When Easterly Showers Fall On The Sunny West

The drama starts with Chung Fung Yee (Liza Wang)'s character
giving birth to a son and taking her mother's advice, she
gives him away before she gets married, for the sake of both
families' reputation. Thirty years later, Muk Hing (Joe Ma)
comes to the town as a honest and upright peasant who tries
to get a job to support his adoptive family. There, he meets
Heung Ching (Charmaine Sheh) and her protective brother,
Heung Yeung (Evergreen Mak). However, he is later convicted
of a crime he didn't commit. He tries to use Charmaine to
escape, but he is caught by Poon Cheuk Wah (Raymond Wong),
who turns out later to be his brother. As he pawned the jade
that Yee left him, Yee realized that he is her son and then
asks her husband to save him by tipping off the authorities.

Yee's husband later takes a liking to Muk Hing and he
becomes their chaffeur and then, Yee's husband sends him to
learn banking from Yee's brother-in-law. Yee is
uncomfortable and again taking her mother's advice, she
tries methods to chase Muk Hing away but eventually, Hing
just gets closer and closer to them and during an accident
where Wah and Hing were kidnapped, and Hing managed to get
away, Hing's true identity is revealed. However, Yee cannot
acknowledge him in the open.

Heung Ching originally enters the Poons' as a future
daughter-in-law prior to an incident between the general she
was going to marry and Yee's father-in-law, who turned out
to be enemies. However, she eventually gives up her and
Wah's relationship as she feels that what she is doing is
not right, i.e. no freedom of choice and she does not wish
to let others down just for the sake of her own happiness.
Later, she falls in love with Hing, who has been helping
her. Due to rumours in the newspapers created by Hing that
Wah spent a night at a hotel with his best friend Fong Bo
Kei (Selina Lee), who was troubled due to her breakup with
her boyfriend Ho Cheung, and also Bo's father pretending he
was sick, they get married but do not sleep together.

After Hing is reinstated as the eldest son following his
grandfather and father's death, he takes over the family
business and does a lot of evil things as he is unable to
differentiate evil and good, and all he does is for the sake
of his family, and he wants his mother to be happy, as he
felt his mother abandoned him in the past because he didn't
make her happy... This all ended with a couple of unwanted
deaths and leads to Yee's sister wrecking revenge with
advice from Bo's father, who hated Hing. Finally, for his
love for Heung Ching, he wanted to put a stop to all this
but the corrupt sheriff offered him a post as an officer...

Overall Comments:

This is not the first pairing between Joe and Charmaine, and
I do agree they look good together, despite he looks a bit
thin than her. However, the last episode was a bit rushed,
and there were too many elements in the final episode. I
liked the love story between Bo Kei and Ho Cheung, however I
felt Raymond and Charmaine's love story was a bit draggy and
they should have spent time developing Joe and Charmaine's
love story. Also, more explanation should have been given to
Hing's misinterpretation that by "doing all this", his
mother would have appreciated it.

Wah falling to his death was quite a surprise and also
unexplained; there was no proof he died and he could have
survived. Also, this was not explained as the last episode
just crammed things together.

Overall, Liza's performance was convincing as the
daughter-in-law, Joe did well as both an evil and good
character, Charmaine's character was a copy of that in
Maiden's Vow but it was fine. Kiki Sheung as Chung Fung Tak
was impressive, but again, she often gets 'annoying'
characters that shout alot in each episode, like Kevin's
mother in Last One Standing, and Ron's sister in Lost in the
Chamber of Love.

The guy who acted as Charmaine's supposed husband, the
general, acted his part quite well. However, I could not
really understand how he started to like Charmaine. I don't
understand either how he could be connected to the
grandfather as their age range is quite large.

Kwan Ho Cheung's character is quite likeable. Even though he
was born as a gangster, you could see he really cared for
Joe as a friend, and he and Bo Kei really loved each other.
I'm not too fond of Bo Kei, though, as she is somewhat too -
liberalist (slightly overacted in my opinion). It was sad
when he had to break up with Bo when her father came to see
him, and he tried to make her leave him by womanising at the
brothel, but you could actually see how broken hearted he
was after she left.

Other than the main plot, there are also a number of
unnecessary stories that develop the friendship in the
story, such as Bo Kei's photos being snapped at by Kiki's
son when she was changing, misunderstanding it is Heung
Yeung, but actually Bo Kei's father wanted to blame Heung
Yeung as he knew Heung Yeung is his wife's ex-lover. He also
gets brutal and thinks his son is Heung Yeung and his wife
cheated on him, and this guy goes through a lot of phases
of change, initally a friendly man who turns brutal due to
the misunderstanding between him and Hiu Mei, then a hateful
person and finally, a person who has accepted that he is
going to die of cancer, at which he accepts Ho Cheung. I
don't remember the actor's name, but he's been in alot of
TVB dramas, both bad and good alike. He played as Kevin's
father in Last One Standing.

To sum up, a watchable series, other than the gruesome part
during the kidnapping. Some parts would require fast-
forwarding, especially when it goes on-and-on about family
reputation, or Fung Tak throwing tantrums.
Would consider it a sequel to "Maiden's Vow" as it is about
freedom of choice of females during 19xx. (female
liberalism?)