Yen. She could have her voice dubbed if she can't speak in Cantonese or Mandarin.
For the movie The Lost Empire - I felt Bai Ling wasn't the best person to portray the goddess. I thin Rai Aishwarya would've made a better, more authentic portrayal of the goddess. Bai Ling in a saree doesn't look as good as Rai herself. Though the romance sub-plot of the scholar dating Guan Yin Ma feels rather odd and out of place if you ask me!
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