Features

1The Household Members of

Ours Are Manyby Lisa Chang

2My Favorite Comedy TV Showby Steven Lin

3OB (Office Boy)by Irwandi Indra

5The funny movie “All’s Well, Ends Well 1992”by Ada Ma

4Living on right or left side—a small apartment with happinessby Sunny Chen

7Live Left And Live Rightby Angela Fang7The Story of Timeby Zoe Hsieh

9People Partyby Henry Lan

9Movie Comedy - Catchby Joyce Wen

10Funny TV comedy “kang shi lai le”by Caridee Chen

Executive EditorAiden Yeh

DesignerIrwandi Indra

Image ConsultantChester ChouPenny Li

There were times when I was deeply enchant-ed with the amusement of watching TV comedy shows. Among these fascinating shows, my personal favorite is the The Household Members of Ours Are Many show. Started from the year 1995, it was the first live broad-cast TV sitcom which attempted to bring the theatre art into the TV industry in Taiwan. Although there are many television shows at present, none of them could defeat my favorite TV comedy show of the 1990s. The story of the play was built on the interaction of all the tenants living in the building of a shutdown factory named Cleanflow. Because of this setting, the cast of characters involved in this play are too many to mention. However, the audience could still identify each character easily, for they are all stage artists of great renown and with identifiable characteristics. For ex-ample, Jin Tueng, the landlord of the household apart-ment, was played by the experienced stage actor (Gu Bao Ming). He stays with his tenants in the building of Cleanflow factory in Taipei City and manages this rent-ing business stingily to earn his living. Another charac-ter Jin Xin is the elder cousin of the landlord. He is an innocent man, with his ridiculous speech to reveal the truth and make the audience laugh. And Miss Lin, a con-ventional old single lady, is there to contradict people’s ideas by criticizing their behavior. Other characters such as the sentimental young lady Z Yun who works as the local radio host, the hard-working young man A De who always sells his lunch boxes in the wrong occasions, and the naive part-time waitress Xiao Fong who always gossips about what she has heard from her customers, they construct their pieces of life all inside the Cleanflow factory building and share with other tenants. All the

scenes take place in the building of Cleanflow factory, with a clock hanging at the back to tell the time of day. This show is organized based on the tacit un-derstanding of all its performers, thus most of the epi-sodes came impromptu. The Household Members of Ours Are Many was made in the 1990s, and the major reason that made it a big success is that it seized the essence of the contemporary society as it adapted the up-to-date movements and developments of Taiwanese society into its play which stimulates the involving au-dience to reflect on their own situations. I remember a scene of the sentimental radio host Z Yun complain-ing to another tenant about her unfortunate experi-ence. Her sentiment is so strong that even though she is in her room on the second floor, other tenants downstairs can hear her every sigh clearly. People love the way it was presented, and of course this comedy show was a huge success of that year. I think that they made hu-morous remarks of everyday life is probably the most likely reason for so many viewers to love their show. I adore The Household Members of Ours Are Many because it is rather a stage play for the audi-ence to feel the direct emotions of the artists’ and its greatest charm of the theatre art, to partake in the life/live performance as well as to find a part in this creative work. Although The Household Members of Ours Are Many expired in 1998, it remains the record of broadcasting six hundred successive episodes. Up to now, it is still the most memorable TV comedy show for me. For its brilliant achievement, I believe it to be one of the timeless masterpieces of Taiwanese comedy.

The Household Members of Ours

Are Many

by Lisa Chang

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In Taiwan, comedy shows like “I love Lucy” and “Friends” are not that many, but in 1999, one comedy show called “An Shi Ai Mei Hui” gave me a very strong impression. It is the first comedy show I saw in Taiwan, and even now when I watch the show on Youtube, it still makes me laughing.

The show are mainly talking about funny things around an old marry couple, therefore, there are only two characters in the show. One of them is Tao Jing-ying, a very famous program host in Taiwan, acts the wife who called Tao Mei-Hui in the family. Although she is a house-wife, all she can do is spending the money and doing many unbelievable funny and silly things. The husband, Xie An-Shi played by comedian Xie Zu-Wu, is a em-ployee of a sales company. He is a husband who works very hard outside and take really care his wife, who al-ways makes him feel helpless and mad; he still loves her. Most of the scene happened at night in their bedroom.

