Taiwan doesn’t make period dramas anymore, not since China started churning them out twenty years ago with bigger budgets and the resources for vast location shoots. Many Taiwanese actors and actresses have since done period C-dramas but a few haven’t worked that extensively in the mainland so still hasn’t tried out the flowing robes for size. That’s about to change for Annie Chen, who has done a C-drama but just not a period one – her upcoming new TW-drama Nie Xiaoqian allows her to don the period goddess costume and look gorgeously perfect in it.

Nie Xiaoqian is the name of the famous fictional female ghost character from classic 1980’s HK-movie A Chinese Ghost Story with Leslie Cheung and Joey Wang, and launched Joey into super stardom.  The drama Nie Xiaoqian tells of the titular character played by Annie who time travels 500 years into the future and meets up the her incarnated loverboy played by Morning Mo and Christopher Lee as a doctor who in the past life was the Taoist monk who tried to help them. I like the leads and this actually looks pretty interesting, and will have a guest appearance by Damian Lau as the vengeful demon who still wants to control Xiaoqian’s life. The drama premieres at the end of February on the 27th. Continue reading →