If you yearn to be chic and blend in with current Asian pop culture, then you can't miss Meteor Garden. This TV series, produced in Taiwan, is based on a popular Japanese comic strip. Meteor Garden has swamped the entire China, Hong Kong and Taiwan media market since its release in 2001. As confessed by the producer, Miss Yang, Meteor Garden was started by a group of cartoon fans that did not have any former or formal experience in TV productions. Initially, its episodes were only shown once a week in a midnight slot. However, after the fourth episode aired, Meteor Garden received unexpected enthusiasm from audiences, tuning into to watch the show in record numbers as well as to buy the songs of the show's featured musical group, F4.

     The story line of Meteor Garden is quite simple. Four rich, handsome university boys who are students at a prestigious private college in Taiwan make up the main characters. They are played by the group F4. Not surprisingly, one of them falls in love with a beautiful, shy and somewhat ordinary girl, Shancai (played by Xu Xiyuan) from a poor, poverty stricken family. It is this simple Cinderella story that has caused some fans to give up two months worth of salary to travel thousand miles to meet F4. With the popularity of this television series, it was a shocking and unexpected blow to millions of fans to find that the Chinese government has ordered the banning of Meteor Garden in mainland China.

     Here is the puzzle, what is it about this fairy tale that captures the hearts of so many? Deng Lijun (Teresa Teng), who once sang of sugary love and effervescent dreams earned the adoration of fans across all Chinese speaking regions. With Meteor Garden, the audience is not limited to any one age group or gender. Females, males, young and old alike seem to be drawn to this show. To our writers, the social variables of a simple TV series like Meteor Garden and what they point to is baffling. Thus, we sent out a series of requests to fans from China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, and invited them to explain this puzzle. Overwhelmingly, we received many enthusiastic and continuous replies within just few days. The following are some selected feedback:

Some reasons that people like F4 or Meteor Garden:

Person 1 (student): The actors are young. The story's based on a Japanese comic--you know how the Taiwanese are crazy about anything Japanese! The guys are cute (some girls think) And they sing! The main character (girl) is cute and is a good actress. It's romance-based (kinda like a Japanese drama/soap). The story is engaging--you know you can depend on the storyline b/c it's inspired by a Japanese comic. I like the main actress--she's so talented! The guys are ok in acting, but what's really striking is that they're all so young and look twenty-ish, as opposed to the usual Chinese dramas where older actors act in a historical China setting. They're all very natural actors, like your friends or young people on the street.

Person 2 (student): A year ago, Meteor Garden 1 was on the web. The only entertainment Angela and I had at that time was to watch the 20 episodes of that series. Well, what so good about it?! I can say that the style of MG is different than the other Taiwan production TV series. It might be because MG acquires a pretty good plot from the original comic book "花樣男子". Watching it is like reading the comic book though I think that the comic is much much better than the TV series. The group F4 kind of ruined the original characters from the comic. In addition, the theme is pretty much like the fairy tale Cinderella. Plus, MG is in the form of comedy, which provides lots of entertainment in it.

Person 3: HAHA, meteor garden 2 is more "hot" than I expected, (while I am watching the downloaded version of episode 6). Everyone is posting it online, I mean, I see them everywhere. For those who haven't watched series 1, you should definitely try this. It is a new hit among the younger folks, and you should know what it is about to stay updated (so you have "things" to talk to others). Maybe you will fall in love with F4. (Another big laugh here)

Person 4 (PhD student): I haven't seriously watched TV series about love for a long time, so there's some special attraction about F4 that really appeals to my appetite. For one thing, they are handsome, and they are wealthy in the series. These are something that every guy in the world hopes for. In the series, there is also this brotherly bond between the F4 members that I really enjoy watching and that will make you think about the good times and bad times between me and my best friends. F4 always hang out together a lot: in school, in nightclub, and drinking beer in someone's house, and they chatted and joked, and they went after girls and discussed about them. These are the things that I have gone through with my

The Big Question Mark: why?

Japanese influences

     Meteor Garden (hereafter referred to as MG) is based upon a Japanese manga series by Yoko Kamio, loosely translated as the "Flowery Boys." In Japan, the manga series sold well over 24 million copies in six years between 1992 and 1998. It became hugely popular in Taiwan as well. As translated into the Taiwanese drama, the story mainly centers on a love story between the poor and ordinary girl Shancai and the rich and hotheaded Dao Mingsi. Of course, love stories of this sort between mismatched lovers are nothing out of the ordinary, but what sets Meteor Garden apart from other such stories is the specific style to which it is set. MG purposely effuses the series with Japanese pop cultural norms, from clothing, melodramatic behavior, to personality types. Dyed and bleached hair, new Japanese haircuts, Japanese fashions, a quirkiness often found in Japanese dramas, these are all readily apparent when one watches the show. However, such influences do not imitate Japanese drama's themselves. Like most Chinese dramas, there is a languidness which permeates the storyline, drawing out each possible emotional moment. There is also a reflection of Taiwanese daily life-from parental behavior, the types of part-time jobs worked, to youth vocabulary. It is this active reinterpretation and inclusion of Japanese pop elements that gives MG much of its kitsch appeal.

     As mentioned before, a key to F4 and Meteor Garden's appeal lies within a Japanese styled format. Japan is perhaps the greatest pop cultural influence in Asia, often overshadowing the US. With the world's second largest music industry, and possessing a dynamic pop culture, Japan has succeeded in highly influencing the development of Asian cultural trends. Japan's appeal in Taiwan has many historical reasons. Japan's colonization of the island after the first Sino-Japanese war in the Treaty of Shimonoseki in 1895 opened the door to Japanese cultural influences on the island, at the time a small unimportant backwater. From 1895 to the Guomingdang control of the island in 1945, Taiwan for the first time, became a semi-developed area. Japan's influence was important in that it saw Taiwan through the early years of its modern cultural development and identity. The beginnings of Taiwan's modern culture became a unique infusion of "traditional" Chinese culture with Japanese culture on every level from language, to etiquette, to self identification. Even after Japan's defeat, and the recent emergence of Taiwan's democratic state, this historical/cultural factor has predisposed Taiwan to greater admiration and willingness to look to Japan as a source of culture. Today, economically affluent Taiwanese youth look to Japan as a source of popular culture, to the extent that they imitate Japanese mannerisms, etiquette, fashion, and more recently, music. Many Taiwanese youth even wish they were Japanese in blood. Connected with Japan's cultural role is its economic power, which places it above the already large economies of Taiwan, Hong Kong and South Korea. Its combination of an economic and cultural giant fills Asia with Japanese consumer products-both electronic and cultural.