Culture Chronicles #1
Where I share five fun cultural delights from China and Malaysia every month.
Welcome to the first issue of Culture Chronicles, where I share quick doses of cultural delights from Chinese and Malaysian culture. You can often find these snippets shared in my Notes section too, but I don’t just copy pastas of my posts but usually expand on them or have new delights!
Chinese New Year mall visitations
Since all social life seem to happen in Malaysian malls, mall management really go all out with their decorations during festive seasons to attract patrons.
so, it's really a thing to visit malls just to see their festive decorations. This year, I only had the energy to visit two major ones: Sunway Pyramid and Midvalley Megamall, both part of the “so big you can do a 5km marathon there” pantheon of Malaysian giant malls.
Romantic dragons
This was such a rare and beautiful poster 2023 xianxia Chinese drama, Back from the Brink, that I had to share it! (Also, since 2024 is the year of the Dragon, it seems like an appropriate time to share it too.)
The story is about a dragon in search of his body, and the woman who has one of his scales in her heart.
“Xianxia” (仙侠) is a unique Chinese fantasy genre heavily influenced by Chinese mythology and philosophy.
I wrote a review of Back from the Brink on my CDrama blog, so you can have a read.
You can watch this drama on the Youku app or on Youtube with English subtitles.
Ad stories
This is probably a tradition peculiar to my country, but during major festivities in Malaysia, brands will release short 2-3 min dramas to celebrate the festival. Petronas, Malaysia's national oil company, is very well know for these “ad stories”.
This particular story hits close to home for me because the language used is Northern Malaysian Hokkien (my mother tongue, and a rare form of Hokkien only found in Malaysia). I can almost picture my mum in this group.
Boasting about your kids during Chinese New Year is a time honored tradition, but the ultimate message of this story is bittersweet.
A rare instance where I don't skip the ad!
Wuxia dance
Wuxia is a unique Chinese genre that has so much of cultural subtext that most Chinese folks just take for granted.
Like the concept of internal energy, which enables fighters to be “light as a feather”, allowing them to perform amazing acrobatic feats and of course, jump crazy distances.
This is Cheng Yi, one of the few actors who can convincingly execute moves that looks both deadly and graceful at the same time.
From the hit Chinese TV drama Mysterious Lotus Casebook.
I think we can all agree magnesium is important for us
Technically not Chinese or Malaysian culture, but international.
I loved the ad! Definitely an ad I wouldn’t skip and I wish more ads are like this. Also can relate with how people visit malls just to see festive decorations as happens here in Dubai too
This is so interesting. And I cried at the ad. Thank you.