Sean Akizuki's East Asian Drama and Movie Blog

Cast members visit the real-life wife of the late painter (Provided by Epoch Times) Well, I guess I'll always be a sucker for historical series, right? La Grande Chaumiere Violette is one series that made me regret (at least in part) why I didn't pursue a history course and instead graduated from commerce. I watched the series that took place in 2016 when it's 2020. Call it backtracking since the beauty of watching older series is you can watch at your own pace in contrast to watching the weekly series. Though doing series weekly helps at least to keep quality in check especially with artistic licenses to insert imaginary events to real-life stories. What was amazing was that those who played the older cast (plus Eli Shih who played as Jiang Yi An and Jiang Xing Xiong) actually visited the late Madam Lin A-Qin in her home. Just in case you don't know - A Qin is the wife of the late Guo Xue Hu who died at 103 years old. A Qin died this year at 105 years old and she's...

  Most Taiwanese TV shows I've watched are spoken in Mandarin with sprinkles of Hokkien whenever applicable. In this case, La Grande Chaumiere Violette which means The Big Purple Cottage is spoken mostly in Hokkein. Nihonggo and Mandarin are spoken as well due to characters from China and Japan. because of characters from  The setting is during Imperial Japan's rule over Taiwan in 1920- a very turbulent time as Japan back then was a major threat when it was an ever-expanding empire. The Empire of Japan died in 1945 and began the rise of Modern Japan. Japanese do still remember the bitter history. I remembered watching the movie The Tokyo Trial which focused on executing the Japanese war criminals.  The summary goes as follows: San Francisco, 1980. As 72-year-old Guo Xue Hu reminisces about his hometown, Dadaocheng, a young man walks towards him from afar. It is Xing Xiong, Yi An's son. He has brought a letter from Yi An, a letter addressed to him. He learns that Yi An had...