This month I’ll be going to Vancouver as part of the LiterASIAN festival. The cost of hotel and travel has gone up, but I guess everyone is starting to travel these days post COVID.
Exactly 10 years ago I was invited by founder Jim Wong-Chu to participate and now 10 years later I find myself returning. It’s bittersweet because Jim isn’t with us anymore, but he did plant a seed in me to volunteer with Asian Canadian Writers’ Workshop which I continue doing to this day!
For those interested in learning more about the past (1923 Chinese Exclusion Act with historian Catherine Clement) to more current stories (Rachel Phan’s Restaurant Kid, Eddy Boudel Tan’s The Tiger and the Cosmonaut, my Ghost Bride of Gum San), this is a good place to meet authors, listen to readings and quiz them about their writing journeys!
On Netflix I have a tendency to watch dark stories, but when an ad popped up for Love Game in Eastern Fantasy I just assumed it would be more of the same. I was pleasantly surprised, there is demon hunting in the show, but it’s a wacky comedy with some romance in it. The show’s intriguing plotline moves along and has many funny moments, making it one of the lighter things I’ve watched in 2024.
The main storyline is about Ling Miaomiao, a girl who is an obsessive reader of wuxia demon hunting novels and after she posts a bad review of the latest book from her favorite author, she is sucked into a videogame world based on the novel. To her horror, she discovers she isn’t the main character, but a secondary character who is a villain in the book with a terrible fate. The “system” gives her quests, similar to an RPG game and she must fulfill them or risk losing a chance to return to her real life. One quest is to make another secondary character fall in love with her which takes up a lot of episodes because the male lead/secondary character hates her guts. Prior to entering the game, Miaomiao is a bit of an otaku, so it’s funny to watch her try to charm a man and fail spectacularly most of the time!
The world building assumes the audience is familiar with wuxia (ancient Chinese martial arts genre), cultivation and demon hunting. Since Miaomiao is a “modern” person in a game based in ancient China, she asks a lot of questions which helps the viewers understand what is happening. The female lead in the show is played by Esther Yu (Yu Shuxin, 虞书欣), a former girl group member (The9) and she is fantastic with her comedic timing along with dramatic scenes. One great scene has her failing a mission and she is killed over and over again until she figures out the solution. It is really funny because she is the only person who remembers dying while the other characters just “reset” in the videogame.
The male lead is Ryan Ding (Ding Yuxi, 丁禹兮) and he is super impressive with his range in acting from nasty smothering stares directed at Miaomiao to becoming an innocent puppy in front of his older sister in a matter of seconds. He does most of the heavy lifting for fight scenes and he is swift and graceful. The Chinese gossip columns said the male lead was supposed to be Arthur Chen Feiyu ( 陈飞宇) but there was a scandal involving him and the President of his fan club so he was dropped from the role. Asian idols aim to have pristine reputations so they can gain sponsorship opportunities. Some companies and fans also demand celibacy of their idols. Despite the glory and glamour, the entertainment industry is a tough business.
Admittedly the name of the show made me scratch my head. It’s based on a book called The Guide to Capturing a Black Lotus by Bai Yu Zhai Diao Gong so who the heck came up with the title of Love Game in Eastern Fantasy? The original title is better in my opinion because mentioning a “love game” tends to turn off a lot of people who don’t usually watch romance, like myself. Themes involve friendship, not giving up (or you remain in the game forever), recognizing the greyness in people and demons along with the fact that falling in love can be a struggle!
Overall, I have been recommending this drama to friends and waiting for the official Netflix episode releases so I have something to look forward to every week. Each episode is about 37 minutes and Netflix drops happen every few days. The show has very high production quality with lots of scenic settings in forest, mountains and ancient Chinese towns along with beautiful FX during fight scenes. My only criticism is that despite the fact the characters are wanderers carrying tiny satchels, they have an impressive wardrobe of flowing robes and ribbons. I am glad that there are female characters in the show that can fight since Miaomiao, as a modern person is fairly useless at that. The show is a smart fantasy comedy mixed with impressive special effects when the characters are demon hunting. (Show rating 9.0/10)
Link to English/Chinese lyrics to MV for 凝眸 (Stare Intently), one of the main songs in Love Game in Eastern Fantasy is below:
What is success? Is it achieving a goal such as writing a best selling book or living a dream lifestyle?
Recently I interviewed Lindsay Wong about this and I was slightly surprised by what she said, since she hit success with her memoir, The Woo-Woo: How I Survived Ice Hockey, Drug Raids, Demons, and My Crazy Chinese Family. The book was nominated for book awards, won some awards and selected for the 2019 edition of Canada Reads.
For many people it seems after hitting one goal, it’s time to set up the next goal and keep going! Lindsay works very hard and I wish her luck in the future of being able to just wake up every morning to just write in pjs!
