by Eleanor Mannikka
synopsis
Can Yue (pronounced "tsan yu-e") is a melodrama that centers on the perception and treatment of older women in China. The central woman in this story married in the traditional manner, but only after her fellow villagers turned against her first marriage to the man she loved. The prejudicial attitudes of the villagers drove the couple apart, and now many years (and five daughters) later, the woman is widowed and longs to see her former love. Since her first husband kept her first-born child, her desire to see him is not merely triggered by nostalgia for the love they knew. But the situation is made more difficult by her own children, who forbid her to remarry, believing its beneath the dignity of a woman her age.
