A Touch of Green (2015) (DVD) (Ep.1-31) (End) (Deluxe Edition) (PTS TV Drama) (Taiwan Version) DVD Region 3

Like Tsao's previous adaptations, A Touch of Green departs from and adds to the source material, very significantly in this case, to record the turbulent lives of a group of Nationalist air force pilots and their families from 1945 to 1971. Tsao and screenwriter Huang Shi Min do an amazing job enriching and adapting Pai's story and characters such that it feels true to the original while also taking on a completely new life of its own.

Pai's original short story Yi Ba Qing is part of the pioneering writer's seminal Taipei People collection. In the story, a Nationalist army pilot's wife recalls her encounters with Zhu Qing, a young, fresh-faced girl who marries her husband's student. Years later, after the narrator has moved to Taipei, she comes across Zhu Qing again and finds that the shy girl of yesteryear has become a flirty, sashaying singer who boldly works the crowd and strings men along. The untold years in between had forever changed this woman. This is all Pai's story provides, a before-and-after picture relayed calmly by an aged widow.

In A Touch of Green, the narrator of the story is Mo Ting, a pilot's daughter who as a young girl lives through the tragedy and upheaval of war and witnesses the toll inflicted on her parents' generation. Mo Ting's mother is Xiao Zhou (Tien Hsien), a name mentioned only in passing in Pai's story but fleshed out in the drama into one of the main characters. Per the air force's tradition of taking care of widows, the feisty and straight-spoken Xiao Zhou remarries reticent, steady-eddy deputy captain Shao (Gabrielle Lan), who holds himself responsible for the death of Zhou's first husband. Qian Yi (Cheryl Yang), the original narrator in Pai's short story, is the matron of the military dependents' village. While her husband, captain Wei Cheng (Leroy Young), leads the Eleventh Brigade in aerial combat, Qian Yi steers the ship at home as the firm voice of reason and leadership for anxious air force wives, and the bearer of bad news when pilots don't safely return.

The story begins in 1945 at the end of WWII when the long-awaited days of peace and reunion have supposedly finally arrived for the surviving pilots and their families. Lieutenant Guo Zhen (Chris Wu) returns to the village a broken man as the only survivor of his unit. His inner demons are calmed when he meets Zhu Qing (Cindy Lien), a student of a nearby women's college who becomes Mo Ting's tutor. The proud and stubborn Zhu Qing and the rash and charismatic Guo Zhen push and pull over a relationship that shouldn't be and yet is meant to be. Against the odds, they dream of a future together outside of the air force, but with the outbreak of the Chinese Civil War, the pilots are sent back into combat, this time to fight a war with no honor and no hope.

The three different main couples each carry stories of profound love, loss and sacrifices against two decades of unforgiving turmoil. At times heroic, at times gripped with anger and fear, and always haunted by the cries of fallen comrades, the men take to the skies in deadly missions while looking to loved ones below as their beacons. The women on ground carry no less a burden as they bravely forge a sense of normalcy while waiting for their husbands and dreading the worst. The focus of A Touch of Green is more on the women, unsung by history, and how they support each other and their husbands through the years.

Needless to say, history is cruel to the bearers of this war-torn generation, and audiences should be prepared to have their hearts put through the wringer. The first two-thirds of A Touch of Green is set in Mainland China from 1945 to 1949, during which the short interim of peace gives way to the dark days of war. The drama's portrayal of the Chinese Civil War is remarkably balanced. Though told from the Nationalist side, the drama doesn't demonize the enemy; rather, it baldly portrays the horrors of war for the ordinary people and powerless foot soldiers caught in the fray.

The final third shifts to Taiwan where the Nationalists retreat and resettle after losing the war, though home for Mo Ting is still a military dependents' village. As devastating as war is, A Touch of Green reserves its most emotionally trying developments for after the time jump when the protagonists have been indelibly transformed by the scars of war. Like in Pai's short story, we meet Zhu Qing again years later after she's willfully turned herself into a different person. War trauma and the shameful burden of survival turn Wei Cheng and Qian Yi into shadows of their former selves. The air force village is also not spared from the witch hunting of the White Terror and the combat casualties of the Cold War years. A Touch of Green's depiction of the fear, distrust and propaganda of the White Terror period is especially disquieting and poignant. The latter years, however, are also slightly dragged down by overwritten melodramatic elements, as well as some terrible performances by Western actors as U.S. soldiers.

Though the tragedy can get numbing after a while, the protagonists' conflicts, anguish and fates never come across contrived because the drama does such a wonderful job of rendering the time, place and circumstances driving their lives. The strong characterizations also elicit strong performances from the cast, in particular Tien Hsin and Chris Wu. A Touch of Green's story may be fictional, but it feels reflective of a generation's real scars and struggles. The decision to use Mo Ting as a narrator holds especial significance at the end as her subtle coming-of-age storyline provides gentle closure to the decades of love, loss and turmoil.

One would be hard-pressed to name another recent Taiwan drama as emotionally compelling and magnificently realized as A Touch of Green. Like Crystal Boys, A Touch of Green will be remembered as a classic masterpiece of Taiwan television.