铁齿铜牙纪晓岚

Rating:	★★★
Category:	Movies
Genre:	Comedy

This Chinese TV series which began in 2000 is now in its 4th installment. The comedic slant to court intrigues during the reign of Qianlong when Qing Dynasty reached its zenith was represented mainly through rivalry between the famed Qing humourist scholar Ji Xiaolan (Ji Yin) and the infamous corrupt official He Shen.

Sometimes caught between them, sometimes the driving force behind their activies, was the Emperor.

Throw in eye-candies of two female martial arts exponent of commoner background, the series managed to recapture some of the nostalgic memories from the 1960s-1970s Shaw Brothers movies on Emperor Qianlong and Liu Yong.

The problem when such stories are dramatised is that no dramatised fiction script could accomodate both historical figures Liu Yong and Ji Xiaolan - in terms of "stock character", they were too alike.

What is interesting about this series though was how it represents motivations and self-justification of the corrupt official He Shen for all his misdeeds.

It posed the questions
(1) Making the best use of corrupt officials as human beings are greedy by nature
(2) The emperor acknowledging that he needed to balance upright officials versus the rest - including He Shen who was instrumental in filling the imperial coffers through various means in the face of escalating state expenditure

After several arcs which saw conviction of various corrupt regional officials sentenced to be beheaded, a viewer like me does question how much does merely exposing these officials and executing them contribute to solving the perennial problem of graft in bureaucracy.

Under an autocracy, the accountability of these officials are not to the people they serve but to their superiors, and it was impossible for the man on top to ensure everything was done properly, not even with the help of honest officials.

When I thought of the underlying problem, the system itself cannot under the best of circumstances to work.

Expenses for the state are naturally high, tending towards extravagance in times of plenty but slow to cutback during times of famine.

It was not possible to pay officials generous wages to allow them not to feel inferior in some ways to tycoons in the private sector. Like it or not, even a high ranking prefect/governor who earns a pittance compared to the wealth of the merchants in his jurisdiction will find it hard to make them toe the line unless he is extraordinarily capable.

I am of course thinking of the million dollar salaries ministers of Singapore - no other country have such high wages for their elected public officials.

One quibble I have about the series is how it was editted - much loose ends or developments were not shown or accounted for explicitly, leaving viewers to make the connections themselves. While it is not much of a problem for veteran viewers of such genre, it can be very irritating and distracting to those who might be new to such shows.