deciphering themesongs #5

Love is Beautiful is a poignant tale pertaining to beauty and told through the story of two "sisters" - Ling Wan (Mariane Chan) and Chor Chor (Anne Heung) - and their switched lives and fates when one steals the face of the other. It's a moving tragedy, preaching endearing morals and presenting the issue of society's obsession with beauty and the superficial.

Love's themesong allows Ling Wan to voice her sorrows and all of hardships that she has to overcome as a result of her passionate love and Chor Chor's wickedness, jealousy, and greed.

Love's Price by Stephanie Che
(Themesong from TVB series Love is Beautiful)




English Translation by MetalAZNWarrior
If eyes can distinguish right or wrong,
Such a blink, can you see me clearly?
Sincerity hides within the heart
How to compose a love song of a thousand years with you?

Distinguish me from my body
Will such a girl love?
If outer appearances mislead, then use love
How can I make you see the real me
Come look at me clearly for once!

Cry! Is it I who doesn't know how to manipulate?
Is it you who doesn't understand me well?
Still believing, the truth is that my mood has yet to change to fakeness

Come, look!
A poorest life is not scary
Not resenting, regretting, or hating this poor life
This is the price of love

Analyzing the verses
Verse #1 deals with perception and being able to "see." People won't believe something unless they see it "with their own eyes." However, not everything that we "see" is actually the truth. Appearances can be deceiving and this causes misunderstandings. We have to look beneath the surface in order to fully understand or appreciate something. The line "Sincerity hides within the heart" reveals that Ling Wan feels beauty is from within. This is in agreement with her philosophy. When we first see her in the first few episodes, we learn that she purposely made herself ugly because she didn't want to marry someone who would only "love" her for her face - she wanted someone who would look deeper and fall in love with her inner beauty.

Verse #2 brings Chor Chor into the picture and elaborates more on the issue of outside appearance. She wonders if Chor Chor can truly love because she seems to be so greedy and superficial. To Chor Chor, the most important thing is wealth. This is what drove her to steal her Ling Wan's face (and thus life) and later on - her son. Everything she does is for the sake of maintaining superficial possessions. Ling Wan wants the Emperor (Eddie Cheung) to be able to tell it's still "her" even though Chor Chor has changed her face. She tells him to use his feelings for her to recognize her. She wants him to look at her from the inside and understand and know who she is - the real her.

Verse #3 raises very sad questions. Ling Wan ponders if it's her fault or the Emperor's that she's in such a predicament. Why won't he believe that she really is Ling Wan? Even though she faces many setbacks, she keeps fighting and maintains her optimistic spirit. No matter how much she falls or how hard, Ling Wan always climbs back up. She also wonders if she's "wrong" for not knowing how to lie and cheat. Her nature is so trusting (she likes to see and believe in the good in people) and innocent that Chor Chor easily feeds off of it and uses her. What's also admirable about her is the fact that despite it all (the lies, backstabs, and so on), Ling Wan never once changes. Her mentality and morals are intact. Not once does she sink into thoughts of bitter hatred or plots for revenge. She stays on high ground and that's pretty great. [Yes, I recognize that Ling Wan is too "perfect" and sometimes it is frustrating that she's so "nice," but Mariane plays her so wonderfully that it's forgivable. Besides, it would be out-of-character for Ling Wan to start plotting for revenge since she's been taught to 'do upon others as you wish done upon yourself' and she just truly believes in kindness.]

Verse #4 concludes the song well and relates back to its title. It also ends the song on a very powerful note. Ling Wan bravely declares that she's not scared of anything and that she doesn't feel bitter at her poor fate. Loving is painful, but she is willing to pay the price and she accepts and deals with her fate.

Conclusions made from the themesong
Love's Price (Ching Dik Doi Ga) foreshadows all of the difficulties and hardships that Ling Wan must pass through as a result of her immense love for the people around her (her family and friends). Loving someone isn't an easy task - they can make us extremely happy, but can just as easily shatter our hearts. Love can and usually involves sacrifices and it can be very painful. It has a high "price" but it's the best purchase anyone can "buy" and worth it all. A life without love just isn't life. Ling Wan shows us how far some people are willing to go in the process of loving.

Thoughts
What an excellent themesong choice! I loved the song because of Love is Beautiful and loved it even more when I realized the person who sang it was the highly underrated Stephanie Che ("Man Gwai Fei" from Virtues of Harmony). Stephanie has impeccable comedic timing, priceless facial expressions, and a sweet singing voice. The lyrics of Love's Price are also very meaningful and I am so happy to be finally able to comprehend it. When I heard it in 2001, I only knew that it "sounded" good but had no idea what it meant. In 2007, I finally understand it (in fact, the lyrics are quite simple) and it is a great thing. It's sad that it's been six years, but there still isn't a full CD version available for this song. It's upsetting, but I can only hope that when and if Stephanie releases another CD, she will include this song, but that's very doubtful. In any case, the song is still great and is a classic TVB song - along with the series.

