92
Popular Culture Review
With a sense of guilt, Zhong Rui starts to shy away from his wife. His
company becomes profitable, so he buys a nice apartment for his wife and son.
But he continues to have affair with Wang Xing, and his infidelity finally leads
to a divorce. Although both Zhong Rui and Xiao-Xue love their five-year-old
son dearly, the boy is a vulnerable victim of the broken family. One night, he
wakes up to find nobody at home. So he walks out of the apartment and is
kidnapped by a child-trader. Fortunately he is saved and sent to the hospital.
There, his doctor, a married man, falls in love with his mother, Xiao-Xue. The
doctor has long been caught in an unhappy marriage, and he wants to divorce his
wife and marry Xiao-Xue. However, Xiao-Xue tells him plainly that she would
never marry a man who, for whatever reason, divorces his wife.
Zhong Rui and Wang Xing enjoy little excitement and happiness from
their love affair. When Wang Xing realizes that she is pregnant, she goes for an
abortion alone. Her doctor is a kind woman who takes very good care of her.
She learns later that the doctor is Xiao-Xue’s mother. The more she gets to
know about Xiao-Xue and her family, the more guilty she feels about her affair
with Zhong Rui. She leaves Beijing for Xiamen, a coastal city in the south
where her parents reside. When Zhong Rui follows her to Xiamen a few weeks
later, he finds that Wang Xing is dating a man of her own age. The end of the
story implies that Zhong Rui desires to return to his wife and his son.
Coming and Going depicts a story very similar to the other two TV
Dramas. During the early years of the Cultural Revolution Movement, Kang
Wei-Ye, then a junior high school student, falls in love secretly with an older
schoolmate. However, the timid boy fails to make love with her when the girl
tries to seduce him with her half-naked body. Later the girl’s family moves
away, and Kang Wei-Ye never sees her again. As a grown man, Kang Wei-Ye
finds his first job as a butcher. He is introduced to Duan Li-Na, a young woman
officer whose father is a high-ranking military officer. Their dating is not
romantic at all, but their accidental premarital sex leads to their formal marriage,
though Kang is somewhat reluctant. Kang gets a promotion because of his
father-in-law’s influence. The young couple soon has a daughter, and their
family life is harmonious and stable.
The economic reform brings a great opportunity to Kang Wei-Ye, who
becomes the owner of a successful apparel company. He falls in love with a
beautiful young businesswoman, Lin Zhu, who is a representative sent by
Kang’s parent company to oversee the company business. They truly love each
other, and Kang enjoys for the first time the romantic sexual love he has been
dreaming of for a long time. When Kang cannot hide his extramarital affair any
longer, he asks to divorce his wife and plans to many Lin Zhu. Duan Li-Na tries
every means possible to save the marriage. Her parents’ family and the city’s
Women’s Federation all come to help her persuade Kang Wei-Ye to give up the
idea of divorce. Finally, Duan Li-Na confronts Lin Zhu, telling her that she will