The funniest episode I remember was one night, Xie An-Shi asked her wife to wake him up at 4 o’clock next morning, because he had a very important con-ference with his boss. Tao Mei-Hui promised she would wake him up, however, instead of sleeping, she started to think what job she could do so her husband didn’t have to work that hard. Then the idea she suddenly came up was betel nut beauty, then she started danc-ing on the bed. The way she imitated betel nut beauty was really funny that I could not forget even until now.

The well-written play and funny act-ing had caught many married women’s heart. Al-though the play had stopped at 2004, there are still lots of audiences wonder to see the show played on TV again now. To me, it is the greatest com-edy show in Taiwan I will never forget the actors.

by Steven Lin

My Favorite Comedy TV Show

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There are more than five television programs that I like to watch every day, but there is only one television program that I like to watch the most

-- it is called the OB (Office Boy) show. It is a comedy show which took place in the OK-TV office building and it tells about the humorous office’s way of life. Nowa-days, this comedy show is very popular in Indonesia.

There are seven main characters in the OB (Of-fice Boy). There are four actors as the officer staffs and three actors as the office boys. Mr. Taka is the manager of Human Resources Department. He is very strict and he always gives a physical punishment (ex: push up, squats, etc) to his careless staff. His secretary, Sasha, is an ab-sent-minded woman and has a unique laugh. Actually, Mr. Taka loves her so much but he isn’t brave enough to tell her directly. The other two staff members are Hendra as the diligent staff but so stingy, and Gusti as the funky staff and is well-known as the “Player”. The other three office boys: Sayuti, is an innocent man form country side and his friend Ismail is a talkative man with a high-pitched voice which always make Odah (fat and greedy woman as the chief of office boy) get in temper. Most of the scenes take place in the work’s place and in the pantry.

There are so many funny episodes and in ev-ery episode there was always a special guest (a fa-mous actor/actress, singer, etc.). My favorite episode is when one of the famous group bands, Nidji, comes to the OK-TV. All of the staff don’t know if Nidji will come. Hendra and Ismail are big fans of them. When Mr. Taka knows that Nidji will come, he become so con-fused how to keep both of them away from the super-star. He asks all of his staff to keep the news secretly from them. The problem comes as they know Nidji comes to their office. Both of them become so under-controlled and hysterics. They sing one of the Nidji’s songs out loud with the funny expression and terrible voice. More-over, Mr. Taka asks them to do push-ups; however, they started singing a song when they’re doing the pun-ishment. I laughed out loud when I watched this show. I like to watch the OB (Office Boy) so much be-cause each actor has his/her own uniqueness in their character. Moreover, every episode is well-written and so entertaining. It makes me feel like I want to watch it all over again. No doubt, many people love to watch it.

OFFICE BOY

by Irwandi Indra

Graphic Source:http://www.rcti.tv/assets/shared/program/393_390x225.jpg

Everyone loves to watch funny or interesting TV shows, especially those which are close to our life since they make us feel we are a part of the TV

shows. When it comes to my favorite local TV program, I would definitely choose “Living on right or left side—a small apartment with happiness”. It was a popular TV show with high TV rating when I was a senior high school student. Almost everyone around me watched it and crazy about it; moreover, the plot of each epi-sode even became the topic of our conversations every-day. It seemed to have magical power to the audience.

The story began with an ordinary but warm family in a community which is called“Happiness Community”. This was a small family with four members, including Mr. and Mrs. Guo, their daughter who is a junior high school student and a traditional grandma who always spoke half Taiwanese and Chinese. Mr. Guo was a main com-mittee member of their community so he had to solve almost all kind of problems in the community. Yet his real career was a chief in a TV station. Mrs. Guo used to be a singer but became a house wife after she mar-ried Mr. Guo. Their naughty daughter was in her adoles-cence and always asked a lot of questions to make Mr. and Mrs. Guo confused. As for the grandma, she spoiled her granddaughter very much just like other Taiwanese grandma did. Besides,she was a very welcome person in their community because she treated everyone kind.

