[News] Conflicts between brothers led to crying scenes a 60% of total screen time in Jiu Jiang Twelve Wine Mills

***MAY CONTAINS SPOILERS***

TVB has recently placed more importance on scenes between males. In [Lives of Omission], a moral of good vs evil is portrayed, while in [Jiu Jiang Twelve Wine Mills], a value of kinship and integrity is conveyed. In [JJ], Bowie Lam, Sunny Chan and Pierre Ngo act as 3 brothers from 2 families. They have to face with the toughness of operating their own family’s wine mills, and also each obstacle in the path of their individual relationships. Even though each has their own “man sufferings”, once all of them shed tears, tears can flow non-stop even in an all-man scene. Nancy Sit has described that about 60% of all screen time is devoted to crying scenes, “when we come back to ancient dramas, we see a lot of scenes about kinship, the scenes have a clear distinction between good and evil as well, so it is suitable for all ages in the family to watch”. Yesterday, producer Wong Wai Sing as well as the main casts Nancy Sit, Pierre Ngo, Linda Chung, Kong May Yi, and Evergreen Mak turned up for the outdoor promotional function for [JJ]. During the interview for Information Times, they revealed first-hand information about the best scenes in the drama.

Wine Making Skills over Wine Quality

Since [JJ] has a setting in “Wine Culture”, the function can’t possibly lack an element of wine. The cast showed up at the function in their Qing Dynasty costumes, and opened the seal for the wine that was sealed all throughout filming. Thereafter the artists challenged each other’s wine drinking ability. As Sunny Chan and Bowie Lam were absent due to filming elsewhere, Pierre Ngo was the only male artist present in the event. He bottoms up one glass of wine, and was praised by the audience for great wine drinking ability. After the wine drinking, the cast split up into groups to play wine tasting games, where they have to differentiate between the 4 main wines of Jiu Jiang by looking, sniffing, asking and cutting. Also, the group that can list out the 12 wine mills of Jiu Jiang in the shortest amount of time will win the game. In the end, the group with Nancy Sit and Pierre Ngo won the game. After the function, Pierre Ngo laughed and said that he only has average wine drinking ability, and that “the one who can drink the best in the entire cast is actually Sire Ma, for she had to be carried back to her room after she got drunk the last time”.

Thickness of kinship over thickness of wine

[JJ] depicts the conflicts between the Sung and Leung families in their wine mills. The drama is set in the town of Jiu Jiang in the city of Fo Shan. The town of Jiu Jiang had 12 very prosperous wine mills in the past. Bowie Lam acts as the elder brother of Pierre Ngo, and their brotherly relationship has never been affected by the fact that both of them do not have any blood ties. Pierre Ngo acts as the eldest son in the Sung family, and initially learns the wine making techniques from Bowie Lam. Later on, he was misled by some bad people and nearly made his family and friends leave him. Pierre said that his character is a very complicated character, much more different than the “pai guat tzai” that he acted as in [No Regrets]. This character has a lowly side (like a beggar) as well as a cunning side. But in the end under his family’s help, he turned good, and that is very touching to watch.

Nancy Sit mentioned that due to filming in the wine mills, she could feel the warm hearts of the people in Jiu Jiang, “the villagers are very warm hearted, they would take out all the nice wines that they have, and we would have wine to drink in every meals. Also, they would make lots of fresh river seafood for us. I have never come to film in the mainland for a long time, and it is really warm hearted.”


Characters give off positive energy (Linda portion)

Linda acts as a daughter in the Sung family, naturally born with uneven length of the legs. The villagers are afraid that this will be hereditary, and as a result no one dares to marry her. Eventually she falls in love with Bowie Lam’s real brother Sunny Chan, but is not accepted by his mother Nancy Sit. Even though everyone has a tough situation that they cannot change, they still accepted the predestined fate, no wonder the production team praises this drama as one that is very warm hearted, and is full of positive energy.

Linda Chung: “I act as Sung Tze Tsing, she is like a sunflower, even though she has a born disability, she does not feel inferior, but rather becomes very objective.”

Translated by Joshick @ LindaCottage

Thoughts: Wasn't sure if I wanted to post this up due to abit too much spoilers...but eh. I like watching sad series...just hopefully it won't be draggy though. Seeing the clips (limited amount...) of Linda so far, I'm really looking forward to seeing her in here....though I'm sad that she'll probably have many crying scenes :( Think how tough it was to cry for 60% of the series!