"The Marriage of the Other Shore" - Into the Nineteenth Century Malacca
Recently, the Spring Festival holiday, more time at home, Xiaobian in the infection of friends from all sides, finally joined the Netflix world.
However, the first drama that attracted the attention of the editor was not a European and American drama, but a "Marriage on the Other Shore" produced in Taiwan! Xiaobian has finished watching just six episodes in one breath!
The following contains some spoilers, so please read with caution. The Other Side's Marriage is based on the novel Ghost Bride by Chinese-American writer Zhu Yangxi, and is set in a Chinese family in Malacca at the end of the 19th century. The heroine Lilan is favored by a large family as a ghost bride for her son Lin Tianqing, who has just been poisoned and died, and Lin Tianqing's birth mother learns that Lilan's father's business is blocked, in order to help her father as an inducement to marry Lilan into the Lin family. In the end, due to the entanglement of the evil spirit of Tianqing, LiLan was forced to go down to the underground mansion and guard Erlang of the Heavenly Court (played by Wu Kangren!). Together, we will track down the truth.
Set in the South Sea at the end of the 19th century, the scene props are all reflective of the crew's heart, and many places reflect the combination of Chinese tradition and Nanyang flavor, reflecting the "Baba Nyonya" culture.
The so-called "Baba Nyonya" refers to the mixed descendants of early Chinese immigrants who intermarried with the locals, but also refers to the native Chinese descendants who only intermarried with the same ethnic group. The male's name is Baba and the female's name is Nyonya. These Chinese descendants who have taken root in the ground were originally concentrated in Malacca.
Even if these Chinese have lived in Malacca for several generations, Chinese ideology and culture have not been swept away. The imagination of the underworld and the heavenly court from the marriage and the burning of clothes and paper is actually deeply rooted in their genes. Therefore, Lady Lin did not want her son to die early, coupled with the harassment of her son's evil spirits, as a result, she burned a large amount of property, food, clothes and paper to her son every day, to appease her son who died early and died in vain, so that her son could also buy the judge of the prefectural government, so that he could continue to stay in Hades without having to reincarnate. These ideas are consistent with the traditional Chinese imagination of the afterlife.
Of course, as a girl, in fact, the focus of the editor is on costumes and props. I noticed that Lilan's clothes did mix with Malayan style - like a modified version of the little phoenix fairy suit, sometimes showing her arms, combing a small ball bun on her head. In fact, Lilan's body is the common clothes of the early Nyonya - Kebaya.
Nyonyakarta Kobaya, also known as Nyonya shirts, although very similar to the traditional clothing of Indonesia and Malaysia, Nyonya Kobaya is derived from the early Baju Panjang (loose body tunic), which is long to the ankles, long sleeves and plackets, and the fit is quite similar to the Chinese men's Tang costume.
By the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, Nyonya began to wear a narrow-body design of Kobaya, the lower body with a sarong (Sarong), similar to the cheongsam, close to the body can show women to show a beautiful figure. As for the bun, Lilan's simple small round bun is indeed a common Hairstyle (Sanggui) in Nyonya, and it can be pinned with flowers or hairpins, which is very similar to the traditional styles of Java and Burma.
Another attraction in the play is the Lin family mansion. It fully reflects how Malacca, a place occupied by Portugal, the Netherlands and the British, and the Chinese culture have impacted this big city. This mansion that looks like a Chinese courtyard but mixes Western and Horse-drawn elements at the same time, is very impressed by the large number of parquet floor tiles and dark brown wooden furniture, but the Chinese-style furnishings have European ornaments, and at a glance, I can't tell which place this is the mansion.
Climbing data, the original crew in the scene and props are full of heart, really ran all over the ancient cities of Malaysia including Taiping, Ipoh and Penang filming, in order to present this Nyonya flavor of the traditional mansion!
Incidentally, amah, Lilan's personal servant in the play, speaks cantonese with her fellow villagers, and she also indicates that she came to Malacca from Guangdong to work. Ma's background is actually more in line with the history of many Chinese from Fujian and Guangdong at that time who went to Nanyang to work, which also explains why there are still many people in Malaysia and Singapore who can speak fluent Cantonese or Hokkien today!