Do you watch the Spirit of Love (yi nan wang - 意难忘) on AEC? It comes on every weekday at 6pm. And now Astro’s showing episode 446 already - that’s the four-hundred and forty-sixth episode. Pretty long huh? Reminds me of A Kindred Spirit (zhen qing - 真情), which was aired on Wah Lai Toi for over 1,000 episodes. Why do all the ’super-series’ have the word ’spirit’ in their name eh?

The Spirit of Love | Narrowband.org
(Acknowledgment: Picture shamelessly grabbed from youthwant.com.tw via Google Images.)

To be honest, I am not a big fan of the Spirit of Love series. But when I sink myself into the couch and watch, that’s it - I’m glued. It’s so engaging ok! I’ve not been able to keep up with every single episode, so it’s an on-off kinda thing. Sometimes when I miss certain chapters I’d ask my sis what happened. So what’s the deal with this Taiwanese Hokkien drama that almost every Chinese auntie is watching?

The series touches on a lot of things (yea it doesn’t have more than 400 episodes for nothing), including relationships, gangsterism, kinship, friendship and revenge. It’s all interconnected and sometimes, quite complicated - but very engaging nonetheless. The spoken Hokkien is somewhat similar to our local Hokkien (both Penang and Klang), but most of the time I rely on the subtitles (no not the Chinese one, the BM one).

I like how the stories unfold, and how each of their lives are intertwined and connected. The ending of each episode is always full of suspense (of course lah rite?), so much so that we’d stay on to watch the preview (during the rolling of credits) of what’s going to happen in the next episode. We never fail to skip this part. And it sucks to watch it on Fridays because you’d have to wait til Monday for the continuation. Heh.

But some scenes are a little weird because, get this: almost all indoor scenes are shot in the studio. The windows are all not really windows - they’re either covered with curtains or lit with a nice wallpaper background. The layout of most of their houses is also similar. Echo is heard from almost anywhere in the house, too. However, these factors never stopped me, or anyone that I know, from watching the series. That goes to show only one thing: It’s the essence in the story that matters. I also noticed that Taiwanese actresses can be really pretty!

The soundtrack keeps playing in my head day and night now. If you don’t know which one I’m talking about, here:

Does Redbox Karaoke have this track? LOL. Catch the cast of the Spirit of Love (actually, only five of them) on the 25th and 26th of May in Genting Highlands! Then you can listen to the song sung live :).

Addendum: A snippet of my MSN conversation with -identity withheld-:

¦h¦pÇ»» ¦ ©小晶晶 says:
crap
u actuali watch yi nan wang?

Why not!! Actually, she was the second person - within an hour - who seemed not too convinced that I actually watch the series, haha.