There’s a new show on TV here that I’ve been following recently called the Golden Marriage (金婚). It stars Zhang Guoli (as Tong Zhi, a homophone of ‘Comrade’) and Jiang Wenli (as Wenli) as husband and wife. The concept behind the show is one I haven’t seen before, as every episode takes place one year after the previous one. It goes from 1956-2005. Chinese TV is different from American TV, in that they already have the whole series filmed and play 3 hour-long episodes a night. That way you can watch the whole thing in about a month. It lets you get more into the story I think, than the US way of playing episodes once a week over 8 months (that is if the show doesn’t get cancelled). It also makes a TV series become related to a period in your life. When I had mono I had nothing else to do, but watch 五月槐花香 (can’t think of a good translation at the moment) every day, and I was thankful there was something to take my mind off being sick.

I think the series Golden Marriage is important, because I have never seen a popular TV show here portray the pre-80s period (and I think this one is getting very high ratings). It also does not shy away from some of the serious issues from that time, and even pokes fun (in a very dry, Chinese way) at the social/political climate of the time without playing down the seriousness of the situations. Some of the funnier parts I can remember are when Tongzhi and his buddy do not know what it means to be a ‘rightist’, and when they joke about having to write criticisms of plays they have never seen. During the Cultural Revolution Wenli goes to have an abortion, and her mother-in-law goes to stop her because she thinks it will be a boy. She suceeds in stopping the doctors by threatening to write a big character poster denouncing them and parade it through the streets. There is also a few funny scenes when Tongzhi and a young lady converse by quoting lines from Mao Zedong back and forth at each other.

The names they want to give their children are funny, too. For their firstborn, if it was a boy, they wanted to name him Gesi (格斯) after Engles, but it was a girl, so they named her Yanni (燕妮) after Marx’s wife, who’s name was Jenny.

The series is also important because it shows the continuity in Chinese society that we don’t get to see from accounts of the turmoil of the 50s-70s period. I think it’s hard for us non-Chinese to imagine what it might have been like living during that time, and here is a completely plausible story of one family. In a lot of brief China histories from western news stories one gets the feeling that China did not really exist before 1980, or that it was this backward, chaotic place, but people really did live through that time. The series shows that even though many ideologies were thrown about, people still held on to old beliefs. For example, there was supposed to be equality between the sexes, but the family clearly favors having a baby boy over a girl.

There are some things in the series that would never fly in the US, like getting an abortion and parents slapping their children, though.

Another interesting thing about the series is that it does not shy away from the difference in sex education within the family between the generations. Wenli has no idea what to do on her wedding night, but her daughters are educated in school, and she feels foolish for trying to explain it to them.

Zhang Guoli is great in the series, too, and has really broken out of the Ji Xiaolan mold unlike his other co-stars from that series, Wang Gang (who always plays Heshen, or the not completely evil adversary willing to do anything to get ahead) and Zhang Tieling (who always plays the Emperor). Recently Zhang Guoli has been in another good TV series “Brothers” (亲兄热弟), and in his recent roles has played complex, flawed characters.

At one point in the series the couple’s daughter is going to get married, but doesn’t want a big, traditional Chinese wedding, because it would be too su (俗), which means something like common, conventional or vulgar. I found that interesting, because in the US people of the same generation may give the same reasons for not wanting a big church wedding.

In any case, I think this series will be a big hit. The only drawback about it is that there’s so much yelling and fighting between the husband and wife, and if you are in a bad mood it will only make things worse.

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