Chapter 49--If there're Season

The winter of death numbs a lover's pain
The autumn of dreams lies awake in vain
The summer of life sings its passing song
And spring comes again...with courage to hope, and go on.

"If there are seasons I would see snow, but not here..."

After the demise of his girlfriend xiao jing, A-Le packs up to pursue his musical ambitions in New York. There, he meets the easy going A-Qiang, a fellow dream hunter from Singapore, who gets him a job at a restaurant. On a particular take-out delivery, an aspiring actress named Rose enters A-Le's life. Soon a bittersweet friendship of battered dreams and bruised hearts is born between them. But with each passing day, Rose begins to feel a little more for A-Le. Unknown to them however, the future is about to change their lives and their friendship forever.

"There are no seasons here, but there is always love..."

-Adapted from synopsis of "If there're Season"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrNQcvczD3A

"If there're seasons" is the third chinese threatre drama that I watched and certainly the best so far. To be honest, I only get to know about this beautifully written chinese musical drama from the song with the same title sang by my idol Kit Chan when I was still in NS. What struck me when I first heard the song was how beautifully and touching the lyrics of the song is and of course how wonderfully it was sang by Kit Chan. The song gives me a special feeling in that it is a rather sad and touching song yet at the same time it seems to give people a trace of hope in it at the same time. Actually hearing it would really makes one want to cry as from what I interpret, the song is trying to covey the message that when one meets obstacles in the outside world, our loved one is always there to support us...
Back to the play itself, I already has high expectation for it but never in my dream would I expect the performance to exceed my expectation so much. I mean, even though there are already so many good reviews about it since the first time it was staged a couple of years ago coupled with the fact that I already regret missing it due to 2 years ago, I still could never foresee that it would be such a truly terrific show. Kudo to the playwright Raymond To for producing such a superb piece of work. Kudo to Liang Wern Fook for coming up with the idea of this play that would and have surely touched so many people especially those that grew up listeining to xin yao. I never could imagined how so many songs could blend in so nicely with a play even if it is a musical drama for instead of the actors and actress merely singing their lines, they have to sing the songs written by Liang and yet each time it was excecuted so beautifully with the lyrics and I not exaggerating here, reflecting the feelings of the performers. One really have to watch the play to understand what I meant. The story is also like what I have mentioned so times so touching that I believe there there won't be many people who won't get touched by the story and the songs. In fact, I could feel the lady sitting behind me trying hard to control her sob during the play and being the sentimental guy that I always am, I am glad that I could at least still hold back the tears in my eyes although I admit only barely...This is the first time I feel that a performance really resonate so much in me.
Perhaps what makes this play so touching and meaningful is that it touches on a few topics that I believed most us have always wanted to pursue and that is love and dreams. In the play, Ah Qiang played by Robin Goh have to give up dream to pursue love while the leading actress Rose played by Joanna Dong have to forgo love in order to pursue dreams leading her to lament that love and dreams are simply rivals that cannot co-exist with each other reflecting the dilemma faced by some lovers today who have to chose between love and their dreams such as opting to go overseas to pursue their dreams but having to face the tough option of leaving their loved one behind with no one to guarantee what will happen in the future for instance. If one chose to stay behind, then one may have to sacrifice his or her dream that could only be achieved overseas by a golden opportunity with no one to gurantee that their love life would surely blossomed. Yet if one chose to go overseas, one could be sacrificing his or her love for his or her special someone with no one to gurantee that such golden opportunity would come again in the future. if you would to placed yourself in such predicament, then what would you chose? Ah Qiang and Rose both made their important decisions at such critical crossroad and in the end they....
Watching this play have also make George Chan who played Ah Le now offically my new idol. To me, he is the male version of Kit Chan. People who know me would have known that I have always admire talented people especially those that are TRULY bilingual or multilingual. Seeing these talented people who are so well versed in both languages always make me feel so so shame of myself as there's such a big gap between their abilities to command both languages compared to me. I am surprised that George(whereby my impression of him halt at only at him being one of the judge at The Dance Floor show at Channel 5) is not only able to speak mandarin despite spending so many years in Europe, but he can sing truly well in it as well! This only shows that he have not forgotten that he is still a Chinese after all(which was coincidentally also a message send by the play not to forget our roots) and I admire him for that. I admit that I look down a lot on chinese people who cannot speak or understand chinese as it is such a shame to one own root. I mean, I do not expect one who is chinese to master the language for even I myself is still so far away from it but at least we should seek to gain that basic level of language competency whereby one would understand what fellow chinese people are talking about and to hold a decent coversation with one. Therefore I really really admire and pei fu these bilingual people who must have spend considerable amount of time to master both langauges so well and such desire to improve oneself should have already make us respect them for that. I hope that one day I could be like the multi talented George who not only can speak well, sing well but also dance well. I know that I am still far away from that but hey, at least I am trying to improve my Chinese competency now that I have more time on hand and I hope that I can improve my English grammer competency as well which is at an atrocious level now. At least now I have another goal to achieve and I believe that like the characters in the play who actively pursue their dreams despite so many setbacks, I can attain my goal one day..

Regards,
Yongster


Live the life you want! Still many more good years ahead...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrNQcvczD3A