IF you watch Chinese drama, the latest series you would have seen Zhao Jinmai and Zhang Linghe in would be the historical drama The Princess Royal (2024), where they played Princess Li Rong and Prime Minister Pei Wen Xuan, respectively. Well, they’ve returned in Our Generation, a contemporary series about friendship and love (platonic, romantic, familial) that’s set in China and Hong Kong in the 1990s.
Our Generation reels in viewers through the “ordinary” characters—the self-contained Jiang Qiaoxi and the spirited Lin Yintao. Their lives are narrated with a rational buildup of emotions; the series steers clear of the clichéd conclusion of swift epiphanic transformation. The 24 episodes are sufficient to watch Qiaoxi and Yintao’s anguish, which would have been overdrawn had the originally planned 40 episodes pushed through.
Yintao’s vivacity contrasts with Qiaoxi’s impassivity upon meeting as young children in a village in Mount Qun. Yintao, the de facto leader of the four children in the village, befriends him after noticing his forlorn figure. The rest do the same. Yintao shows Qiaoxi what life should be and what love is. She celebrates his birthday (his family doesn’t). She saves up for his birthday cake and, with the others, sings him the birthday song. She makes him feel love when they all run to a part of the mountain to see the road out of the village and shout their goodbyes. His mother, who picked him up one day, didn’t let him tell them he was leaving.
Yintao is the sunshine in Qiaoxi’s dark life. She writes to him without fail. The motif is reminiscent of Su Zai Zai writing to Zhang Lu Rang from the series When I Fly Towards You. Su Zai Zai writing to Zhang Lu Rang, who has moved to another school, is her way of saying she cares for him. Her letters stay the pangs of depression for Lu Rang, who writes back to her, unlike Qiaoxi who ghosts Yintao.
Comparatively, Qiaoxi and Lu Rang’s circumstances are different. Qiaoxi is forced to shoulder economic responsibilities at an early age, while Lu Rang is free of such encumbrances. To a degree, Qiaoxi is cruel, but without intending to be. In his mind, he is sparing Yintao the hurt and pain he imagines she’ll feel if they are together.
Qiaoxi misjudges the tenacity of Yintao, who takes the lead in the relationship. She initiates their childhood friendship and searches for him when he disappears to Hong Kong after telling her he loves her. When they finally meet, she gives him an ultimatum about their relationship, making him confront feelings he has long suppressed.
Although Yintao offers unconditional love, she isn’t love’s fool, aware that Qiaoxi also feels the same way towards her.
Jinmai is the senior actor between the two. She metamorphoses from the teenaged Yintao into the adult Yintao smoothly, with nuanced expressions and actions
Jinmai is the senior actor between the two, having started acting at age 10. She does the girl-in-love role masterfully, showing the myriad emotions, i.e., hurt and worry from separation, and grim determination to commit and sacrifice. She metamorphoses from the teenaged Yintao into the adult Yintao smoothly, with nuanced expressions and actions.
Zhang Linghe is the brooding math prodigy Jiang Qiaoxi. (Image from @zhanglinghe_1230)
The “opposites attract” trope is highlighted by the juxtaposition of Qiaoxi’s quiet personality and Yintao’s spunky nature. Refreshingly, it goes beyond the common romance. What starts as an innocent friendship is a lifesaver for Qiaoxi, whose moroseness stems from a complicated family life. His brother’s death has led to his parents’ divorce and his high-strung mother controlling his life, wanting him to live up to what’s expected of a mathematical genius to fill the void left by the brother. His father quietly stands at the side. (Qiaoxi’s brother ran away from his math lessons and wandered off to the nearby woods, where he died.)
Math becomes Qiaoxi’s sole purpose in life. As academically brilliant as he is, he becomes cold and inhibited—behavior that people often misread as arrogance. (Interestingly, Qiaoxi as a math whiz reflects a part of Linghe’s life. Google says the Gucci/Gucci Beauty ambassador was fascinated by physics, but his interest shifted to acting after meeting an agent. He would have graduated from the Nanjing Normal University with a degree in electrical engineering if he hadn’t gone into acting.)
