First published in Newtype USA magazine

Chinese Whispers

Shy teenager Shancai (Barbie Hsu) unexpectedly wins a place at the prestigious Yingde Academy, where the pretty girl is soon scandalised by the behavior of some of her fellow students. The school is ruled by the infamous F4, a quartet of spoilt rich brats who even strike fear into the hearts of the teachers. Their word is law, but the plucky Shancai stands up to their bullying.

She earns the guarded respect of some of her classmates, and a mixed reaction from F4. The bullies' nominal leader Dao (Jerry Yen) finds himself falling for Shancai, but she has no interest in him at all. Instead, she discovers that she is developing feelings of her own for the withdrawn Hua (Vic Zhou), a quiet member of F4 who is too hung up on his childhood sweetheart Qing (Qian Weishan) to notice.

It may sound unfamiliar when read out in Mandarin, but the story should ring bells with any fans of Yoko Kamio's 1992 manga serial Hana Yori Dango (Boys Over Flowers). The names sound strange to Chinese ears, too, but they have the added exoticism of a Japanese pedigree: Shancai is the original's Makino Tsukushi, Dao is Tsukasa Domyoji, and Hua is Rui Hanazawa. Yingde is simply the Mandarin pronunciation for the Japanese Eitoku Academy - the 2001 Taiwanese TV series Meteor Garden is no more or less than Hana Yori Dango replayed with a Chinese accent.

Ever since the surprise success of Love Generation in Hong Kong, Japanese TV has been one of the cornerstones of programming right across Asia. On any night of the week, from Singapore to Taipei, local trendies can be found on their sofas in front of Japanese import TV, preferring the sight of Asian actors with Mandarin subtitles to the inscrutable Occidental entertainments of ER or Dawson's Creek.

At the beginning of the 21st century, Asian TV channels are awash with Japanese TV serials, creating a rush to duplicate their success with homegrown talent. Japanese producers themselves began to pander to their new-found foreign success by adding foreign stars to their cast lists - recent years have seen the Taiwanese Takeshi Kaneshiro appear in Love 2000, the Cantonese Faye Wong in False Love, the Taiwanese Vivian Hsu in Lady of the Manor, and the Korean Won Bin in the international coproduction Friends. Producers across Asia also tried to discern what it was that made Japanese TV successful, leading some to hit on the source for many of the most popular shows - manga.

This, then, is why some manga have suddenly found themselves transformed into TV serials outside Japan. The popular romance Asunaro Confessions was remade as Tomorrow in Taiwan, alongside live-action local versions of Marmalade Boy and Taro Yamada. But the biggest of the remakes was the Taiwanese production of Hana Yori Dango, a.k.a. Meteor Garden.

If anything, Yoko Kamio's comedy of class and manners plays even better with a money-conscious Taiwanese audience. Barbie Hsu plays Shancai as an endearing Cinderella figure, eternally tormented by two tall, gold-digging ugly sister-types, and railing against the injustices visited upon her by F4. If there's any downside to the Taiwanese remake, it's the generally poor quality of acting from a cast that has clearly been hired for looks over talent, and shunted around each scene like shop dummies by a crew who expect nothing better from them. Needless to say, the boys of F4 and Barbie Hsu all have singing careers outside their acting projects, and all remain a popular fixture on Taiwanese youth TV.

When real actors arrive on the scene, the difference is palpable, such as when the show is regularly stolen by Huang Yet and Tong Che Chen as Shancai's social-climber parents, utterly shameless in their pursuit of their daughter's advancement. Endlessly complaining of their poverty ("I had to sell my blood for you!" Dad boasts), they would dearly love their daughter to get swiftly pregnant by one of the college rich kids, thereby allowing them to marry into a wealthy family and stop paying the college fees in one easy step. In an eye-opening difference to viewers used to the gentle innuendo of Japanese TV, the chaste, childish nature of the teenagers' flirting is regularly blown out of the water by the parents' earthy humor - "The only thing stiff about you is your liver!" Mom yells at her hubby on one memorable occasion.

Meteor Garden is already an underground hit with many anime fans, particularly since the release in Hong Kong of a legitimate DVD version of the entire series, complete with English subtitles. Surprisingly, this puts this Taiwanese remake several years ahead of any of its Japanese contemporaries - if a drama series does get subtitled, it tends to be solely for broadcast on US cable for Asian immigrants, and such shows have yet to make it to video in America. Could it be that the first "living manga" to achieve true success in America will have to come through the filter of a Chinese adaptation? Only time will tell.

Jonathan Clements is the coauthor of the Dorama Encyclopedia: A Guide to Japanese TV Drama Since 1953.