Shall talk a bit about the chinese drama done by the chinese society.

I couldn't stand the play done by ri. The actors don't sound natural when they speak mandarin. Besides, the plot seems shallow to me. It's about bad people given a chance to redeem themselves but they don't cherish it, and one good guy eventually didn't need the chance to redeem himself. Simple good versus bad, coupled with unimpressive acting. For one, the ah beng at the "Battle of the Interchange" is way better than the ah beng here.

The second one about the shop was fun to watch, especially the part with the transvestite. The part where the main actor recited the stuff he had in his shop was also impressive.

The third one, which is supposed the main show, is impressive. Chen Bo and Wang Miao are really good. Not many people can spasm for 2 minutes without me having a chill run down my spine. Ho Wen Jun and Chen Bo are the only 2 people whom I know are capable of this.

This is probably really random but the only special lighting effects seem to be the flashing white light. Last year's flashing lights had a whole lot of colours with a larger range of frequencies. (Though I admit, the use of coloured lighting would not be quite as justified in this year's play)

The story was good, on par with last year's, except that the powerful acting made it more impressive. (The french monk in the thai temple was really damn random, and the smell of the incense lingered for a long time after that scene) Some lines in the play are just plain weird when you think about it.

"I'm not in such a bad state that I can't even afford a pack of cigarettes!"
"Of course you can afford normal cigarettes. But can you afford cigarettes laced with high purity heroin?"

The term "high purity" (in her own words, gao1 chun2 du4) was emphasized, perhaps to stress the fact that it is not cheap. But really, it's not like if the heroin was not pure the main character would not have been addicted.

"Then why are you not addicted to the cigarettes?"
*smirks*"That's because I smoke a different pack."

If you were sitting there, you would feel that the way they said those lines made it seem like it is a crucial piece of information to show us how the villain managed to sabotage the main character. But on hindsight, it seems like it's either that the heroin has really taken a toll on his intellect, or that he really flunked his college exams for a good reason.

To end this post with some randomness, I would suggest that the ending part of the play could play something like,

"I tried so hard
And got so far
But in the end
It doesn't even matter
I had to fall
To lose it all
But in the end
It doesn't even matter"

It sounds similar to what the main character said in the end almost before he jumped.

Sometimes it seems like it is possible to make a pun on anything, if you try hard enough. Like a rock. Or a roll. Or a cake.

Mrs Leong mentioned something about trying to find some chinese words that cannot be translated into other languages. I haven't found one. But chinese idioms are quite interesting to translate.

Let's start with the more literally intuitive ones.

zhi4 tong2 dao4 he2: Literally similar goals, same pathway. Describes close friends.
qing2 tong2 shou3 zu2: Literally relationship akin to that of hands and feet. Describes closer friends.

Less intuitive ones:
gua1 tian2 li3 xia4: Literally on field of melons, under (some fruit) tree. It's about avoiding suspicion.
zhang1 guan1 li3 dai4: Literally some guy wearing the another guy's hat. It means anyhow.

Direct translation is more fun.
zi4 xiang1 mao2 dun4: Own self spear shield.
bu4 fei1 ze2 yi3, yi4 fei1 chong1 tian1; bu4 ming2 ze2 yi3, yi4 ming2 jing1 ren2: Don't fly then nothing, fly then reach sky; don't chirp then nothing, chirp then scare people.