Link to my interview and her book reading here: Spotify, Youtube
Streams Flow from a Riveris about a dysfunctional Chinese Canadian family, who when trapped by a freak snowstorm in their rural Albertan hometown, are forced to confront the events of a decade prior that tore them all apart. The series will premiere on April 1st, 2023 on SUPER CHANNEL. The Vancouver Asian Film Festival (VAFF), Racial Equity Screen Office (RESO) and Fae Pictures has a free special presentation on April 1, 2023 which includes the short film NANITIC and the first four (out of six) episodes of Stream Flows from a River,Click here for more info.
Looking forward to watching this streaming series!
Just before Christmas in 2022, I was notified that the honorable MP Shaun Chen, Scarborough North, on behalf of the Canadian government will be awarding me and my team COVID-19 Humanitarian Service Medals for our work on anti-Asian racism during the pandemic. Our team had held a variety of anti-Asian racism events to discuss this issue in the workplace along with a seminar to discuss elderly care in the pandemic, created a newsletter and I made some of the graphics for promos.
I feel very grateful for the execs that pulled a nomination together and at the time, they said we probably won’t get it because so many other people deserve this medal, such as people working in healthcare. So it was a surprise that we were told that our group would be receiving medals.
There were a lot of group and individual pictures, but I’m just sharing the one with me. Sadly I see I have gained some pandemic weight and will think about not eating as much chips in the future. I could get an avatar for virtual meetings, but in person is another issue!
Many months ago I was booked for an interview on the Lurking for Legends podcast and totally forgot about it until the host Richard H. Stephens sent an email with the live podcast link! Since my last blog post, my 106 year old grandma passed, so I had been busy planning another funeral and dealing with over zealous relatives who all have opinions but at the end of the day only me and my siblings were paying for this funeral.
Having done a few interviews in the past, the biggest difference in live streaming is the lack of opportunity to correct mistakes. It’s similar to giving a talk in public. It’s a good exercise in practicing improvisation because there will be questions asked which are not scripted and you have to pull yourself together to speak clearly. There were also questions from the audience via the Facebook live feed and I had to answer these on the fly too. I always think afterwards about how I could have sold things better (my husband says I am the worst salesperson!) but every experience makes the next one better.
I haven’t written anything in a while, so I wrote a long personal essay called How COVID Affected the Care and Death of the Elderly In My Family. It’s a recap of what has happened over the last few months with my mother and grandmother before they died. Death is final and even conspiracy theorists can agree that such a thing will happen to all of us! Or maybe not…
Have a look at the essay here if you have time and please follow me on Medium if you can. To qualify for their partner program I need 100 followers but I only have 2. Yes, pretty sad, I know. In the near future I will be posting more on Medium and then mentioning them on my WordPress blog as larger pieces fit there better I think.
It’s been a busy week, planning for my mom’s funeral this Friday and suddenly my 105-yr old grandma landed in the hospital two days ago. Mom was the only one who could shove food down grandma’s throat and they were each other’s nemesis for the last forty years. Grandma has been struggling to survive for a while now, her body is getting weaker as time passes.
After learning about my mom’s death, a wave of comments from aunties and uncles crashed down on me, including:
“If you stayed with her, you could have saved her” (an elderly uncle fell at the same time who has no kids and for a moment me and my siblings where trying to deal with him when she suddenly died)
“Don’t kill yourself!” (I was depressed for many years after father died and have gotten somewhat better, not suicidal anymore at least. Thanks for the reminder)
Funerals are like weddings, I have to come to say goodbye to your mom!
Sue her family doctor! This was negligence in the healthcare system!
Don’t fight over money with your siblings! I want to mediate and we have to find a spouse for your single sibling!
I think we should talk, but you have to drive yourself to my house because I don’t have time to come to you.
At least she died not knowing she was sick, so she lived her life to the fullest!
Sadly, having experience the loss of my father before, I know that a lot of these comments are people dealing with their own grief and expressing it onto me. For people who say they want to help, but can’t really find time, it’s their choice. At the end of the day, I forgive and forget. My mother was very involved with family, friends and her community, so it’s a huge loss for everyone. May she give me strength to get through her funeral and grandma’s current hospitalization.
Moni Brar’s works have appeared in PRISM international, Hart House Review, Existere, The Maynard, untethered, Hobart, and other publications. She is a member of the Alexandra Writers’ Centre Society, The League of Canadian Poets, and the editorial board of New Forum Magazine.
She reads “Fault Lines” and tells us what inspired it on the Artsy Raven podcast, Episode 11. This clip is an excerpt from the episode.
Kevin Wong was born and raised in Halifax, Nova Scotia: the same hometown as Sidney Crosby and Sarah McLachlan. He has always loved writing and creating art, and even as a child he was constantly drawing, painting, writing stories, and telling tales to his friends and family.
He answers the question “What inspired you to write stories about Hong Kong?” on the Artsy Raven podcast, Episode 9. This clip is an excerpt from the episode.
Musings of a Generic Asian 
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