If you also like Michael Miu and Barbara Yung classic wuxia series, click here for my new Jianghu blog...
What happens when your heart desires to do one thing, but your role gives you absolute responsibility to do another thing altogether? Could you accommodate your heart’s desire while at the same time fulfil your celestial duties? This is, I find, a hard question to answer. Naturally in many circumstances, we have to choose our duties, while at the same time stealing some precious moments for our heart’s passion, if we’re wise and lucky enough. But living the duties that are not your true nature is hard. Such was the situation with Li Yu, a born poet who was dragged to become the last king of the Southern Tang Dynasty, whose kingdom was annexed by the Song Dynasty in 976 AD.
I found out about Li Yu, a.k.a. Li Hou Zhu (literally ‘The Latter Lord Li’) when I watched a wuxia (traditional Chinese martial arts series/movie) last week. The title itself was in Mandarin, and almost put me off merely because of its length. The original title is ‘Li Hou Zhu yu Zhao Kuang Yin’. I did not know what it meant; let alone thinking of the nature of the series. To tell you the truth, I originally watched it because I wanted to see another performance of Nicky Wu Qi Long, a talented Taiwanese actor & singer (plus black belt holder of Taekwondo), and because some reviews said that ‘Li Hou Zhu’ was a good TV series, I took the DVD set home. I did not regret it, despite my reduced sleeping hours.
