Dear Mayang Street

One of the best family drama that I've watched

This is one of the best family drama that I've watched. The drama tells the story of six families in Mayang Street in Guangzhou. The story starts with the sixth family (with five family members) first move to the street. They then interact and became part of the community. The drama has very interesting characters, some with traits that you have met at least once in your life. We all have that nosy neighbor, that annoying auntie, the kindhearted grandma, the silly boy next door and the girl that everyone likes. The drama has a stellar cast from the young actors and actresses to the more experienced ones. I thought that most of the cast acted really well. The best acting in this drama goes to Timmy Xu. I first watched him in Addicted to Heroin but he was not memorable in that one. He played Ou Xiao Jian really well and portrayed the emotion of a very complicated character. I can feel his pain as I watch the drama and his breakup with Xiao Xiao was the saddest thing. They were the ones breaking up in the drama and I was the one who were sad and felt the pain. (It's that good! LoL). Another kudos goes to Niu Jun Feng for portraying Yi Dong Dong, also a complex character. They both acted really well in this drama. The drama is not all serious, there are some funny moments too and funny character like Liang Xiao Bao's father. He is comical and that includes Xiao Bao too with his comical expression. I will definitely rewatch this in the future. The ending is not what I expected and what I would have liked it to be, but it's still a good ending. The OST is also good and fitting to the tone of the drama. If you like dramas about life and family and friendship, I would totally recommend watching Dear Mayang Street. It's been two days since I finish the drama and I still miss the characters and their story.

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A Nice Drama about Growing From Teen Years To Adulthood

I had wanted to give up on this show so many times many times throughout watching it but I made it to the end. I chose this show being a Tan Song Yun fan. She was still the same lovely and talented actress but this may not have been her best performance. But I can say that about all of the major characters in this story. The show is not only long with 37 episodes but it covers many years in time, about half the lives of the major characters and even more if you count flashback scenes from times before this story began. I don't know if it was the script, the actors, or the director but if you are working with a story that covers such a large timespan, there should be some progression in the characters. It may have been tough on the actors to today playing a 16-year-old, then a few episodes later someone in their mid-twenties and by the end a thirtysomething. But aside from some hairstyle and makeup changes, many of the characters acted the same from beginning to the end. So, in the beginning, you have a group of very mature teenagers and at the end you see a group of very immature adults. And that went for the adult characters too. The parents didn't age from day one to the end of the story. But none of this detracts from my appreciation for the quality of the acting throughout the story.
The ending which for me makes or breaks a show was a letdown. Despite the writers giving away the ending in the middle of the next to the last episode, I still kept hoping for the hero to prevail. The very last scene seemed out of place too. It was somewhere between an epilogue and an afterthought. It was nice that they gave us closure to the character but the scene came out of nowhere with no explanation of what actually happened, although the result was obvious.
I will likely watch the show again at some time in the future but it is not at the top of my rewatch list.

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