As I just mentioned, this was a very ordinary family and there was even no differences from those in real life. So, what made this TV show so popular with the audience? From my point of view, I thought this was a little similar with the Cosby’s Show. Most importantly, it was more funnier and more humorous. For instance, ev-ery time when Mr. Guo came home from busy work in TV station, he still had to take care of all the things in their

community because he was considered the most reliable person in this community.In fact, there was nothing to do with Mr. Guo of most of the thing, because those were out of his duties. He even had to help other house-holders to find their missing dog or mates for those who were single or divorced. Moreover, the living room of his apartment became a public place for everyone who lived in this community. He was just like a mother in their community but also a good father in his family. However, he still had a lovely wife who shared these duties with him. His mother, the grandma, played an important role in this show and I thought she was a spirit character. A traditional grandma was a main point which made this TV show more close to the audience. Actually, all she did in the show was the same as other grandmas in our real life. As for the other characters, they did the same thing too. They were just normal people like you and me. On the other hand, all the actors in this show had excellent acting and they could make audience laugh without exaggerative ways of acting.This was totally different from “I Love Lucy”.Yet they were all comedies.

Things happened in the Happiness Community could also occur in our real life. You may say it was just made into a TV show. I thought the main reason why it became so popular was that it gave us a dream life just like the Cosby’s Show. Since there was no violence or sadness in the show, all the people lived in happiness just like the name of their community. They may have worries sometimes, but things would be solved in the end. Most importantly, they had omnipotent “Mr. Guo”. I believe this was what the audience like the most, only happi-ness in the world. For happiness is the thing that our society really lack for, yet we saw it in this TV show.

Living on right or left side — a small apartment with happiness

by Sunny Chen

4Graphic Source:http://www.settv.com.tw/metro/m094/download.htm

Since I was a child, I like to watch TV. In many of the TV channels the one that I like the most is the movie channel. Until now I have already

watched many local movies. You may ask me after watching many movies, what kind of movie do I like? I can tell you definitely, I like comedy, and my favorite local movie is “All’s Well, Ends Well 1992.” Its name in Chinese means that someone will marry in the fu-ture. It is all about a story of a family. The movie was serialized in 1992. Although it’s an age-old movie, still many people watch it and many of them like it.

“All’s Well, Ends well”, a romantic comedy, there are three main characters in the movie. The point of the movie goes around the three brothers and their af-fairs. The oldest brother, Chang-man, is an executive in a company. His wife is an assiduous and frugal woman. They have only been married for a few years and the husband didn’t love his wife as before and they had the third person between their marriages. Then they caused an interesting family revolution. The second brother, Chang- sau, is a flower arrangement teacher. He’s a sissy man; his eyes can only accept his child-hood sweetheart. But one day he found that his child-hood sweetheart has already had a boyfriend. He was very sad and incidentally he started with a new affair. The younger brother, Chang-huan , is a radio station host, he has a charming personality and a magnetic voice so his audience were attracted by him. But he is unfaithful in love. He changed his girlfriend as fast as he can. He can dump girls easily and cheated the girls. But not all of the girls can easily be cheated by Chang-huan. At last Chang-huan was be found that he was unfaithful in love so a girl appeared to give him a lesson and subjugate him. Since then he became faithful in love. The movie is closed to our life.The love affairs are that we can hear in our life. And so many scenes take place in their house. Some of scenes are take place in their work places. It’s what we familiar in our life.

Why do I like this movie so much? Believe me. The movie is really funny! Another reason is that Stephen Chiau is one of the actor in

the movie and he acted the role Chang-huan. When I watched the movie there are so many funny episodes. For example,the younger brother is unfaithful in love. One day he took a girl to his home and they are in his room prepared to do something unfaithful to his girl-friend. Suddenly his girlfriend came to his home and he was scared by her. Although his face turned embar-rassed, he tried his best to dismiss her from his home. He succeeded. Then came back to the room happily but the accident happened! He was stepped on a skateboard, and then he pushed the girl and the girl fall out of the window. He knew that his girlfriend just down stair and the girl may bump into her in half-dressed at the yard. Exaggeratedly, he jumped out of the window and at the same time he transient had Kung Fu. Druing the short period of time He pushed the girl strongly then the girl flew back to the room.Unfortunately, when she back to the room, she acted like Chang-huan has done before, she stepped on the skateboard and fell over the room then rolled down the stairs. It happened so coincident. Chang-huan and his girlfriend met in the yard. In a min-ute the girl rolled down the stair and can’t stop rolling out of the house. So they met each other in the yard. Chang-huan was so scared and frightened that he comically did some somersaults to evade the embarrassing situation. He turned over the enclosure, jumped over the car, fi-nally he bumped a tree and stopped in front of the tree then the egg in the bird nest on the tree fell down and hit Chang-huan. You might not believe that he fainted just because of a little bird’s egg. After been sent to hospital, the doctor said that he got a brain concussion. Then he started to have some weird symptoms and the symptom we common knew that it can only happened on female. The symptom which was he would not do under his hand-some appearance. Such as When he saw his girlfriend stood in front of his room, his reaction and his facial ex-pression is changable.Sometimes he cried, sometimes he