Moving to Hong Kong to study was Qiaoxi’s respite from his mother. It starts on a positive note. Money isn’t a problem—his parents and cousin help finance his studies and upkeep.
Linghe started in the business only five years ago, but he has proved his mettle with his range of emotions. He channels the feelings of an angst-filled young man drowning in misery well, eliminating the residue of the pretty-boy vibe in The Royal Princess.
Qiaoxi arrives in Hong Kong in its last decade of colonial British rule and preparing for the handover to China. Per imf.org, Hong Kong was then experiencing a boom in personal consumption, reexports, and assets markets. Stock prices doubled in 1993 and residential property prices rose by a third during the first quarter of 1994. Between 1994 and 1996, as real wages and property prices fell rapidly, companies upgraded their office and production technology, cutting costs and leading to lower domestic inflation and resumption of growth.
Qiaoxi would have used the Octopus card, a contactless card for electronic payment in buses, ferries, and MRT. He would have also accessed the Internet at his university. Google says the first Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol was established by the Faculty of Engineering of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) in September 1991. CUHK set up a 64-kbps leased line to connect to the Internet in the United States, and limited access was granted to academic institutions. In 1992, the use of the link was extended to all university and polytechnic students in Hong Kong.
Behind the scenes with Zhang Linghe (Image from @zhanglinghe_1230)
The ’90s cultural scene was the Cantopop era and, fan or not, Qiaoxi would have heard the song of the Four Heavenly Kings (Jacky Cheung, Leon Lai, Andy Lau, and Aaron Kwok). It was also the golden era of Hong Kong cinema, so he probably would have watched Wong Kar-Wai’s films Chungking Express and Happy Together, which catapulted Wong to international fame. Likewise, he would have watched movies on VCD that superseded the laserdisc.
The ’90s cultural scene was the Cantopop era and, fan or not, Qiaoxi would have heard the song of the Four Heavenly Kings and watched Wong Kar-Wai’s films
But Qiaoxi’s life is upended when the financial crisis hits the region and his cousin is hospitalized. The cousin was pushed by a former subordinate—hinting at retrenchment as cost-cutting measure against the crisis—from a building rooftop. Qiaoxi sees the cousin fall through the window of the restaurant he’s at. Bereft of financial support from his parents and cousin, Qiaoxi discontinues his studies and works to help pay his cousin’s medical bills. He takes on three jobs—as construction worker, financial consultant to his landlord, and private tutor—and lives in a shabby apartment building in a rundown neighborhood.
Parenting is subtly raised in the series, with the styles reflected differently in Qiaoxi and Yintao’s upbringing. Yintao and her friends’ parents, who all work at the power plant, are similar in their approach to child-rearing. The children aren’t viewed as objects, but as people to be raised with compassion and love. In such an environment, Yintao and friends grow up as caring, independent, responsible, and well-mannered individuals. Obviously, teenagers can get rebellious, but arguments and misunderstandings between them are resolved with openness and encouragement, not by a tyrant’s hardhanded rule.
Qiaoxi’s experience is the opposite. He doesn’t learn about or feel love, respect, and warmth from his family but from Yintao’s, who have meals and watch TV together, talk about how their days went, and discuss their problems. Qiaoxi’s father tries to be a better parent to him, but his authority is overshadowed. His mother’s concerns are only his math scores and preventing him from spending time with Yintao, whom she considers a bad influence. To ensure their distance, she hires a driver to take him to and from school, making the need to take public transport with Yintao unnecessary.
With his dreadful childhood experience, it’s par for the course that Qiaoxi and his parents are estranged. That his situation doesn’t end with an immediate reconciliation is a welcome development. It’s an incredulous expectation to have those in a toxic relationship quickly bury the hatchet and erase the hurtful past. Simply put, the transition from estrangement to endearment is a gradual process.
Fictional as Our Generation is, it presents a tolerable view of the possibility of love in a world knee-deep in cynicism and individualism. Yintao and Qiaoxi show that genuine friendship is achievable when both parties are committed to not losing the close ties, in the same manner that a romantic relationship can last if both work on it.
Life isn’t always fair, but like Yintao and Qiaoxi, one can fight to be happy.
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