My Shallow Reason Why I Got Interested To Check Out Older Qiong Yao Drama

It's a sad fact that older Qiong Yao dramas do not have subtitles compared to the modern ones. But I'll admit that even if I was more used to seeing Liu Xuehua playing as the mother of the leading guy or leading guy, I'm still interested to see her older roles as a leading lady. My first impression to see them was watching them on Taiwan TV. Even if my knowledge of Mandarin or other languages is very limited (considering I'm more of an English speaker), I dug whatever limited knowledge I had while I could actually understand a bit, a bit and it became the time I forced myself to study Mandarin.


After my Meteor Garden hype (and thankfully, no Meteor Garden III because the second part was already one that made me tear my heart off), I still wanted a Jerry Yan and Barbie Xu type of pairing. When I started watching Vicki Zhao's version of "Romance in the Rain", that's where I would have heard that Liu Xuehua used to play the leading lady parts while Qin Han used to play the leading guy parts. As much I prefer the 2001 version over the 1986 version but I cannot deny the charm of the 1986 version. I am a fan of Vicki Zhao but I haven't been too much of a fan of Leo Ku's rather so-so acting plus I thought him as Shuhuan wasn't such a good idea but what's done is done.

I would have preferred if Jerry Yan were Shuhuan and Barbie Xu-Wang were Yiping. My reason would be is that both celebrities have the vibes of Qin Han and Liu Xuehua especially when it comes to the romantic scenes. When I saw Liu Xuehua's fierce stare, I couldn't help but say, "My, she does have Barbie's fierce stare." or when Qin Han shows his romantic scenes, I could only think of Jerry's passionate on-screen romances with his leading ladies. Whenever Liu Xuehua cries, I could only think of Barbie crying so well on-screen.

This raises the question on whether or not I would rather watch those shows for my generation of grown-ups than those that belonged to the 80s to early 90s. But as said, it's not really about the era when a show was produced or if it was a remake of an older series. The older Qiong Yao series may have had a lower budget but when a story is good, when the acting is good then I would still watch it even if I am more inclined to watch modern Taiwanese and Chinese drama.