alostfish:

I haven’t been blogging for a while (mostly due to being busy and working on G3S), so I will try to restart again and write a bit more.

Today, a friend told me about the Chinese web series called Addicted. I will not spoil the plot for everyone here, but I find it to be pretty addicting like Heroin (double pun intended). It’s pretty much based on the old fashioned Korean drama plot lines except its mainland Chinese and gay.

Other than the entertainment value (and I really do recommend the series, it’s been fun watching it), it’s been kind of a surreal experience for me. I actually have never thought I could see something like this coming out of mainland China given how heavy the media is censored. Shows are actually required to remove all content that can harm “social harmony”. There are a number of rules like “mistresses can’t have a happy life” and “no dating in school” that are aimed to create the illusion of a perfect society where people who exhibit behaviors not consistent with social harmony are punished by karma despite the whole host of social issues that exist in China. Blatantly showing homosexual relationships as the main theme on mainstream media was unthinkable… until now.

I imagine that’s why it’s a web series rather than airing on TV. However, the web series has been climbing in popularity. This is very encouraging for me. Perhaps having shows like this going mainstream will help to break the social stigma surrounding same sex relationships and create more tolerance in the mainland Chinese society for LGBT communities.

I personally enjoyed the show - its a combination of mainland Chinese (with cultural references and modern slangs), same sex romance and catchy Kdrama plot lines that I never thought could co-exist so beautifully. It’s actually just really amazing that the actors speak in mandarin accents and slangs that I relate to the most (as opposed to Taiwanese or Cantonese accents). And of course the hot boy eye candy and the risque romance scenes don’t hurt either :P