Roundup: Mexican soap operas build cultural bridge with China

Mexican soap operas have gained popularity among Chinese audience in the past three decades, serving as a cultural link between the two distant nations.

Featuring tales of unrequited love and unforgivable betrayal, these dramatic daytime or nighttime series have elicited sighs and smiles on both sides of the Pacific, with human stories that millions of viewers in both Latin America and Asia can identify with.

Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa once said:" Culture has done for Latin America what politics and economics have failed to achieve: integration."

The cultural bridge that has connected the two regions via the small screen has been in place since at least the 1980s, following the production of "The Rich Also Cry" ("Los ricos tambien lloran"), a Mexican soap opera that was an enormous hit in China.

Produced in 1979 by Mexican TV network Televisa, the soap opera starred actors Veronica Castro and Rogelio Guerra as an unlikely match -- she's a poor orphan, he's a debonair millionaire -- thrown together by fate, but kept apart by meddlesome family members with their eyes on the money.

It was a gripping and winning formula that proved successful in distracting viewers from their own troubles, even if just for a few minutes each day. So successful, in fact, that in 2007, Televisa signed an agreement with the Chinese government to produce soap operas in China for Chinese audiences.

A year later, in 2008, the company launched the Chinese version of its popular drama "The Prettiest Ugly Girl" ("La fea mas bella"), known in Chinese as "The Ugly Girl Wudi."

Starring Chinese actors Li Xinru and Liu Xiaohu, who thus gained national fame, the program was the most watched prime time soap opera in China from 2008 to 2010.

In its first season, more than 280 million viewers tuned in daily, according to "Razon y Palabra," an online Spanish-language magazine on the media and entertainment industry.

China's ambassador to Mexico, Qiu Xiaoqi, noted the special cultural relationship between the two countries in a speech at a ceremony in 2013 celebrating the anniversary of a magazine.

"Mexico is the Latin American country with the most frequent cultural and educational exchange with the Asian country," Qiu said.

"Certain Mexican films and soap operas -- such as 'Wild Heart' ('Corazon salvaje') -- have been well liked by Chinese audience, due to their spectacular and beautiful landscapes and excitement," he said.

"In recent years, several quality films and soap operas ... have aroused a new wave of 'fever' for Mexico," he added.

Perhaps the highest recognition awarded Mexico's TV dramas came in June 2013, when China's First Lady Peng Liyuan, accompanied by her Mexican counterpart, actress Angelica Rivera, visited Televisa's headquarters in Mexico City.

Rivera later wrote on her Facebook page that "my acting and technical colleagues were filled with pride by the interest (Peng) showed in the great work done in Mexico and broadcast in more than 74 countries, including China." Endi