Sunday Pastimes

[flemmings]

Only an idiot would go down to Chinatown on a Sunday, but I wanted to look for mooncakes and I wanted somewhere to go this aft, so I did. And found that a) mooncakes are not sold in bakeries, they're sold in grocery stores and b) the downtown Chinese groceries all have the same three or four brands, one being some variant on peach and the rest lotus and all exorbitant unless you buy the individual mooncake in a tin, which sets you back four dollars and change. After qwerty and zan and the rest of you lot babbling last year about green tea and cappucino and you name it mooncakes, lotus paste doesn't really cut it. OTOH it's sweet and captivating and I'm glad I only bought one, so I shall now buy no more. Thus I dispose of mooncakes.

However, serendipity, wandered into the Dundas DVD stores and not the Spadina ones--

...and emerged with 我心飛翔/ Rainbow, and the knowledge that if I had an all region DVD player I'd have a source for cheap Woxin and reasonable Prince of the Han Dynasty-I-think, because my memory for Chinese titles is fuzzy. Uncle Ming's in it; I'm just not sure the series really is 大汉天子 and not something wth a similar name. But I shall go back some rainy weekday with my handydandy list of Uncle Ming's Oeuvre (largely pulled from Yesasia) and check; and the regionless player will doubtless follow in time.

Though googling first might be an idea. I was all set to order 江山風雨情/ The Dynasty on the basis of those stills on the yesasia page, which annoyingly one can't click'n'save and must present in b&w. More reading suggests the part is a slight walk-on and that there's much more of Pigface Whoever than of languorous Uncle Ming.

The List:

大漢天子/ 大汉天子 The Prince of Han

康熙王朝 Kangxi Dynasty

江山風雨情/ 江山风雨情 The Dynasty

北平往事 A Love Before Gone With Wind (criminy)

冬至 Winter Solstice (40 eps)

紹興師爺/ 绍兴师爷 Shaoxing Attorney

一代妖后 Empress Dowager

茉莉花 Jasmine (41 eps)

一江春水向東流/ 一江春水向东流 The River Flows Eastward

末代皇帝/ The Last Emperor (28 eps)

寇老西兒/ 寇老西儿 Kao Laoxier (20集)

魂斷秦淮/ 魂断秦淮 Hun Duan Qin Huai

圍城/ 围城 Fortress Besieged

浪淘沙 Lang Tao Sha

我的1919 My 1919

我们无处安放的青春 Nowhere to leave our youth

Comments

[paleaswater.livejournal.com]

There is a chain of Taiwanese teashop, Tenren, which is in almost every Chinatown, and almost certainly in Toronto's, which sells the best mooncake, in manageably small sizes. Also Fada, a bakery Chain which is all over US Chinatowns, also sells mooncakes. The boxes sold in groceries are the special imported ones from famous stores in Hongkong, which is why they're so expensive.

Don't get 江山風雨情, Uncle Ming is in only five episodes, though he does swoon and gasp most deliciously whenever he appears. There is condensed fifteen minute version with only Uncle Ming that's circulated around the web by his fans. Let me see if I can find it.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

My guess is our Tenrens and Fadas are up in Markham, which by me isn't even a suburb of TO but a small town on the outskirts, unreachable except by car. Shall check phonebook to be sure, but I've only ever seen one teashop in the Spadina area and it isn't them. But yeah, HK and expensive and by me not as good even as the Canada-packaged ones I bought last year.

He plays the Emperor's fater, yes? Just how young is the emperor supposed to be?

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Father, even.

[paleaswater.livejournal.com]

No, he died without issue, having devoted most of his life to being a carpenter, seriously. I think he passed the throne to a brother? cousin? nephew? Not sure. The Ming emperors are famous for their eccentricity.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Brother, wiki says. But the yesasia information seems to be confused. Says Uncle Ming plays the father of the emperor Chongzheng.

[kickinpants.livejournal.com]

Region-free players have gone waaaaaay down in price. I got mine about three or four years ago for $80. When I first came to Seattle 7 years ago, it was closer to $300. It's not a bad investment. :)

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Shall definitely check this out. Thanks.

[mikeneko.livejournal.com]

Hmm. May I point out that I have already posted about where to obtain a region-free DVD player for less than US$30 (http://mikeneko.livejournal.com/208942.html) with complete instructions on how to make it so?

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

But it won't play qwerty's VCDs! What use is it? Also requires being coded with a series of numbers that I bet doesn't come with the instructions. Where do you find the Magic Numbers to render players all-region?

[mikeneko.livejournal.com]

Yeep, I am running terribly late. And I will explain.

This is what one does: One picks a brand of player, one applies to Google for the region-free hacks. Some players (mainly domestic U.S. brands) are region coded via hardware; they cannot be hacked without a soldering iron. Others (foreign manufacturers, intended for international sales) are set to specific regions via software. That means the settings can be reset, often in very simple ways.

With El-Cheapo player I'd posted about, for example, all you need to do is press a key sequence on the remote keypad to reset the player's internal software to region 0 (all-region play). The hack combo for this player and many, many others is available on sites such as the one that I'd linked to in that post. :D

I'd add that some players intended for the international market not only can be reset to region 0, but they _also_ can play multiple video standards (such as PAL, the UK/Europe standard) and bypass copy-protection coding (aka Macrovision). As demonstrated in test runs, El-Cheapo does all that after the player's coding has been reset.

As for Qwerty VCDs, they still play just fine in any DVD/CD player on a computer (as well as in my old DVD player), so it's not as though they're completely off limits. :P

[tanbi.livejournal.com]

I shall bear this info in mind when looking for region frees. But in my case qwerty's VCDs won't play on my old DVD or computer, so I'd like something where they will.