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Popular Culture Review
forward (to the front)” instead of living under the shadow of the political past
such as Mao’s Cultural Revolution Movement in late 1960s and early 1970s.
This phrase was revised by common people later as “look to money” (“front”
and “money” in Chinese have the same pronunciation). With the goal-oriented
notion that whatever makes money goes, people try every means possible to
become rich, including sex trading. It is estimated that there are 20 million sex
workers in China, whose job is “three accompaniments” {san hei)—sharing
meals, sharing entertainment, and sharing a bed with customers (“Communists”
1). One easy way for beautiful young women to make money is to trade sex with
rich men. In China today, those who get rich have a nickname of ""dakuan'"
meaning “big money” in Chinese. Some well-educated, good-looking girls are
willing to live with those ""dakiiam"" in exchange for money and other profits.
Their nickname is '"bang dakuan,'" meaning “big money’s companion.” Thus, a
recent popular saying goes, “A man is sure to become bad as soon as he gets
rich; and a woman is sure to become rich as soon as she gets bad (willing to
sell).”
These side-effects of the country’s economic development seriously
corrode society, government, and especially families. They negatively affect
people’s daily life, their traditional values, and their moral standards. People
desire that something must be done to save families and traditional values. The
three TV dramas in the late 1990s, To Live a Good Family Life, Holding Hands,
and Coming and Going, appropriately represent such a desire of the Chinese
people.
The Storyline of the Three TV Dramas
To Live a Good Family Life depicts a family of four that has undergone
a crisis simply because the husband wants to divorce his wife and marry a
younger woman. The husband is an architect, and his wife is a factory worker.
They have an eleven-year-old daughter. The architect’s elderly widowed mother
lives with them. The architect and his wife were classmates in high school.
Actually, it was the latter that provided for her husband’s college education and
raised their daughter alone while he was at college. She is a devoted wife, a
loving mother, and a filial daughter-in-law. Friends and neighbors all say that
the architect is a lucky man who has such a wonderful wife. The family is
definitely a happy one in the eyes of many. She is stunned when her husband
tells her that he has loved another woman and that now he wants to divorce her.
The architect’s mother is the last person who would allow a divorce in
her family. She is used to the happy laughter of her granddaughter and the
harmonious relationships between family members. Moreover, she has always
treated her daughter-in-law as her own daughter, and she enjoys the unique
friendship between them. She goes to her son’s company and begs the powerful
Party Secretary to stop her son from destroying his own family. Then, she hides
the family’s household register, a document required by the local office handling