Film promotes China’s ‘One Belt, One Road’ initiative among Nepali viewers
BEIJING: Beginning next spring, television screens across Nepal are set to light up with episodes of Ode to Joy, one of China’s most popular sitcom series.
Dubbed in Nepali — among the first languages in which the show will air outside of its original Mandarin — the broadcasts represent a new step toward stronger ties between China and the Himalayan republic. More broadly, the move demonstrates China’s tightening embrace of countries under its “One Belt, One Road” (OBOR) initiative.
Since it debuted in China last year, Ode to Joy has racked up more than 20 billion views online. The show, which has been likened to the American sitcom Sex and the City — minus the sex — tells the story of five young women who live in the same Shanghai apartment building. The show has been hailed for its depiction of Chinese women as strong, independent, and careerdriven. Tsering Rhitar Sherpa, a Kathmandu-based filmmaker who is leading the Ode to Joy project in Nepal, said that when it comes to consumption of foreign media, most Nepalis look to India and its often-patriarchal soap operas.
Sherpa has several films under his belt that offer a peek into Nepal’s gender and social issues, including the 2000 movie Mukundo, Nepal’s Academy Award submission that year. His company, Mila Productions, is now working alongside the Chinese firm contracted by the government to dub Ode to Joy.
The show, Sherpa said, offers storylines to which people in his country can relate. “The characters in this show are universal — they portray challenges we face in Nepal, too,” said the filmmaker, whose fictional TV series depicting Nepal’s first female prime minister received rave reviews in 2015. “This (the Nepal screening of Ode to Joy) will give us an opportunity to understand the Chinese people, too.”