Joys of Life

Joys of Life is a Singaporean Chinese drama which was telecasted on Singapore's free-to-air channel, MediaCorp Channel 8. It stars Chew Chor Meng, Alien Huang, Rui En, Chen Liping, Zheng Geping, Chloe Wang, Kate Pang, Andie Chen, Huang Wenyong, Lin Meijiao and Zhang Yao Dong as the casts of the series. The series was repeated at 2am on Sundays and at 12am on Tue - Sat in Oct 2020 - Nov 2020. The series was produced to celebrate 30 years of Chinese language drama being broadcast in Singapore. Set in post-World War II Singapore, the story line spans the decade between the end of the Japanese occupation and the HDB's clearing of squatters during the late 1950s to early 1960s. It is the first on-screen pairing of Rui En and Alien Huang, and Huang's first Singaporean drama. Story In an old tenement house at Huaxiang Street, several families live together and play out the acts in life every day. The story revolves around six friends – Zhao Mingxing (Alien Huang), Qian Yiduo (Zhang Yaodong), Han Yongyong (Rui En) and her sister Rourou (Chloe Wang) and Sun Zibin (Andie Chen) and his sister Lianjing (Kate Pang) – and their families as they go about their lives in post-World War II Singapore. True to his name, Zhao Mingxing "Star", dreams of becoming a star. He is raised by his father, a movie billboard artist. Zhao Dagou (Chew Chor Meng), who has lived through the horrors of the Japanese Occupation, is a master storyteller. Dagou often chides Mingxing for being childish. Zibin, who works in the office of the TV station, has a leftist younger sister, Sun Lianjing. His mother Cai Shuxian (Pan Lingling) married Uncle Roti (San Yow), a bread seller, through an arranged marriage. Shuxian often gripes that she is a victim of a feudal marriage. Han Yongyong is the adopted daughter of Han Jianren (Huang Wenyong), a cook whose love for women and booze forces his wife Liu Daiyu (Lin Meijiao) to be the breadwinner of the family. The couple had wanted to adopt a boy after Daiyu failed to conceive, but the child was swapped. Yongyong grew up being raised as a boy. Thereafter, they gave birth to three daughters. One of them, Han Rourou, is the beauty of Huaxiang Street. She is every man's dream girl, but her heart is set on marrying a foreigner.