Joe and Ariel had a little press conference for their new drama, “My Love Bread”, which was formerly known as Trillionare Bread, which I think I had translated as something totally off before. Whatever. They had finished all of the shooting in Taiwan in the last months three months, and have gone to the mainland for a 3-day shoot, in Hangzhou, so this may actually be airing quite soon.
Wu Jianfei, who got famous through the 2006 “My Hero” competition in China is going to be part of the cast as well, playing Ariel’s character’s ex. Wu Jianfei already has a budding career in Taiwan, with his latest CD being released there and having Selina (of SHE)’s sister star in his MV but to be honest, it’s not sold that well, and hopefully this will give him some more exposure. Unfortunate that he doesn’t act as well as he sings.
The curious thing about this is that Taiwan has, or at least had, a policy banning mainland actors being in Taiwanese movies or dramas. I wonder if this has changed gradually since Ma Ying-Jou has stepped into office and what this means for the future of collabs between the two. I think it would do both places some good actually because mainland dramas can be a little too serious at times, and Taiwan’s a little too silly.
I’m like so giddy that you read my blog! Anyways, I didn’t know about the ban on foregin (mainland) artists. Does it only apply to actors and only those from mainland? I mean, there are so many foregin artists like JJ, Gary, Vaness, etc. working in Taiwan. To be honest when I found out about this, I was a little dissapointed. When I first got into Kpop, I quickly realized how xenophobic the entertainment industry (I get the need to protect local talent, but still…) was, but I always thought Taiwan was much more liberal about these things. I guess not~. It seems like only China has little restrictions on foreign artists but that’s probably due to it not having a super strong entertainment industry at the moment. Who knows if things will change in a few years.
Oh, and on the SJM thing. I know you put a lot of thought into the sociopolitical and ecnonomic reasons behind SJM staying in the Chinese Market, and I agree, it is a bigger market and probabaly makes sense from that standpoint. What I’m saying is that because Cpop is so heavily rooting in Taiwan, it makes sense for SJM to establish themselves there because that’s where all the competition is. This is a lame example, but Fahrenheit is obviously based in Taiwan and hold the majority of their activites there, yet their are immensly popular in China because mainland still very much looks to Taiwan for their pop idol needs. I still think that to be legitimately considered a true Cpop sucess (I assume SJM wants to establish it’s own identitiy in Cpop and not rely on the name Super Junior so much), groups have to have conquered the Taiwan marktet. You said that foreign artists don’t have staying power on the charts and I agree. My point is that SJM is already so popular in China (they debuted at number one), what they need to do is conquer Taiwan in such a way that they are no longer thought of as a Kpop band. So these are the serious reasons I give when asked about this. However, the real reason I want them to go to Taiwan is cause I think the variety shows are better there. Seriously, everything in mainland is so awkward; I’d die to see SJM on Bai Fen Bai. Also, I’d love to see SJM interact with some other Cpop talent because it seems like the entertainment industry in Taiwan is quite close-knit and I wish SJM would make some famous people friends ; ).
What else… oh yeah, I know that even the best selling artists of Taiwan like Jolin only sell ~200 to 300K in Taiwan, which is about as good as the South Korean market, yet the market in Asia as a whole, is still much greater for Cpop then Kpop so yeah, the majority of the sales do come from outside Taiwan. But that’s my point exactly, the top Taiwanese artist are still managing to sell so much even though they are based in Taiwan, shows how much influence that market has on Asia. Has Mayday’s album even been released in mainland? How Asian artists release albums in different markets confuses me so much.. Ok, wow, that was a lot of words. Thanks for reading my blog again and keep up the excellent work!
Taiwan is…rather unbalanced. It is definitely on the level of South Korea, and it’s got a fantastic music industry that’s better than South Korea’s imo, since it allows for anybody with talent to become famous much like the US, whereas South Korea relies too much on idols. But Taiwans’s movies and television are just not up to par. I don’t understand it at all, but it’s really that lacking. Very few great movies come out of there, and I admit I don’t know much about the television, but it seems that there are no grand productions on the scale or quality of China’s. Just idol series that can be entertaining but not exactly quality.
There is hope though. Home-grown Cape No 7 just blew away the foreign movie competition in Taiwan.
Taiwan seems like a powerhouse to me. It’s been on the level of South Korea for me. Hmm.. thank you for the article. Clarity is a good thing.
Yeah, a light-bulb went off in my head when I first read about it because I realized, oh they’re right. I always see Taiwanese actors acting in Chinese series, but never the other way around. Ruby Lin, Alec Su, Vivian Hsu, Victor Huang and many others all built a career in China, but you don’t see mainland actors in anything Taiwanese, and very few singers have promoted in Taiwan.
Chinese stars have acted with Taiwanese ones, but never in fully financed Taiwanese productions. Things like Chinese Paladin and The Fairy From Wonderland all had huge Chinese stakes in them.
I hope things will change, if only because of what I said before. Taiwan has very poor movie/tv production quality compared to China (there are exceptions), and China desperately needs idols. Not a lot, just some. The younger population craves them. Cross-cultural interaction would be beneficial to both.
Whoa, I never heard of this ban, but it is definitely silly. :/