The funny movie "All’s Well, Ends Well1992”

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laughed and angry at the sa-metime.So It’s really funny to me. I think this is the fun-niest episode in the movie. I like the movie “ All’s Well, Ends Well 1992” and I have admired Stephen Chiau for many years. He is a great actor and director. Although it is an age-old movie, as I have said still many people watch it, like it. They had a happy ending. So when people watched the mov-ie can also be affected by the happy atmosphere.Time goes by and people grow old but the happiness of watching this movie will always keep in our heart.

by Ada Ma

Graphic Source:http://www.photo1.bababian.com/upload11/20080503/A86632000EB94339EAF032F1287D1271.jpg

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There are a lot of television shows in Taiwan, espe-cially comedies. Comedy is necessary to modern people, we can relax when we watch the comedies.

Live Left And Live Right is one of the good comedies.

Live Left And Live Right was broadcast in 2004, and it was very popular at that time. The main character is the Guo family. There are four members in the Guo family. The father Guo Fu-Chien, is a commissioner of their community. The mother Chen Shio-Shio is a house-wife and the daughter, Guo Zoon-Zoon, they live with the grandmother, Mon Jian-Niou. The program shows the Guo family gets along with neighbors and some unex-pected events in the community. The main scenes are at the Guo’s house, the gymnasium and the sushi restaurant. Sometimes, the scenes are at the Guo’s neighbors’ houses.

When I first watched this film, I think it is very hu-morous. It is unlike other television comedies, it uses funny conversation and movements instead of sexual jokes. For example, when Guo Fu-Chien’s former girlfriend came back, he recollected the past between him and his former girlfriend. Their conversation is what the famous poet, Shiu Zi-Mo, said to his lover, but the screenwriter change it into a funny way. The screenwriter revise some phras-es to let it be a little exaggerated, but it does not affect the meaning. I think the screenwriter is so great that he has this special idea, and that scene is my favorite scene.

I like to watch Live Left And Live Right because of the amusing conversation among the characters and the vivid expressions of the actors. It is not lon-ger being shown on TV, but the excellent plots still at-tract many audiences to enjoy it by surfing the Internet.

Live Left And Live Right

by Angela Feng

The funniest TV program I have ever watched is “The Story of Time” It’s about some events be-tween a few families of a small village in old

Taiwan. I like this TV show because I love the way they talk to each other. They make normal things in a exaggerate and happy way. I think that is why this show is so popular in Taiwan these days.

There are four main characters in the show, in-cluding Sun Yi-Mei, Tao Fu-Pang, Hsu Yi-Yuan and Chien Chien. They are all students in the same school and their family know one another. The interesting things between them is the way they get along with each other. For ex-ample, they sometimes greet each other by telling a joke to avoid the embarrassing situation. We can also know more about their life style and how the environment looks like in 70s or 80s Taiwan. It reminds my parents a lot of precious memories such as the scooters, houses, students’ hair styles and their khaki uniforms. There are many dif-ferent scenes at different family’s home or on the street.

The Story of Time

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My favorite scene of all the episodes is when Tao Fu-Pang helps his parents sell foods on the street. His parents are vendors who sale noodles and dump-lings. In the beginning, Fu-Pang’s mother is standing on the left side while his father is standing on the right side. They are making the stuffing for the dumplings. Fu-Pang stands in the middle of his parents. When Fu-Pang takes the stuffing which is made by his father to his mother, his mother tells him “Tao Fu-Pang, tell your father, I’m not satisfied with these stuffing. I won’t take it unless your fa-ther makes it better.”. When Fu-Pang back to his father and says “Dad, mom says...”, his father interrupts him and says “Tao Fu-Pang, tell your mother, these are the best stuffing I’ve ever made and I’m not going to make it again.”. They let Fu-Pang bring messages for several times. They keep fighting untill Fu-Pang says “Enough! You two must work out this on your own, I’m going to study with Chien Chien.”. The interesting thing is that Fu-Pang’s parents talk very loud and they can actually hear each

other clearly but they still ask Fu-Pang to bring messag-es. It’s not that so funny that makes you laugh out loud but you will smile and feel interesting from you heart.