"love is beautiful" - ahead of its time?

Who can forget the poignant 2001 ancient series that addressed humanity's value and definition of beauty? Love is Beautiful starred the brilliant (and missed!) Mariane Chan and Anne Heung, who gave one of her best performances to date. The series took place during the Sung dynasty and its premise revolved around two girls, Ling Wan and Chor Chor, both of whom are deemed the "ugliest" girls in a village renowned for beauties; Ling Wan has unsightly acne while Chor Chor has a massive birthmark on half of her face. Because of their common fate of being "ugly," Ling Wan and Chor Chor became sisters since childhood, growing up and facing the ridicules and discrimination from their fellow townspeople for their physical appearances together.

Ling Wan takes everything with stride while Chor Chor is extremely bitter. Chor Chor associates beauty with prosperity. She believes that "beautiful" people get everything that they want just because of their beauty, so she longs day and night to have this good fate. While Ling Wan is also "ugly," people are much more receptive towards her because of her kind heart. As it turns out, Ling Wan was feigning her unattractiveness because she wants people to see her inner beauty foremost. However, Chor Chor is convinced that Ling Wan's physical beauty is the reason why people like her. Her beliefs are furthermore confirmed when she meets Siu To (played by Marco Ngai), who can "magically" change someone's appearance temporarily by using a dough to form a new face. Chor Chor is able to live as a "beauty" (a refreshing Charmaine Sheh loaned her beauty to Mariane in her short cameo!) for a very short while and this experience makes her even more desperate for beauty as she begs Siu To to make the change permanent.

Meanwhile, Ling Wan meets and saves the emperor and she's set on becoming a royal concubine! Chor Chor gets into more trouble and even kills someone! Chor Chor's life is quickly going down the drain and she relates her failure to her unattractiveness and Ling Wan's good fate with her beauty... Siu To had mentioned to Chor Chor that Ling Wan had the same facial structure as her and was the perfect candidate for her face change. Chor Chor does the unthinkable and abuses Ling Wan's friendship with her. She abducts Ling Wan and begs Siu To to change her appearance forever.

Siu To performs his magic and then holds the faces of Ling Wan and Chor Chor in his hands. He switches the two girls' faces, changing their lives. Ling Wan now has Chor Chor's bad situations and Chor Chor now thrives in Ling Wan's seemingly perfect life...

The whole idea of switching faces and transplanting someone else's face onto another person seems all too fantastic, which is why this storyline takes place in ancient times. After all, the past is a big mystery to all of us. Sure, there are historical accounts, but really, who knows what really went on back then? The possibilities of the unknown are endless.

Recently, while sitting in my anatomy class, my professor mentioned a procedure called facial transplant. As he described the process, the first image that popped into my head was the scene in Love in which Siu To peeled off Ling Wan and Chor Chor's faces, switched them, and then placed them back on. (Odd how something from TVB was the first to come into my mind as I sat there in my sophomore-level class, huh?) Now, before you start thinking that this relatively new procedure is similar to the face transplant that Chor Chor received, let me state that it's not.

Facial transplant is basically a skin graft to the face. The surgeon takes the facial epiderms of a donor, reconnects all of the blood vessels, and then stitches the face back together. This procedure is useful for people who suffer from severe facial deformation (burns, cuts, and so on) in which cosmetic surgery can't help. Thus, the person has a chance to have a somewhat normal face again. The first partial face transplant was done in November 27, 2005 in France, in which they transplanted a nose and mouth onto the face of a woman who got ravaged by her dog. Full facial transplants have been done experimentally on dead bodies, but not yet on a living person. The first full facial transplant is planned for the near future; they are currently searching for a patient. Apparently, the surgery could take up to 20 hours and the success factor is only 50%.

Up until my anatomy professor mentioned face transplants, I had no idea that faces could be separated from the anterior portion of the fleshy head. Sure, I knew about masks and everything, but I always believed that "faces" were transfixed into the tissues that formed them. Since Love was fantasy, when I watched it, I thought the face removal was just as unreal as the whole face switching scene. Now that I know that the "face" can be removed, I have to say, TVB did an exquisite job with producing the "faces" of Mariane and Anne, very lifelike and detailed!

Did the ancient-setting Love is Beautiful predict a future before its time? Can the fantasy of Love become a reality? It's a relieving "no." Even if the surgery is successful, the recipient will not look like the donor whose face he or she received because facial bone structures do not match up exactly. Also, the donor has passed away, so there's no "switching." However, what if medical skills and technology advance so much in the future that scars will not be so evident and the face will look more "natural?" What if the surgery will always be successful? Will this prompt people who lust for beauty, like Chor Chor, to kill for a beautiful face?