This TV program is successful and popular in Taiwan because these actors and actresses make their ordinary life interesting and make the audience laugh. I’m sure “The Story of Time” will keep making people happy and the number of people who watch this show will beincreasing regardless of their age in the future.

by Zoe Hsieh

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When I am tired, I switch on the TV and watch the programs in which I am interested. There are a lot of comedy shows in Taiwan.

However, my favorite comedy show is “People Party.” People Party is a kind of show that uses a humor-ous way to discuss the societal events or political prob-lems. There are six main actors who are very good at imitating in the show. They play the roles who are popu-lar at that time, like, politicians or presidents of other countries,etc. They perform the characters with some funny ideas, like the gestures, intonations, clothes, fea-tures, etc. The most interesting part is that they state their opinions with a sarcastic tone to entertain the audience.

In that show, I like the performer whose name is Jiu Kong. I think he is the most amusing than any oth-er performer. He is very good at imitating and likes to sing. Therefore, he always plays the roles who are famous or peculiar at that time, like, the movies stars, singers, and politicians. The part which impressed me most is that he played the role of the famous singer, Vitass. Jiu Kong became the Russian singer like Vitass and imitated how Vitass sang songs( With the dolphin vocal sound) to show his personal opinion by sing-ing recomposed songs. His performances really make me laugh and look forward to seeing his imitation. I do enjoy this show so much. It’s a good way for me to understand what has happened in our soci-ety. Furthermore, it really takes my ease . By watch-ing this show, I can use a relaxed attitude to see the show instead of using a tense and serious point to confront what happened to our society and politics.

When I have free time, I love to turn on the tele-vision, and search for the movie channels. Therefore, I have seen many movies, but the

most impressive one is a local comedy, which named Catch.

The story is based on a scam clan. There was a rumor that spread everywhere that the king of cheat has come back. The police men try to arrest him to win honors, and the deceiver want to inspire him to be their leader. Also, the reports attempt to get this big interview. Even though no body can recognize the ap-pearance of this important deceiver, the police have already taken the action. They ask a man called Le-Ji Wu, who is good at acting, to slip into the scam clan to get more information about the king of cheat. In the end, will Le-Ji find out the big figure finally, or the police will find something wrong by themselves?

Catch is a really interesting movie, into which set a lot of laugh points, but the part which attracts me most is the tricks scam clan use. In order to get more money, they do their best to the public by mak-ing phone calls. For example, an actress was pretend-ed to be to be a younger sister and shouted next to the phone for help. Besides, the scam clan claims that an old man owed them a huge amount of money, how-ever, his daughter said her father has been paralysis.

The reason I love Catch is that it deeply reflects the social problem. In addition, the serious issue is described into a comedy, so that the audience can relax to enjoy this film. Therefore, Catch becomes my favorite local movie.

by Henry Lan

People Party Movie Comedy -Catch-

by Joyce Wen

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There are many television shows in Taiwan, and I’ve seen lots of the shows. However, the show that impressed me the most is called “kang shi

lai le”. The name of the show comes from the host’s name. It’s an entertainment TV program which was broadcasted in 2004, it is still being broadcast now.

In this TV show, there are two main hosts.One of them is Hsiu Shi-Ti , also called “small S.” The other one is Tsai Kang-Yung . In the show, they would invite some well-known guests or stars to their show and in-terview them some questions.Through the conversa-tion, you will know more about the guest’s secrets and thinking that is unknown to audiences.The show would also present some different subjects,like dancing and singing contest, imitating contest, rummage around the guest’s private bag and so on. In addition, the hosts are so funny and humorous. They present the show by acting funny motion and say some interesting matters or play tricks on guests. Sometimes, the guests are also very witty. Most of the episodes are fun to watch.

There are many funny episodes, but the most in-teresting episode I remembered is that the guests was in-vited to the show and they had a dancing contest. When the contest came to the last guest, he could not danced well. For example, he couldn’t catch up the tempo of music and could not coordinate his dance steps well. The whole rhythm looked really funny and amusing. I laughed out loud when I saw it. It’s really funny, I cannot forget it now.

Having funny contents of TV show is so well-liked by everybody. It really holds a special attraction for me. Now, I watch this show from time to time and I will keep watching till the show stops broadcasting.

by Caridee Chen

Funny TV comedy

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